The Coastal Challenge
Gearing up for The Coastal Challenge In Costa Rica
Jackie Windh / 16.03.2016
This is the 12th running of The Coastal Challenge - a 6-day 225 km staged ultramarathon held on Costa Rica’s south Pacific coast. But don’t let the “coastal” part of it fool you!
Yes, parts of the route cruise along some of Costa Rica’s prettiest (and most remote) beaches. But each daily stage starts by heading inland, in most cases climbing along the foothills of the Talamanca Mountains, before descending back to lower elevations for each night’s camp. Other than the final day’s “Victory lap” on the Osa Peninsula, the total elevation for each day is on the order of one to two km.
But that’s not all...
This race offers some of the toughest terrain you’ll find in any ultramarathon in the world. I know - I completed it back in 2008 (racing alongside with Robyn Benincasa’s team Project Athena). Although Race Director Rodrigo Carazo makes some changes to the route each year, the overall route is similar to what I ran back then.
You tend to blank out parts of long races like this (well, at least I do!). Even the very night after you have run a stage, it is sometimes hard to remember what order things happened in. Was that really tough technical descent from today - or did I run that one yesterday?
But one of my strongest memories from this route is JUNGLE. Lots of jungle. Being alone for hours in the jungle. You could be travelling only five minutes apart from another racer - but not see them at all. And that can play tricks with your mind: wondering if you missed some flagging and are off course, peering carefully into the hardened mud path to see if there are signs of trail runners having passed by.
Another strong memory for me is the river. Day three. That route is pretty much the same this year: we start in the seaside surf town of Dominical, but soon descend to the river. And then, for the next 8 km, we make our way up the bouldery riverbed, against the current, to the first checkpoint. I’m actually a much better rough-terrain hiker than I am a runner, so I loved this section (and did well on it). But some of the more “pure runners” hated it.
And then the descents are my other big memory. Steep and rough descents, sometimes through jungle, sometimes on gravelly 4WD tracks so steep that you cannot walk on the pea gravel, your only option is to run them. And one big descent on a very rough and lumpy slope overgrown with long grass, where we drop 1000 m over a very few km, and it is very hard to find secure footing through all of the vegetation. A few of the very elite trail runners do run this stuff, but for most of the field it is a slow and careful slog down, just trying not to injure yourself.
Runners are now all gathered at the Best Western Irazú in Costa Rica’s capital San José. We’ve just come from an excellent and informative briefing, delivered bilingually in perfect English and Spanish (with a little fire dancing show thrown in for fun). Runners are now doing finally gear prep, hoping to get a couple of hours of sleep before tomorrow’s 3:30am wake-up call, and 3.5 hour drive to the race start in Quepos, on Costa Rica’s west coast.
SleepMonsters
