La Ruta de los Conquistadores
Stage 1 · Welcome to The Jungle
Cory Wallace / 11.11.2009
With night fading away the 243 riders representing 17 nations left on the 17th annual La Ruta. The welcoming mat to this yrs legenday event was a 8 km climb on up to 26% gradient roads into the Costa Rican rainforest.
With heavy rainfalls the past two weeks the notorious La Ruta mud was out in full force with over 1 hr of super hike a bike through Carara National park. Carara is stunningly beautiful and the riders had even more time to enjoy it this yr as the almond butter mud put the breaks on any forward movement. Hiking a bike is one thing but when both your wheels seize to rotate and your bike has over 25 lbs of mud on it I had a few choice words to describe the experience. There were two choices in this case,either pack your 50-60 lb bike for 1 hr over your head or try and push the beast through the muck, you choose. Being rattled after 45 minutes of this I was stopped in my tracks by a neon blue butterfly floating in front of my face. A little after a Macaw (A Cousin of the Parrot) flew overhead. These sights reminded me why I keep ending up back at this race yr after yr.
Having done the two previous La Ruta's I have to say this was the toughest ride yet and probably the deepest most competitive field ever. With the likes of Roberto Heras, Tinker Juarez, Jeremiah Bishop, Rune Hoydahl, numerous other riders with World Cup experience and a full squad of local Tico's on the line this La Ruta is looking like a Marathon World Cup.
Today's winner was local rider Manual Prado (Sho-Air Specialized) as he outsprinted 4 time winner of the TransAlps Heinz Zoerweg (KTM, Austria) in a time of 5:43:35. Following this duo by 7 minutes was World Cup racer Marc Trayter. 2005 Vuelte de Espana winner Roberto Heras (Giant, Spain) came in 10 minutes behind in fourth and Milton Ramos (Spain) rounded out the top 5.
Racing around the top 15 I blew up like 90% of the riders today and was soon thinking of playing hockey back in Canada. After a couple riders blew by me I slowly began to loose my interest in placing and began thinking more about making it to the finish line. Cresting a 22 km climb in the middle of the Costa Rican heat I was amped up for the sweet decent to follow only to have 11 time World Cup winner Rune Hoydahl (Norway) blow by me half way down. Apparantly Hoydahl is the only rider to ever win both a World Cup XC and Downhill so I wasn't rattled too badly by this experience and quickly hopped in his dustline. I was scared sh*t less as we blazed down into the Jungle below. A little while later we both blew up again and began talking as we road along in the middle of a twisty gravel road. As we rounded a corner so did a blue car ripping at us head on. Hoydahl peeled off to the right but I was stuck in the cars tracks as it skidded out of control straight at me. Preparing for a superman over the cars hood I managed to pull left at the last second hitting the ditch hard as the car skidded by. Hoydahl looked back expecting to see me in the cars windshield but thankfully I was able to ride back up to him and we would continue on 2 hrs to the finish line. I was stoked to ride in with a World Cup winner and was reminded once again why I keep coming back to La Ruta.
Tommorrow's wake up call is at 6am as the riders will head out on a 11km climb on even steeper roads then what we witnessed today. Last yr less then 15 riders were able to ride the whole climb and apparantly its even steeper this time around. Throughout the stages 75 km profile the riders will either be going up or down although the hike a bike and mud will be virtually non-existent next to what was witnessed today which should lead to a much easier stage. It must be noted that the word "easier" has a little different meaning here then most races.
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