The Coastal Challenge
Up Into the Mountains
Jackie Windh / 22.03.2016
The one easier thing about today is that we spent much of it at nearly 1000 m elevation, meaning slightly cooler and definitely breezier conditions. The tough part of the day was that we had to get there: a steep climb to start, and an even steeper descent to finish, losing nearly 1000 m over 3.5 km of route. Total distance for the day was 35 km, with 2054 of elevation gain and loss.
I woke up surprised by how good my legs were feeling. Like I’ve said, I’m not that great a runner. My strengths are endurance (I may not go fast, but I can go and go and go), and race management (getting the nutrition and hydration and body care all right). Today’s start was a very runnable road, starting with a very gentle uphill slope and gradually steepening, up to PC1 at the 6.4k mark. I wasn’t sure if I would be mostly walking by the second half of this week, but I felt great to run!
From PC2 we abruptly veered into the jungle: another very steep and technical trail, a relentless ascent gaining nearly 600 m over around 1 km. That is steep! I passed Melody here (so far, 5th place female), not looking great: she was having knee problems and feeling dizzy. Up top, at PC2, I saw fellow Canadian Michael Moore seated and looking terrible. He had been running really well up to now, around 12th overall, so that was a surprise. (He ended up dropping here - and later found out he had Dengue fever, poor guy!)
From PC2 it was a long but pleasant run over hilltops with great views of Costa Rica’s Talamanca Range to the east - rising over 3000 m - and the ocean to the west. At PC3, the 20k mark, was where the Adventure category racers had started. The descent ahead would be their first experience of the very rough and technical terrain that we Expedition category racers had been navigating the previous two days.
From here, we veered off to paths through pasture. “Pastures” in Costa Rica are NOT like pastures at home: they are impossibly steep and uneven, and the grass is a metre or even two metres high, but all fallen over - so you can’t see the holes you might step in. Navigation was a bit tough here - the route wound around in all sorts of directions, so you had to be very observant and look around for the flagging. There was no road access this whole section (15 km) and therefore no aid stations: Rodrigo had warned us to carry lots of extra water here, and that there was a single creek with good water at the 25k mark.
Well, what he didn’t tell us is that we would have to walk up that creek for several kilometres! My feet were actually fairly dry for once, and I didn’t want to have soft wet feet blistering up for that steep descent, so I tried for a long time rock-hop and keep them dry (assuming, incorrectly, that this river section was only short). Eventually I had to give up and wade through some of the holes. As it turned out, there was another long long long climb (ascending around 400 m over 4 km) before I hit that descent.
The descent was what I expected - it was the one part of the route that I clearly remembered from when I did this race 7 years ago. Very very steep (definitely use pole!) and completely unrunnable to all but a very few of the most sure-footed runners around.
The women’s competition had been quite tight until today - but skyrunner Ester gained 30 minutes on Elisabeth through here, solidifying her lead. In the men’s competition, little changed: Iain consolidated his position as leader yet again, by winning the stage ten minutes ahead of second-place Gonzalo.
We were nearing the end. Tomorrow, would be the longest day yet, at 52 km for Expedition racers and 37 km for the Adventure racers. But, RD Rodrigo Carazo promised, the terrain would be much easier, and we would likely finish it a good hour faster than our time today. Unfortunately, his prediction turned out not to be so ...
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