La Ruta de Los Conquistadores, 2007
Posted on December 21, 2007 by Andrew
By: Andrew
OK, so there really are some races you should only do once. This is one of them. My second time around just confirmed that for me. Clearly my memory is shot. This is not so much a mountain bike race as a death march, and this year they made it even harder by adding an extra stage, making it a four-day race. Bastards. Even excluding all the stuff that can go wrong - getting lost (see 2002 post), mechanicals, bad race organisation, getting sick, crashing and going to hospital etc - the physical challenge of this race is daunting. And let me add that this was the concensus hardest MTB race in the world according to everybody there who had done the (longer) Trans Alp, Trans Rockies and Cape Epic races.
By way of comparison, let’s consider one of the hardest one-day MTB races in America, the Leadville 100. Leadville is a 100 miler, at altitude, with a total of 12,500 feet of climbing. The weather can turn nasty, the altitude makes you feel weak, the climbing is difficult. Only about 60% of racers finish in under the allotted twelve hours. About 10% finish in under nine hours - an achievement marked by the reward of the coveted “big belt buckle”. Sounds rough right? Well, in the first day at La Ruta, we climbed almost 15,000 feet in just 67 miles. A lot of that was off the bike and pushing up muddy slopes too steep and slick to ride. And the weather was quite benign this year…. For those who say that La Ruta has too much road and jeep road riding well, that’s true, but it also has extremely nasty and very technical muddy descents, endless climbing, river crossings and mud like you’ve never seen. 
This year’s Stage One was supposedly easier than last year in that we did the famous Grifo Alto 22 km climb on the road instead of the dirt. But, to offset that, they added the extra day. I think I would have preferred the dirt climb, but I digress… 
The cast: We had a good group of racers and a wild-card for this one: Scott Henry (Trek Regional Team Racer); Matt Gordon (ex State Champion and very good all-round racer); Stew Stafford (four-time State Champion); Joel Grimmett (overall bike monster, 11th place at Leadville 2006); myself, and the wild-card - my brother-in-law, Andy Burton, a 58-year old business executive who has ridden a mountain bike a total of eight times. In fact, he doesn’t even own a mountain bike. Let me point out that in the months leading up to La Ruta, I have taken an endless stream of abuse from the other riders in our group for inviting (persuading?) Andy to do the race. They can’t believe that a guy with this little experience - not to mention the fact that he is 58 years old - is about to attempt the most difficult mountain bike race in the world. What they don’t know, is that I’ve seen Andy ride a road bike (we did a couple of stages of the 2006 Tour de France) and I know the old bastard can climb. Very well, actually. I also know that he has a great sense of adventure and the kind of good nature that really helps get you through a race like this. So, I am optimistic. I am going to try to keep this brief:
Stage One: 
Wake up at 3am. for breakfast. get in bus and go to start hotel. Pick up bike from storage tent. Go to starting grid. Wait in dark for start of race. Whimper softly in fear. Then….Endless climbing as described above. You’re never happy to see a downhill, because it’s invariably followed by an even longer climb. Lots of mud, lots of hike-a-bike… technical, muddy descents with gullies deep enough to swallow bike and rider.
The “home team” advantage gets really annoying after a while: The Ticos have support motorcycles and cars ferrying drinks and food to them on the open jeep road sections - we get to suck in the fumes of their vehicles while we lament our heavy loads of supplies we are forced to carry. After about four hours on the bike we finally get through the muddy parts and come to the last check-point before the fabled Grifo Alto climb. I arrive as Stewart is getting ready to leave. He tells me that Scott and Matt are just up the road. This is encouraging. I refill my bottles, grab some food and get after it. The climb is steep and endless, but at least it’s on asphalt and is relatively easy compared to the sucking mud we have endured for half the day. The tired legs can live with this. And then…a cruel joke…towards the top of the climb we come upon a road work crew who has been laying fresh, sticky asphalt for miles. And, lucky us, we get to ride on it! It is as if we are in molasses all of a sudden. Curses ensue, but nothing to be done but suck it up and keep riding. The asphalt is finally over, then maybe ten more miles of jeep road climbing and I am done. My time is 6:41, ten minutes behind Matt and Scott, five minutes behind Stew. I am very happy with this. We shower and eat and wait for Joel and Andy. This race is not Joel’s cup of tea: he has bad ankles and the hiking sections really kill him. As we wait, Matt leans over to me and says, sotto voce, “Dude, your brother-in-law is not gonna make it”. He has a point: The stage was very difficult with sections that even the best technical riders had trouble with. And Andy is very inexperienced… But, no sooner are the words out of his mouth than we see Andy cross the line , barely more than an hour behind us. We find out later that he finished second in his age group - a stout effort indeed. We reluctantly hand in our bikes for the power wash - a seal-destroying, bearing-contaminating session of bike abuse performed by the La Ruta crew. Then we hand in our bikes for overnight storage until the next stage. We all hate doing this because they just lean the bikes against each other in rows, maybe 50 bikes deep.
Stage Two: This is very funny. We get our bikes early so that we can get towards the front of the starting grid and avoid having to fight the crowds mid-pack at the start. Then we hear an announcement saying “the following riders please line up at the front of the grid”. And, by virtue of our collective good finishes on Stage One, Stew, myself and Andy find ourselves at the front - with the pros. Andy can’t believe it - it’s maybe his 10th day on a mountain bike - ever. We are a little apprehensive about this stage because it is the new, extra day they just added and nobody really knows what to expect.The start is fast and furious: through a muddy field, out onto jeep road, then asphalt, then dirt and then - damn - here are the climbs again. We hit the first steep one and I shift into my easiest gear on the cassette. Massive sound of metal-on-metal ensues followed by my pedal-stroke getting stopped dead. I dismount and look at the rear end. My chain has totally overshifted the cassette and is now wedged between the cassette and spokes. I pull off to the side and try to pull it out. Matt rides by and asks if I need help. I tell him I’m OK and he advises me to be gentle - derailleurs are easy to snap. I struggle with the oily chain for about five minutes. It seems as though the entire race overtakes me. Finally, I realize that I just have to break the chain, re-route it, then put it back together. Five minutes later it’s done and I’m back on the bike overtaking the hundreds of riders who have passed me. But it’s tough going, the climbs are clogged with riders either pushing or riding a bit slower than I’d like. Overtaking is nearly impossible. We hit the next huge climb and I shift into my easiest gear and - crunch! The chain overshifts again. Now I’m really pissed. I dismount, look at the jammed chain and wonder WTF this has happened twice. Then, I look at the bike from the rear, and see that the dearilleur hanger is badly bent and this is what has caused the overshift. And…I realize that it must have happened overnight in the bike storage tent. All those bikes leaning on each other - with people trying to get their bikes in and out - must have been what bent it. So… same story: break the chain, re-route it, re-connect it, bend the derailleur hanger straight, adjust the limit screws and try to overtake the 300 or so riders who have overtaken me again. It turns out to be a brutal day: The climbs are relentless - Leadville climbing packed into half the distance. I’ve never lived in the granny gear for so long. Near the end of the stage we are diverted off the main trail and up the longest, muddiest, suckiest climb I’ve ever seen.
It’s so bad that there’s a guy at the top who you have to pass your bike up to. Then he hands down a long pole, you grab one end, and he pulls you up. At the top it’s giant pools of muddy water, then the descent down the other side is like a slippery ski run on your ass and feet. No fun at all. Then we are routed through town - I almost hit an oncoming truck when I overcook one of the turns - and we finish at a giant shopping mall at the outskirts of San Jose.
Stage Three: This is the same as Stage Two from years gone by and I’ve done it before, so I know what to expect. In a nutshell, you climb for about three to four hours, then do a 30 km descent on the shittiest, muddiest, rockiest cow-poop infested doubletrack road known to man. It’s really fun. And, it’s really hard on brake pads, so most people carry extras with them on the bike in case the existing ones wear out. I have prepared well for this by changing my pads the night before AND packing a spare set in my tool pouch. Clever me…
The following is the post I wrote in San Jose on Day Four:
Day four: Well, sadly, I am writing this because I’m not racing the final stage of La Ruta. After a great first day, a bad luck second day, I had another bad luck day yesterday. After a mammoth climb up Irazu Volcano on the road for about 3 hours, we were turned onto the muy peligroso mud, rock, mist and rain endless 30km descent. This is the one everybody warns you about. It’s so long and muddy you can wear out a set of brake pads on the way down. So, everybody carries spare pads in their tool pouches just in case. Jennifer tells me I’m not far behind Stew as I hit check point 3 and start the downhill. I’ve been feeling good, so this feels right, just like day1. I think I can make up time after my shitty mechanical breakdown from day 2. The downhill is long, wet and peligroso as advertised. After about a half hour the brakes start to fade. I stop and adjust the slack and continue. I pass Joel a little later. He really hates the mud. A little later they get really bad and I’m having a hard time stopping, at one stage having to go off the road and control/crash into the verge to stop. Time to change the pads. It’s tempting to continue and hope for the best because I know I’m only about 10kms from the end, but the slope is steep and very treacherous, so I stop and reach for the tool pouch under my saddle. Only…it’s not there! All that’s left is the cinch strap and a red tatter of fabric that had once, proudly, been a tool pouch. It looks like the shark from Jaws ripped it from the bike…
Oh well, nothing to do but run. So, I suck it up and run the last 10kms in my super stiff carbon shoes, cursing every step of the way. About thirty or forty guys pass me on the run. Bastards… The run hurts - my big toe nail is still black from it - a month later….
I buy some more pads from the bike shop tent, hand in the bike for a wash and go to shower and eat. While I’m eating, Matt comes up with a strange grin on his face and says ‘do you want the good news or the bad news first’. Long story short, he tells me that Andy has crashed in the final 10 kms of the race. His carbon handlebar snapped, he went down on rocks, cut his hand, bloodied his nose and got bruised all over. Carbon brake lever destroyed, handlebar snapped… But that’s not the good part. So he, then, somehow, gets offered a bike from a Costa Rican racer to finish on. Apparently this Tico guy thought Andy’s race was more important than his. So, they trade number plates, remembering even to cut off the timing chips and switch those too. And, Andy finishes the stage on this good Samaritan’s entry level Gary Fisher, circa 1995. And that’s what Matt is laughing about. He tells me I’m the proud new owner of a $350, 30 pound chunk of scrap metal, to put it kindly, because he’s convinced that the Tico is going to walk with my nice light $4000 race bike that I loaned Andy.
But, no, we meet the Tico, Sergio, after the race, exchange email addresses and take a pic of the two of them. He’s a really cool guy. Andy looks like shit, but his adrenaline is still up and he tells me he wants to race the final day. He goes to get his hand seen to by the ambulance crew. They tell him they need to take him to hospital. We arrange to meet at the mechanic area so that we can take a shuttle to our hotel later. I buy a new handlebar and grips from the bike shop tent. The proprietor is starting to like me more and more. Then, I spot Tinker Juarez, the current 24 hour world champion, who I know briefly from racing with him at Chupacabra and also from this race, hanging out at the hotel with him and the lads in the hotel bar.
I ask him for help and he takes me to the Team Cannondale mechanic, Troy, who is working his way through a mass of Cannondales, cleaning and prepping them for the final stage. We explain the situation to Troy, who is super cool and agrees to fix the bike and loan us an entire new brake assembly… after he’s done with all those other team bikes in the queue, which will be well into the night I believe.
I wait for Andy to return. I walk to the ambulance and ask them where he is. ‘Hospital” is the answer. OK… So, I wait some more and ask one of the organisers what I should do. He says that, although it’s been three hours already, I should just be patient, things take a long time in Costa Rica. I go back and ask the ambulance drivers if they can call the hospital. Of course not, they only have walkie talkies to comm with the other ambulances, but no way to contact the hospital. Damn. Stew, Matt, Joel and Scott are long gone to the hotel and I begin to think I should do the same, seeing as we have a bag of wet clothes, rain jackets, wet shoes, bottles to refill etc. and, clearly, there’s nothing I can do to help here. I talk to one of the organisers we like, who also speaks good english, and he agrees to look out for Andy and put him on a shuttle to the right hotel upon his return.
I get on the shuttle – it’s getting dark already – and begin the 45 minute drive to our hotel, one of the four hotels that the racers are being put up in around the little town of Turrialba. The first thing I do when I get to the hotel is to ask the front desk to call the hospital and check for Andy. “Which hospital?”…shit, I dunno, so the nice lady at the front desk calls around and locates the one Andy was checked in to and we discover, to my relief, that he has just left. I join the lads in the restaurant for dinner and we anxiously wait for the last shuttle to arrive from the race finish. At last it arrives and we all walk out to meet it, expecting to see him on board. But no, he’s not there. Now, I’m really worried, knowing that Andy has already checked out of the hospital, doesn’t know which hotel we’re staying at, and doesn’t speak any Spanish at all. Not good.
We return to our dinner and beers. About ten minutes later we hear a car engine and see a cab drive up the steep path to hotel. Andy gets out and bums cab fare from us, since he didn’t take any money with him when he left for the hospital. He sits down and eats and tells the sorry story of his epic day: The race ambulance pretty much just dropped him off at the hospital and left, making no arrangements for transport back to the race site. After treatment, he had no money to pay the $105 hospital bill and so had to loan the money from one of the other gringo racers who was also injured and in the hospital. The other gringo racers and Andy left the hospital together and went to the hotel in town where they thought they were staying. Andy however, was not booked into that hotel and so after a few phone calls, he figures out where we are and gets a cab ride out to us.
So now, the adrenaline has worn off, the five hours in hospital and all the injections into his split hand have taken their effect, and he looks – and feels – like shit. Wisely, he decides not to ride the final stage. The other guys in our group have done OK: Matt finished an astonishing 11th overall on the day, Stew maintained his 2nd place in our age group, Scott did well, Joel had a bit of a rough one again in his nemesis, the mud.
It’s a rough night for both of us. Andy is hurtin’ and doesn’t sleep well. I have a case of the runs, probably from all the cowshit and mud that we’ve been riding through. It’s a pretty bleak morning too: raining and misty. Andy looks a little grey around the gills. We go for breakfast and I mull over the shitty mechanical luck I’ve had in this race, the weather, Andy’s condition, my bad gut and I decide that bailing out sounds like a plan. Disappointing, because my legs feel fine and I rarely, if ever, bail out of a race, but we’ve done the three hard mountain stages and have acquitted ourselves quite well, I feel. Also, I finished this race in 2002 and recall that the last day was less than inspiring: a lot of riding on train tracks, a lot of road sections, little climbing…and I’m OK with missing it this year.
We go to the start of the race and organize a bus ride back to San Jose. We wait and watch the start of stage 4 before we leave. Just before the start, I look over and see that Scott is having trouble with his shifters and is trying to see if he can take mine off my bike and put them on his. Matt, Jennifer, Scott and I decide that transferring the shifters and cables would take way too long so he should just ride my bike. We quickly change pedals, adjust the seat height, change toolkits and we get him on the line just in time for the start. Andy and I start loading our stuff onto the bus. Embarassingly, Troy the mechanic sees Andy’s bike being loaded and comes over and says something to Andy about “staying up all night working on it”. Andy holds up his bandages hand and tells Troy the sad tale of his day in hospital. Troy understands, kind of. I think he had a rough night too.
And we’re off. Back to the comfort of the Best Western in San Jose where Andy goes to bed and doesn’t emerge, except for dinner, for about 18 hours. Turns out the rest of our gang has an epic day. After the last stage the bus bringing them back to San Jose breaks down and they have to get a $100 cab ride to the hotel. Then, there is a mud slide on the highway and the vans carrying the bikes are delayed, which really sucks because we have to disassemble the bikes and box them up for our crack o’ dawn departure for the airport. Finally, they arrive at the hotel at about 2 am and we go downstairs, collect them and pack them, only to wake up a few hours later to get the shuttle to the airport.
Stage Four proved to be good for the lads: Scott finished close to the top, despite getting two flats, Stew flatted, but held on to 2nd place overall, Matt and Joel both rode strong. Matt finished 7th overall in the 30-39 age group, Scott was 5th in the same category and Stew was 2nd in the 40-49 category. Pretty good results from a raced that started almost 700 deep! Now…what’s next?
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