Here's a brief synopsis of those details-

Day 1- 60 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing.  surfaces- 48% Mud, 40% Gravel and 12% Pavement

Day 2- 45 miles and 8,700 feet of climbing. 

Day 3- 75 miles and 5,600 feet of climbing.

ouch.

Most of the ouch came on day one.  It took 6.5 hours.  That's a long time.  I was hiking for about two of those hours up the longest, steepest climbs you've ever seen.  These little gems were connected by the shortest, steepest, most challenging descents I've ridden in quite a while, maybe ever...  Totally worth it though, absolutely beautiful sunrise over the pacific led to stunning ridgelines taking us into the cloudforest and eventually slogging up to the central plateau.  Perfect weather, high clouds but no rain, which would have been a bit over the top...  Couldn't ask for a more spectacular adventure on a more perfect day.  I somehow felt real good too.  Drank a ton, ate a ton, rode pretty fast most of the time.  Rode real slow for about a half hour at the top of the two hour climb, then rode fast again.  Passed a Local on the last climb to finish fourth and take hours out of some of the competition.  The Columbian prodigy, Leonardo Paez, won in six hours flat, beating me by 25 minutes...  200 of the 425 starters had finished by dark, 12 hours in the saddle, the rest got picked up at various aid stations along the course, happily I'm sure...

Day two dawned (before dawn actually) SORE and TIRED.  Shocking.  It pretty much stayed that way.  I got tricked into riding fast between bike fixing stops for the first couple hours, then grenaded and rode much smaller than a small child.  Unfortunately, it takes a small child a really long time to climb up a Volcano to 3,000 meters elevation and come back down...  Lost an hour.  Finished 20th.  If you want to learn more, check out Mountain Bike magazine's La Ruta coverage, for which I'll be writing an account of day 2's struggling.

I actually focused on eating everything in sight and taking a huge nap after day 2, easy to accomplish as I was totally shelled and stranded at the most beautiful hotel I've ever seen, perched on a ridge overlooking the coffee plantation filled Turrialba valley.  This led to day three working out better, which I was pretty happy about.  I didn't get tricked into riding too fast at the start, settled into a maintainable pace and set about catching guys on the initial climbs and descents, having a good time looking at the scenery, appreciating the fact that I'd given my bike a tuneup that morning...  The top of the last (and hottest) climb of the race found Thomas Frischknekt waiting for someone to ride the last 40 miles downhill and across the plantations to the carriban with.  That person was me.  I was happy to have someone to chat with and keep the tempo rolling, the lead group of five was already 5 minutes ahead and we agreed not to chase too hard...  Working together was great till we hit the last 10k to the beach, which was all on railroad tracks.  Somehow my morale and low level boredom was overcome by the abuse and Frischy got away.  I rolled in solo in 7th, just under 5 hours in the saddle, stoked to be alive, feeling respectable, and DONE! 

My time of 15 hours 43 minutes was good for 7th overall 1:43 down on the impressive Paez.  That's a lot of bikin' in three days...

A hat has to be tipped to Luis and Diego, the principal organizers of the event, they did an amazing job getting 500 riders, media and staff from coast to coast over amazing terrain in three days with impressively few glitches.  Everyone at the after party at Playa Bonita had a smile on their weary faces, which is an achievement in itself.

I don't know what to say to sum up the experience.  You definately learn a lot about about a lot of things, yourself, others, the area you're in.  It's really something everyone should check out in some capacity at some point.  I'll be back for sure, it'll just be after 2009...

Now we're off to do some kayaking, surfing and downhilling, along with a lot of sleeping in hammocks...

Cheers,

Adam