December 11, 2004
Hello Cycling fans and La Ruta Followers!
I'm back, came out unscathed and am wiser beyond my years. Had a fabulous
inner and outer body experience. What an event it was. It's difficult terrain
was as advertised, but unfortunately there's not much we can do here to
train for a couple of key areas that prevented a top 15 overall placing.
1) The persistent unrelenting heat and humidity in mid November - just
isn't present here in the North East - and paralyzed me in the last hour
on stage one. Sure we have more than our share of this in the summer,
but acclimating to this in 1.5 days turned out difficult - I expected it
but couldn't swing the extra time off for it.
2) The length and steepness of the climbs. I've ridden some 40k road climbs
before, but never been on a climb taking 4 hours going straight up, with
little to no rest before as we did to the Irazu Volcano in Stage 2.
3) Even though I ran Stan's with Tubeless Pythons (kind a like using the
pill and a condom at the same time :) which have decent protection and
rubber thickness, I flatted in stage 3. This after finishing all the mountains
and hitting the last section, 3 hours of flats, in 12th place with two
locals to work with! My chance for a top 10 placing on the stage went down
the tube (no pun intended) when my only spare had a rip in it around the
valve, probably from all the rocks from the previous 15 hours of riding.
A second flat 1 hour from the finished, hurt my time and overall placing
which ended up to be 27th.
Stage 1 Details (Jaco Beach - Pacific Ocean to near San Jose)
I handled the first 5 hours of stage 1 and the < 1 mph uphill red slippery clay hike a bikes in the rain forest. I felt good, especially getting splits where I was 2nd North American, behind Tinker and 3 rd foreigner behind this Belgium dude, coming out of the rain forest and onto the gravel - my specialty. But it was approaching mid day (after a 3am wake up and a 5:20am start) and the gravel sections were open with no shade and very, very steep. I used every climbing muscle I could muster up, took on as much water and food as I could handle but the cramps eventually came on, and at 5.5 hours of maintaining top 20 I had no choice on the hills but to slow down. Every muscle, adductors first, then quads than hamstrings seized up! And with 3k to go on the last 20k climb I was lucky I could walk. I've been in desperate times before though and was prepared to tough it out, and by the time I hit the 10k decent to the finished I was catching guys again.
But the damage was done, even mildly steep hills before the finish would cramp every muscle forcing me off the bike. I've never, ever, cramped every muscle before in my life. As it turned out I wasn't the only one, as the foreigners suffered from this the most, the Cost Rican's (Tiko's) took the top 7 spots, but I was still one of the top Foreigners. I was happy with the effort and saw the potential results that are possible if I can maintain in that last hour. When I finished the race, the Gatorade tent was just getting set up, there was no water as I guess we were ahead of schedule! So I lied under the tent with the other survivors ahead of me, drank the rest of my race fluids till the cold water/Gatorade arrived. In big international road events I'm used to a manager/coach swooping you up, cleaning your face, and feeding your with recovery drinks and taking you to the hotel to recover. This was much different, and a way more laid back atmosphere. I saw the I.V. tent, and was told by many before hand that was the ticket to recovery. Problem was that I couldn't get up! I've never had my obliques cramp, but even a twist of the body cramped them. Slowly I straightened everything out and made it to the I.V tent. The good part about finishing in the top part of the field is that there are no line ups. After the I.V. all the cramping went away -- including the rest of the stages too. After the shower in the makeshift stalls (will show pictures later), and the local food I was feeling much much better. The next part of the recovery process made the recovery process complete - a long massage.
