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Show 1 C12 Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Vernal Express By Geoff Lesik Uintah Basin News Service Troy Lupcho has been racing bikes since he was 10. But in November, the former BMX world champion - now 39 - took part in the most extreme mountain bike race on the planet: La Ruta de los Conquistadores in Costa Rica. La Ruta, the brainchild of Roman Urbina, retraces Spanish conquistador Juan de Caballon's route across Costa Rica in 1560. The 15-year-old race begins on the Pacific Coast in the town Jaco and ends 225 miles later at the Caribbean beach of Playa Bonita. Transiting Costa Rica on La Ruta is no easy task. There is a chain of volcanic mountains that runs north and south through the country's central region, rising more than 11,000 feet above sea level. All told the racers rac-ers would complete 40,000 feet of climbing through eight different climates. "You really had to be strong, but you had to be prepared," said Lupcho, who competed in the race as part of the eight-man MonavieCannondale mountain bike team. "It was really cool being part of the team, especially being the old, fat and married guy; basically a has-been." Lupcho and 600 other racers rac-ers from 27 countries took on a course that he said was "basically "basi-cally straight up and straight down." "There were grades on pavement pave-ment where I don't even know how they laid the pavement. It was so friggin' steep," Lupcho said. "Having incredible biking skills wasn't beneficial because it was either rideable or walkable. It was really planning, you had to be really strategic." On average, Costa Rica receives re-ceives 130 inches of rainfall a year, and it seemed like much of that rain fell during the race alone. Lupcho said the only dry part of the race was for the first few hours of Day One. After that the rain fell from every direction imaginable. "You were in mud, you were soaking wet, " Lupcho said of the conditions that led him to get jungle rot on his hands the first day out. "It was like you'd been in a bathtub for six to eight hours just soaking. It was just crazy." Riding in Costa Rica's dense jungles with broad-leafed plants, Lupcho said he would try to stay out in the rain to stay dry. "When water ran off those big leaves it was like getting hit by a waterfall," he said. "It was crazy, tryingtogetoutfrom underneath cover." One of the tips passed on by pro riders like mountain bike legend leg-end Tinker Juarez also seemed counterintuitive to Lupcho. Juarez and others told Lupcho to stop at river crossings and dunk his bike in the murky water. At first the veteran bike mechanic resisted the advice but quickly learned that it was imperative to use the river water to clean off his drive-train or just remove the mud to lighten the load. He said competitors were "like ants on a drop of honey" whenever they found moving water. Lupcho had anticipated how destructive the elements would be on his custom bike, which was serviced nightly by a MonavieCannondale Mona-vieCannondale team mechanic. He brought along lube to keep his drive-train in working order, but quickly discovered a local secret. Walking along the race course were locals with squeeze bottles that in the U.S. would have contained honey. On La Ruta, however, these bottles held 40- weight motor oil that the Costa Ricans would liberally apply to the racers' bikes. "Front derailleur - pbbbbt; rear derailleur - pbbbbt; chain - pbbbbt; I mean 40 weight everywhere," every-where," Lupcho said, noting that at first he protested having the thick goo slathered on his bike. "At the end of the day when we'd drop our bike off with Troy the mechanic, we'd be like, 'Dude, do anything but don't take that motor oil off that chain.' It was unbelievable; the saving grace. You saw a little local with a honey bottle, you wanted to be his best friend." V ,-.,; ,... f f - i i 1 ,. ' t. ... n t ' - s V- It i or- f , I ' fr . f 2 - I Racers work their way uphill over a trail of moss-covered cobbles. Lupcho said having great mountain-biking skills was nearly useless during La Ruta because the course was either walkable or rideable. Photo: Jason Sager, MonavieCannondale TV K - f , V. V': if.-Tp rr.jw , . .... . YJ Y , ,, -v - - - 7 - t , - .V - , r j 4 ' r 1 " ' ' . . 'V- " T - ill j 1 fi: t ."isBWa I- .n. n- -J I " - H c f ! V ! L "' ' . p-?alI-,", , . -jSt Jl 3Swwfa T - 1 J T - Vernal's Troy Lupcho stands in a daze and covered in a mixture of mud and cow dung following another wet day in the saddle on La Ruta. Lupcho said it didn't rain for about the first two hours of the four-day stage race across Costa Rica, after that it was impossible to stay dry. Photo: Jason Sager, MonavieCannondale A mountain biker negotiates a rain-slick board bolted to the center of a railroad bridge during La Ruta de los Conquistadores. The ties on bridges like this one were so decayed at times from exposure to constant moisture and heat that they flexed under the racers' feet. Photo: Jason Sager, MonavieCannondale Ji i M j u V i ! A. ) i 4 i Well- qualificd buyers HOW GET ror 2008 GMC - j " ..... apr months sierra 1500 n i ; ... "I7' 1 , t?r-r-rr.-:- j i7 if" t i -f 1"'V V 4 1 i i'ifnncn Locals also warned riders of the unmarked hazards on the route. Lupcho said he was directed direct-ed around a massive puddle on the course that the Costa Ricans said was full of piranhas. There were also countless crocodiles at the river crossings, howler monkeys and three-toed sloths in the forests, and iguanas "the size of small dogs," Lupcho said. On his third day in the saddle Lupcho encountered a wholly unexpected un-expected danger. He was descending descend-ing from the 11,259 foot summit of the Irazii Volcano. Lupcho was picking his way through the skin-shreddingbasalt and trying avoid the all too frequent piles of cow dung on the trail when he fell - onto an electric fence. "At this point I was pretty much suffering and I knew I just needed to finish," he said. With the cleats on his shoes still holding him to his bike, Lupcho Lup-cho uttered a string of expletives as other riders rolled past him, some laughing. He eventually extricated himself from the fence and reached the motel where the team was staying for the the night. "It was a prison cell," Lupcho said. The tiny room held two beds that weren't even twin-sized, a flimsy desk, a sink, toilet, and shower. Lupcho said he had to put his feet in the tub to sit on the toilet. " This is my comforting accommodations accom-modations before the final day; the longest day," he said. Still, determined not to go home with a DNF - did not finish - attached to his name, Lupcho told his teammates he just needed a hot shower to recharge. His brother and teammate, Shawn, told Lupcho that he hadn't been able to get the water heater attached at-tached to the showerhead to work when he'd showered earlier. Lupcho reached up to fix whatever was wrong with the heater and broke the shower head, sending water squirting everywhere. Then he made the mistake of touching the unit's electrical cord. ZAP! Lupcho screamed more expletives, exple-tives, drawing a teammate to the bathroom with a video camera. Another attempt to fix the heater earned Lucpho his third jolt of the day. Video of the incident - which features an exhausted Lucpho naked from the waist up and screaming a blue streak - ultimately ended up on the Internet. "Everybody's in the background back-ground laughing and they're warm and dressed and ready to go," he said. Later that night, Lupcho's brother paid him a visit and said he'd support him if he chose not to start the next morning. The conversation served as the motivation mo-tivation Lupcho would need to reignite his the desire to finish. The following morning the racers set out on the final stage, which would end on the beach on Costa Rica's east coast. A portion of the course ran along railroad tracks that were laid on cement ties, used because wooden ones would rot in the humid climate. "Imagine riding for miles over cement train tracks," Lupcho said. "My butt hurt so bad." Wooden ties replaced the cement ones whenever the rail line crossed abridge, but Lupcho said those crossings were equally challenging. Some of the ties were missing, others would flex under the riders' weight. "You're in mountain bike shoes with cleats on the bottom, carrying your bike covered in mud," Lupcho said. "You couldn't ride across it. You would die." Leaving the railroad tracks and jungle behind him, Lupcho turned onto a main street in the finishing town. At that moment, he said he heard a woman let out a whoop behind him. "I'm like, 'Cool, local Costa Rica chicks are diggin' my action,'" ac-tion,'" Lupcho said. "It was my wife and my sister-in-law and they were driving in to meet us at the finish line. I'm literally, for about a two minute period, in the middle of town and my wife drives by and slaps me on the butt." When he reached the finish line in 79th place - 10 hours 14 minutes behind the overall race winner - Lupcho said he headed straight into the warm waters of the Caribbean in an effort to cleanse himself of the grime that covered his body from a fall in an oceanside cesspool. "The whole time I'm thinking: 'I'm gonna rot! I'm gonna rot!" he said. Even after conquering the geography of the race and the inclement weather, the riders still had to cope with the aftereffects af-tereffects of four days of being spattered with a combination of rotting fruit and cow dung. The mixture clung to their hair, their faces, their bikes and their water bottles. Ingesting it led Lucpho and some of his teammates to suffer from severe intestinal illnesses. ill-nesses. "When it was over everybody had it. When we got home we definitely had it," he said. "The piano rido home was a rough one." Lupcho recovered from the SEE LA RUTA on C3 t:'. |