La Ruta de los Conquistadores
Stage 2 · Riding Skyward
Cory Wallace / 12.11.2009
The depth of this yrs La Ruta was very apparant on the opening climb as 16 riders managed to hang in the lead pack for most of the first climb. Near the top of the climb riders began to blow and many of the top finishers from the first day would drop off. Costa Rican´s Manual Prado and Deiber Esquival would be joined by Spaniard Marc Trayter to form the lead pack for the day with Esquival taking the win with Prado close behind. Esquival suffered some mechanical breakdowns on day one which put him back in 13th posistion so it was nice for him to get the victory today.
As a nice relief today much of the stage took place on paved roads as otherwise some of the climbs would be unclimable. Riding along the tops of ridges and straight up mountains is something we rarely experience in North America as highway construction workers tend to use switch backs and valley bottoms. Not here in Costa Rica. It seems highways are built based on how scenic they can be rather than for logistics. This makes for great bike racing terrain which can be breath taking in more ways then one.
At one point today I was joined by Bishop for close to an hour as he had mistakenly taken a wrong turn and lost around 5 minutes. After riding with Hoydahl on day one I was stoked to get another chance to ride with such a great rider. Maybe tommorow Heras will be around? Seeing all these great riders in the lead group in this stunning racing environment in something else. When you toss in the "La Ruta factor" (open roads, sketchy decents, and extreme weather it makes for quite a rare spèctacle.
With half of La Ruta in the books Im sure most riders already have enough memories and stories to fill there memory banks. After tommorows epic volcano stage where the riders will acend the 3000 m Volcano Irazu and then decend back down to sea level there are sure to be many good times ahead.
SleepMonsters
