"One of the most difficult athletic events on the planet"
[yeah, whatever...]

Funny how things turn out. 10+ years ago I used to race bicycles. Then I got married, had a son, got divorced, went back to school and changed careers. Turns out I still love bikes. More than just about anything. Thank goodness I never totally stopped riding during that decade. In fact, in the last few years, I put in some long days and got reasonably fit again. Then a friend begged me to do a race with him (mostly for his benefit I suspect - he just wanted some company). I did the race and felt okay. So I did another. And another. Then I tried my hand at the track again and that went okay too. Now I'm looking at racing in 2004 (as much as my parenting schedule permits) with guarded optimism and the enthusiasm of a newby.

As the summer wore on, two friends and I were (jokingly) trading ideas of impossible things to do on a bike. We entertained ourselves by postulating doing silly things like RAAM, the Iditabike and this La Ruta thing in Costa Rica... Somehow, we ended up talking ourselves into La Ruta.

So, as panic stepped in I started to wonder how to get fit for this adventure. Being so late in the fall, long road rides were out of the question. Not knowing what we would encounter, some sort of 'all-over' fitness seemed just the ticket. Then another friend in a spinning class told me about this other fitness class in the morning (Boot Camp) and it turns out the instructor for THAT class also was going to teach UAT and by the way, wouldn't I like to give it a try? Okay, and so here I am. Core fitness a-plenty, cycling fitness, uh, not so much as I'd like...

Martin's La Ruta Journal

Day -1
In no particular order, here is what I have seen so far in costa Rica:

• It's warmer than in Seattle... It was about 50 when I left Seattle, 60 when I got to LA later that night, 72 when we landed in Guadalajara and 75 when we got to San Jose at 8:30 am. By 10 it was at least 85. And yes, I'm pink. Could not help it. Good thing I remembered the aloe gel! [as opposed to sun block, right? I know, I know...]
• Lane dividers are purely decorative. Cars just kinda 'flow' from place to place. Motorcycles use the shoulder to pass cars, pedestrians vie for superiority on the roads with cars and it seems totally random who the cops pull over as (almost) everyone is breaking the law.
• This is a LAME country to ride a bicycle. On the road anyway.
• The roads suck! Not only are many dirt, but HUGE chunks of pavement are just plain missing in many places. Only the newest, freshest pavement is in good shape. And those new roads have no shoulder or lane dividers. Oh well, one can't get greedy I suppose.
• At night, liberal use is made of the high beam switch. It means get the hell out of my way.
• All the (young) men use loads of hair products. That's cool...
• All the women wear tight clothes and show off their midriff. That's also mostly cool... [Note I didn't specify 'young' this time. Okay, and it's not ALL, but I'm trying to give you my impression]
• I went bungee jumping today:
  http://www.tropicalbungee.com/pag_english/eng_01_frames.html
  What a blast! It was just five of us. The driver, two jump masters and two clients. They include a video tape of your jump for no extra so I have an awesome video of me doing this perfect swan off of an 80 m bridge. I have only done this once before in my life (10+ years ago in NZ) and although I was still VERY nervous, this other guy and I jumped right away and we both looked just great.
• On the way to the jump, we drove past all kinds of fruit stands on the side of the highway. And we got these really interesting, green guava fruit at one stand. They were really firm but tasted good. It was like biting into an apple only a different flavor...
• Downtown San Jose is NOT designed for cars. All these buses stop to pick up people on super narrow streets and instantly the roads are jammed and gridlock ensues. This lasts about 3 or 4 hours and then it's back to the usual mayhem that reigns here.
• There are two streets in downtown that are for peds only. Very good idea if you ask me. Each block has about 5,000 shops crammed into it. Everything from a motorcycle repair shop to some place that sells sexy underwear to a fruit stand to a watch shop. And there is also the poor, homeless person sifting through the trash behind the watch shop.
• I'm using the Spanish version of windows XP which is kinda cool. 'notepad' is called 'bloc de notas'. The start button is the 'inicio' button. the back button on my browser is the 'atras' button. 'untitled' is 'sin titulo', but I digress...
• I'm wiped out! I left Seattle at 7 pm, didn't sleep much on the flights, got here at 9 am and have had a full day so far. Better sleep tonight.
• We are two hours ahead of Seattle here. Just like Central Time.
• At the airport, I met a Mavic mechanic that works the Tour de France (and has done 15 tours!!!) who was just coming back from the Crocodile Trophy in AUS so we chatted about that and Phil Anderson (who was in the Crocodile Trophy this year) and this race. His only words were, 'It's hard'. Thanks bro, I suspect it will be...
• I saw a Spanish team all in their matching kits go out for a last training ride today. I was siting on a bench outside the hotel lobby eating malted milk balls waiting for my bungee bus to show up. Made me feel kinda fat and pathetic. [weak grin]
• This other bungee client (a 22 year old guy from Jerusalem who was fresh out of the military and seeing the world) requested that the driver drop us off at a good, local eatery. So we ended up at this fantastic place! It was all wood. Wood floors, tables, benches, counters, bar and there was tons of food hanging from the ceiling. Onions, bananas, etc. And next to each table was a canvas sack of carrots or sweet potatoes or cabbage or something. We ordered our food and then the lights went out. The place lost all its power. Not to fear, out came all these candles and soon so did our food and we were eating by candle light. It was almost a drag when the lights came back on. I had this fantastic dish of coleslaw, rice, black beans, cheese, an egg and fried banana. Wow... It was all served on a big banana leaf. Did I mention that there were no walls in this place? It was all open air like. Not like, it WAS all open air.
• While in the hotel room getting psyched up to bungee, I saw a 50 cent video called 'pimp'. That guy's a musical genius no matter how you slice it. [dead pan]
• I'm learning a tiny bit of spanish. Emphases on tiny.

Day 0
Today we woke up at a leisurely 6 so that we could breakfast by 7 and then assemble our bicycles and put them on the truck by 8:30 (we were getting bused from the hotel in San Jose to the start on the Pacific coast). The parking lot behind the hotel was filled with bike boxes and people fretting when they realized that their disk brakes were rubbing and they didn't know how to center the caliper... My friends and I got our bikes together pretty quickly and then got horizontal in the grass to nibble on some food and relax as the temperature slowly started to rise.

ASIDE - it's a weird thing being so close to the equator. Each day is from 5:30 - 5:30. You wake up and it's warm. At about 9 or 10 it's hot. At noon, depending on if you are in the sun or shade, it's very hot. At some point in the afternoon it usually rains and gets somewhat overcast and then by 5:30 it's dark again.

With our bikes on one truck and all the riders on passenger buses, we headed off to the Pacific coast. It took about 2.5 hours and we stopped at one little food stand in a village for lunch. I love the food here! Loads of fresh tropical fruit, rice and beans, great vegetables and good seafood.

Our first night was spent in a hotel on the beach. This place was huge! It had a big pool, expansive open-air dining (a theme throughout this country) and lots of waterfront property. Did I mention we were close to the equator...? While my friends took a little 'shake-down' spin on their bikes, I hit the surf. Man, the ocean is warm enough that it doesn't really even register when you get in it. You know how you sort of brace yourself when a wave hits because you're trying to prep for the shock of the cold? Not an issue here. You just march in and swim out. The swells were about 3-5' and the bottom was soft sand so I played a while! Then it was off to a great dinner and early to bed. In an effort to give riders as much time as possible, the starts were scheduled to go off right at dawn each day.

Day 1
So, this is the closest thing to an adventure race that I have ever done. "I keep running out of superlatives." That's what I have been telling all my friends anyway. It's going to be hard to describe La Ruta using adjectives so instead I'll also throw in some statistics and if you have ever encountered any of these numbers yourself, you will have an inkling of what the race was like.

Here are some stats for ya'll:

• La Ruta is a three-day mountain bike race that goes from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
• 350 people started this event.
• 222 were able to finish all three days.
• Another 33 were able to finish two out of three days (that means almost 100 people dropped out for you that are math-challenged).
• Day 1 took me almost 11 hours.
• Day 2 took me about 6 hours.
• Day 3 took me about 8 hours.
• I ended up in 130th place (25:29:19) about 10 HOURS behind the winner (15:43:19).
• Every day had sections of 90+ degree temperatures with no shade for hours at a time.
• Every day had sections of 90+ temperatures with radical humidity (but tons of shade - although it didn't matter when you were in these sauna-like conditions).
• Every day had sections of mud that was over one foot deep, river crossings, trail you had to hike down as well as up (because it was too steep or too treacherous to ride) and screaming fast descents on trail, gravel road, pavement and full-on rock gardens.
• Everyone got burned. You'd apply SPF 30+ like three or four times throughout the day ('waterproof' of course) and you'd sweat it off in minutes.
• Every day I consumed between 300-800 oz of various fluids. I had a 100 oz CamelBak and a bottle and drank tons at each rest stop. And I just barely broke even.
• We rode along railroad tracks. That's right, right in-between the tracks and over the railway ties. Sometimes the ties were more-or-less covered in very coarse gravel and sometimes the ties were about 5" tall. There must have been about 15 km of this.
• People were using up a set of brake pads every day. If you didn't carry spares with you, you sometimes could not continue.
• With all the mud, river crossings and water, you had to lubricate your chain about 5-10 times each day. ALL the 'specialty' bike lubes were totally inadequate and got washed off in an instant. True multi-purpose oil or just plain lightweight motor oil was required to keep your chain from sucking and rendering your bike totally unrideable. If you didn't carry lube with you, you were doomed.

Day 2
Today they let us sleep an extra hour so it was up at 4 so you could eat by 5 and start the race by 6. This assumes your bicycle is in perfect working condition of course and that all of your bottles are already mixed up and you have your ride food prepared, etc... And since you had to get bussed to the start of stage 2, factor in a little extra time for that too. Plain old sleep was turning into a precious commodity.

At the start, everyone was swapping stage 1 stories. It seems that the 10 minute warning guy had fooled a lot of riders... Most people had some mechanical problem by now or some spectacular wreck in the mud to relate. I forgot to mention that at the start of stage 1, my friends and I saw the ONE guy that looked like he was wholly unprepared for this event. Let's call him 'Detroit' (he was from Detroit, Michigan). Detroit showed up at the start on his $400 Giant mountain bike, complete with factory installed reflectors, toe clips, running shoes and a cotton t-shirt. He topped off his ensemble with a pack that contained way more than mine and an additional hip bag with a GPS and loads of other toys. I cautiously asked him if he had been training for this ride and he replied, "Yeah..." There is only so much you can do for others and 30 minutes prior to the start of the 'hardest mountain bike race in the world' this was all I had time for. At the start of stage 2 I saw Detroit and asked him how it had gone and if he had finished stage 1. Turns out he never made it to checkpoint 2. We're talking checkpoint TWO people, that's TWO OUT OF FIVE! They hauled him out of the rain forest IN THE DARK. He got back to the hotel at 3 am. It simply boggles the mind trying to figure out what he was doing there in the first place. In case you were wondering, he 'decided' not to ride today and rest instead. He was going to try and ride on day 3 tho.

That's not to say really experienced riders didn't have problems. They had IV bags hooked up to more than one person after stage 1. Some would recover to ride today and some would quit. And I heard about some that already had broken bikes and could not continue for mechanical reasons.

Stage 2 was supposed to be the easiest stage. If you scroll all the way back up to the top of this page, you'll see that it is the shortest overall distance. But you'll also notice that it shoots right from about 2000' all the way to over 9000'. Today was supposed to be the one day where we might encounter cold temperatures and/or cold rain or maybe even snow. In preparation, I took along my arm and knee warmers, a wind vest and my new, super deluxe adventX shell. [Thanks guys, this thing rocks.]

Surprisingly, both of my friends and I had recovered remarkably well after day 1. I guess we did all the right things and I actually felt good (although a bit cautious) as we left town. We rode out of town and right away got into some rollers. I was up the road a bit with this English guy and some Columbians and on every damn incline, the Columbians would stand and just float up the hill. After a couple of these, I had to let them go. Within about 2 more miles, the road seriously tipped up. End of story. For the next 3 hours, you were climbing in your granny gear. At first there were some dirt sections and then it was just this paved wall.

Funny how climbing a paved road in your lowest gear on a mountain bike - for the tech-heads, I had a 24x32 - is so much more memorable than if you were on your road bike.

But I still felt good. I caught the English guy and even some of the Columbians again by the top. My friend was feeling even better and ended up passing me.

The most memorable moment of the climb for me was coming into checkpoint 1. Imagine this loose, rocky climb that heads right up the middle of this field, is about 300 m long and is so steep that you could just ride it if you made no mistakes. About 50' ahead of me was this Costa Rican rider and next to him was this older Toyota Land Cruiser. One of the small, Jeep-looking ones. The guy from Costa Rica was just barely riding the climb and the Toyota was in low/low crawling along beside him. On the roof of the Toyota was a camera operator filming the rider. It was right out of some xxxtreme movie.

From there it was just a matter of staying within oneself to the top. We had all been told that the top could be cold and that the descent was quite treacherous and steep. Since I seem to be able to pace myself better on pavement, I made it to the top in pretty good shape considering. I was not dehydrated, I did not need any oil for my drivetrain and I had only needed to walk the unrideable sections that everyone else had walked. And we got lucky, it was warm and dry! So, I topped off my CamelBak, ate something, pulled on my full-finger gloves and let it rip.

Man, right away we're descending down this road that in some former life was probably paved with cobble stones. The rocks were big. Between fist and head size. My friends and I were all on full-suspension bikes and so most downhills were major opportunities to make up time on other riders. This particular opportunity lasted about 3 hours.

I could go on for days about all the whoops of joy that came out of my mouth while I fell like a stone from 9000' back down to 2000' and all the close calls I had and all the riders that I passed but I'll just relate four things.

1 - Half way down there was a nasty climb. Ouch! If you look at the profile, you won't see it and that's because like so much of the course every year, it got added in at the last minute and no one knew about it. And it was up this farm road that was absolutely greasy sloppy wet with mud. Totally slippery. So many places in La Ruta were about screaming down some hill in your big ring and then grabbing both shifters and cramming your chain into the granny as fast as you can. Man, I need a lower gear if I ever go back...!

2 - There was this big puddle in the road that we had to cross (read: ride through). There was one route along the left side that looked sorta ridable (without hitting the center and maybe disappearing in a who knows how deep hole of water) so I took it. The puddle stretched from one side of the road to the other and there was a fence on both sides of the road so there was no avoiding this water hole. As I hit the water, I must have slightly misjudged my line because I bounced off of something and slowly came to a stop. Not wanting to fall to the right (into the heart of the puddle), I fell left into the fence. Turns out it was a barbed wire fence. Martin draws first blood. Not too bad, a little rip in the left sleeve of my jersey and a couple of scratches on my left arm. In fact, I was laughing at how silly I must have looked falling into the fence and then jumping up to get off the fence. And I was having so much fun on the descent anyway that this scratch was actually kinda cool. I mean shoot, you can't do this ride and not have any injuries, right? A little blood was way macho.

3 - I fell. Okay, I fell twice. The first one was no big deal. My suspension fork is old and really stinks by today's standards. My riding has surpassed it for sure. I was going into a corner hard, trying to brake and turn at the same time and it just pushed out on me. Down I went in the dirt. This woman rode up and asked if I was all right. Yep, not a big deal, this was just another scratch on my knee. Now I had these really badass looking rivulets of blood on my left forearm and my right shin but I still felt fine. I jumped back on, passed the woman and proceeded to pick it up again. No worries. The next fall was at speed. Lots of the downhill was on this rock garden/old cobbled farm road kind of surface. You were bouncing along really trusting your suspension to deal with the surface. It may have been my fork again but since I'm no Hans Rey, it could have been anything really. So down I went, this time in spectacular fashion. As I was lying there on my back, this (same) woman rode up and asked me if I was all right. I had the wind totally knocked out of me and could not answer for about 10 seconds. After I could breathe, I decided that nothing was broken and tried to stand up. I walked around for a bit and then figured I better ride again before I got 1) super stiff or 2) really scared and slowed way down so off I went again. And just so you know, I passed that woman back right away! That's right, Martin is cool and don't you forget it...

[In this fall I cracked my helmet, crushed a finger and gave myself the biggest charlie horse I have ever had. Six weeks later (which is when I'm adding this text), my left quad (the one I hit on the rocks) is still much tighter than my right and it hurts to stretch, I have a new helmet and I finally got my finger (which never seemed to heal) x-ray'd. It's broken.]

4 - The steepest part of the descent was through these coffee plantations. It was essentially a gravel road at this point and you were just flying down the mountain, drifting around corners and occasionally dodging trucks full of beans and bean pickers that were headed up the hill. At first it was just pretty and then I started to notice the poverty. Man, you don't make much money picking coffee beans. Juan Valdez in those coffee ads was always so happy, I just didn't get it. [deadpan]

This finish was just great. It kept getting smoother and faster and finally flattened out on this hardpack dirt road and you had to really grab a handful of brakes to not miss the finish line. Ahh... finish line. Today was literally either up or down. And the interesting thing was, both sections took about the same amount of time. I guess that speaks to the technical difficulty of the descent. Or the length! Holy cow, I have never in my life descended that much in the dirt all at once. Many riders' hands were bruised and sore after today.

ASIDE - not sure if I have put in my plug for fully hydraulic brakes yet so let me just do that. Through all the mud, water, speed that we had endured so far, my Hayes hydraulic disk brakes were champs! Silky smooth, great modulation and rock solid. A total life saver. Literally I'm sure (see day 3 for details).

Tonight we got bussed to a little town. The race had booked about every room it had to offer and there were six or eight riders in every hotel. One thing stood out in our room. The shower had this insta-hot shower head. The whole building was this huge remodel that looked like bits of building tacked onto some small, original structure (just like ALL the buildings down here). All the hallways were 3/4 height and stairs connected all the different levels. So, this shower head was probably installed so that they would not have to get some mega hot water heater and pay to have gobs of hot water when the hotel was empty. It was this 'on-demand' hot water head like you can buy for you sink. I got in the shower, turned the switch to 'caliente' and got it. first of all, caliente was only tepid but I could live with that. The shower head was directly overhead. [how cool, my next bathroom will have an overhead shower - I love them] at one point I must have stood up a little too much and bumped the head. Ouch! What was that, it felt like an electrical shock. I reached up (feeling for all the world like Wile E. Coyote jumping on a jammed trap door) and touched the head with my finger. Sure enough, I got shocked again. Nice... After finishing my shower by turning off the water at every opportunity and only turning it on to rinse, my friends got back and did the same. One of them noticed that of the three wires running out of the head, only two were connected! The ground was flopping around. Nothing like live electricity in your shower I always say.

We found out that today two people broke their collar bones on the descent, one more got trucked away in an ambulance and a few more quit because it was just too rough. Welcome to day two of La Ruta. Thanks for playing.

[I'm rereading this and to some it might sound like I'm embellishing a bit for effect. Sure, I might think I'm a bit funnier than others think I am but this was a hard ride. I don't think I'm exaggerating at all when it comes to perceived effort or conditions. Just ask anyone that knows anyone that has done this.]

Day 3
Sore hands... After having my bike pressure washed countless times on day 1 and then not overhauling the suspension fork, it seems that my front travel has been reduced to about 1". Kind of a drag. I'm not sure if it happened during the second stage or overnight but now I have to be a bit cautious as there is lots of descending on dirt and rocks scheduled for today.

It's worth a quick note to mention that everything else on my bike is working very well. When I put this thing together long ago, I placed a heavy emphasis on functionality and not necessarily on getting components that were super light weight. That horrendous chain suck I had on day 1 was due (in part) to a bent tooth on my small chainring. I found it, straightened it (steel ring), and have had no trouble since.

Today we were promised more mud, a narrow suspension bridge, a big descent, some railroad tracks and then a ride along the beach onto the finish. After a slightly delayed start, we headed off.

The first climb was on pavement. A couple of rollers and then it was up, up and away as we climbed out of valley our town was in. Again, there were sections where I was in my second lowest gear here. Man, this was just the start... I once again found myself riding with these locals that weighed all of 120 lb soaking wet. On every steep section they would pull away from me and on every flat or downhill section I'd pull them back. But it was MUCH too early to play these games, what was I doing!

Finally, we turned left off the road and into the dirt. First we were on a narrow road that was pretty easy to ride on. It descended gently for a while and then we hit the 'field'. At least I think it was some sort of cow pasture/field. We saw some animals and there were fences to keep in livestock. At first the trail just sort of got really muddy. After a 100 yards, it was too muddy to ride and you were hiking your bike through goo that was 12-18" deep depending on where you stepped. Then the slope steepened. Then we crossed a stream. Then we had to hike UP in this mud. By now everyone was carrying their bikes so as to protect the drivetrain from the slop. Not only that, I was not going to give 10 extra pounds of mud a free ride up any hill... I saw one guy lose his shoe. I bet they only had Velcro straps. Poor sap. His foot went into the glop and only his sock came out. I could feel the mud trying to liberate me from my shoes and just hoped that my buckles were tight enough.

After the mud, we got to the suspension bridge and were finally able to ride again. Now imagine being totally coated in greasy, clay-like slime and then getting on a wood bridge and trying to ride. That's right, skating rink! One guy went down right in front of me and I was doing the loosy-goosy for a few feet until it got a bit drier on the bridge.

Once across the bridge, it was time to climb. We were on this fairly smooth dirt road but it just would not stop. I had looked at the profile for today and did not recall any huge climbs but this must have slipped under the radar. Or maybe it was huge -1% or something so they did not tell anyone. All I know is it went on and on and on. And towards the top, it got steeper. I had to stop once and just catch my breath. The last section was a wall. And as usual, the first checkpoint was right at the top of the wall. As I was drinking, eating and refilling my bottle and CamelBak and wondering how in the world I was going to finish this stage, my friend shows up. Right then, time to go I guess.

The details are a bit hazy by this time but I recall many super descents, one more back breaking climb where we had to push our bikes the majority of the way and me begging my friend not to ditch me. To his credit, he didn't. and I knew that if I could only make it to the flats and the pavement on the bottom the of the descent, I'd get a second wind.

Some highlights of the middle third were:

• Absolutely scary descents through tiny towns on 'paved' roads that would all of a sudden stop, turn to gravel and you'd be hurtling through this rock garden at 30+ mph or whatever.
• This one left hand corner that we came screaming into (the road just fell down the mountain). From a distance, you could not really tell there was a corner at all. By the time we could make out the corner, we were doing 44 mph (my friend had a cyclometer on his bike). It was touch and go whether or not to skid the tires. We had to grab handfuls of brake and even so, we both went around the corner with our left foot out of the pedal skirting the edge of the road. And of course, it turned to gravel in the apex of the corner too. Nice...
• That damn climb. It was so hot and dry and steep and man was that hard. Push the bike, gasp for breath, push the bike, drink some really warm water from your CamelBak, gasp for breath, push the bike some more...

Post-Ride Comments
After completing this race, Martin has learned a few things. Well, maybe a few dozen but here are the highlights:

• To finish this kind of event you need to train. Hello, 2-hour workouts just don't cut it. I should have been out there doing 6-7 hour rides. [sigh] Sadly, this time of year in Seattle that's sort of hard to do; especially after a long summer of riding, being a single parent, blah, blah, blah. But I'll shut up. Robert Blake said it best as Beretta, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." You just can't fake it in La Ruta.
• Don't wear anything white. Unless you really prefer brown and were just looking for an expensive, exhausting method of changing the color of your wardrobe.
• Unless you like doing stuff like living in a cave alone or going on multi-day hikes alone or just being alone, do this event with some friends. And make it more than one because more than likely, one of you will not finish so you'll need a backup to help you through this.
• Go with the flow. You really have no choice. If there was one thing that really stood out it's that this race is about dealing with adversity and about 90% of everything the race director told us was absolutely not true. If you are the type of person that gets pissed off if some little detail is not how it was described or the food stop does not serve exactly what you were promised or you throw up your hands when your bike malfunctions, save yourself a lot of grief and stay home. Some examples are:
  • The promised 'warm up' from the start of day one to checkpoint 1 was totally brutal.
  • The 10 minutes that the support motorcycle told us it would take to get to the next checkpoint took about 45.
  • Even after telling the race organizers repeatedly about an email address change, one of my friends never got ANY of the roughly 10 notes that got sent out by the organizers. Some of which were absolutely crucial to showing up at the right place and time to even start this thing.
  • One day prior to leaving, the race organizers claimed to have been infected by a virus that wiped out everything on a PC. Including all our travel arrangements and hotel bookings, etc.
  • My promised bus that was going to take me from the airport to the hotel never showed up.
  • We (my two friends and I) had decided to all stay in one room so that the three of us could help each other out as much as possible. And we even got confirmation from the organizers that this was fine. Not once were we all booked in the same room.
  • At the official race hotel, there was no trace of signage or anything telling people where to go or what to do. It was sheer luck (okay, a little skill... but I'm trying to embellish a bit here) that we even got on the bus that drove us to the start. It left earlier than advertised and no one was told anything. Can you imagine missing that bus and not even being able to start this thing after flying yourself and your bike down here?
  • The 'pre-race' meeting had three different start times depending on whether or not you read the race flyer, talked to the organizers or talked to the riders.
  • The start of day two was delayed one hour about 30 seconds from the official start. By the lead organizer himself. 45 minutes later riders were sent on their way. One of the top placed women had decided to use these last minutes to go to the bathroom one more time. She had to chase hard for a long time just to catch the last rider...
  • Since the start of day three was delayed as well, riders were finishing in the dark. No lights on the bikes, practically no street lights and no lights on the beach or in the dirt or on the railroad tracks, that's for sure. Deal with it.
• Some things you WILL need are: 1) spare brake pads - a set for every day and 2) oil. And not that sissy, specialty shop stuff that you buy from your local fancy pants high-end bicycle store, just bring some three-in-one oil. Or 40-weight or Phil Wood Tenacious. Nothing else will work.
• Spare gloves and shoes for every day or you better not be squeamish about putting on damp stuff time after time after time.
• If you plan on taking pictures during the race, make it as convenient as possible to get at your camera. Then make it even more convenient. I had a camera in my CamelBak and the effort of taking off my CamelBak, getting out my camera, putting it away and putting my CamelBak back on was just too much to comprehend at times. Like 90% of the time. One of my friends had a waterproof disposable in a pouch attached to the shoulder strap of his CamelBak. That seemed reasonable.