Day one is over. All three of us made it to the finish line in time, we can race tomorrow again! 06.00 am this morning 231 ryders set of for Jaco beach heading for the jungle and the fisrt gigantic hill. I already wrote about it in an earlier inlay but it's worth meantion again. It's steep as nothing else, add 231 ryders to that and all are trying to get up there at the same time, madness. But a fun view to. When your at the top/summit it flattens out and you get your first downhill along this ridge line that works it way through this amazing landskape. Later you take a hard right turn it to this crazy path, singeltrack, steep down hill, wet and superslippery. Here I run into my first problem, flat tire and my front wheel, even thoe I race on tubeless wheels... So now they are not tubeless anymore... (Pontus.... =) This tracks and roads are not like anything I seen before, I get back to that later. That meant I had to run for 3 km to the first checkpoint, there a support team could help me. Steven and I was here at the same time, he gave me food while I worked on my tier. After I got my new tub, we head straight in to the jungle, crossing strong rivers, walking most of the time for 1,5 hours. This is way it's called a adventure race and not just a bike race. I learnd about some things here, there are a bunch of different type of mud and clay. This are the main ones: Gray mud; Hard and sticky, like biking on glue, alot of friktion. Light brown mud; laying on top of this hard packed mud, very slippery. Gray/brown mud; slippery like ice. Red mud; sticks to everything and everywhere, horrible. And last, mud mixed with fist sized rocks, incredible slippery. This is how the jungle is, the track is about 2-3 meter wide (6-9 feet) and can have openings that are some meters/feet deep. When we got out from this humid place I was happy to be back on the bike. Here I broked my rear shock so I couldn't lock it or open it. (Fixed now) We reached checkpoint 2, some open felds after that was cocking us when the sun shined right at us. Here I meet up with a guy from Costa Rica that become my new team buddy. We sticked toghter almost all the way to the finisg line. From CP 3 it was all up, 15 km of uphill. There on, up and down, up and down, I saw some really bad crashes when it started to rain when finally got on to asphalt again, people where just laying everywhere. I finished on 9 h & 3 min I think, Steven got in one hour later and Dan around 17.00 (5 pm). I heard someone said I was in the top 40-60 but I don't know, and it's just the first day so a lot can still happend. Now we just cross our fingers that Dans bike is holding up so he can continue tomorrow. He got some problems with a wheel and a break. Sleep time now and we start again 06.00 am tomorrow morning.
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| Start at Jacó beach 06.00 wednesday morning |
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| Me and my Costa Rican Buddy! |
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| CP 3 |
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| Even the support team needs support sometime, they had to be pulled out by a tractor. But they had a great adventure like us. Ron and Brad Rule are our great support team, don't ask me how they find us but they do! Just so you know, there is no such thing as addresses in Costa Rica... |
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| Cleaning my sunglasses at CP 3 |
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| Steven at CP 3 eating a banana |
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| Dan at CP 4, not far behind us here. Than his bike broke down so he had to run with his bike last 20 km. That's respect! |
Sounds like you guys are working hard! You did very well Staffan. You came in at 9:05:51 which is awesome! Thanks for blogging about the race. Good luck to all 3 of you tomorrow! By the way...this is Steve's wife!
SvaraRaderaIt's a beautiful country, isn't it ? but you should know something about its pubs. critico de bares has been talking regarding it. We'll give you the best information about San Jose, Costa Rica. We just want your visit.
SvaraRadera