TransCR: The Prologue

Racers departed from San Jose on early morning shuttles heading to the mountains of Providencia de Dota – and their basecamp for the next four days. The five shuttle buses were loaded down with luggage secured on top as the drivers expertly navigated the chaotic city streets, the windy highway, and the bumpy rural roads. We passed by roadside grazing goats and long-body-short-legged stray dogs. We pointed out stands that sold everything from brightly painted ceramic pigs to giant watermelons – or maybe it was squash. As our convoy turned onto the dirt road and kicked up billows of dust slowly navigating the narrow path we resembled a herd of laden down dromedaries plodding through the desert.


As we got deeper and deeper into the mountains we were enveloped by green lush vegetation that rose up on one side of us and steeply dropped off on the other. The racers pointed out what they thought may be the trails they will be riding and allowed their imaginations to run wild. After all, the course accesses trails that are not otherwise available to the public for riding. The longer we drove, the more three point turns our bus had to make, and the more running starts at steep hills our driver took, the more we left civilization behind us.


Elladee Raelynn Brown, who is visiting Costa Rica for her second time, listed the bus ride to basecamp as one her highlights for the first day. “I loved the bus ride in here! I was glad the trees were so dense on the way in so we didn’t have to look over the bank and see that it was a thousand foot drop to the right. Everyone was leaning to the left as it was!”


Arriving at basecamp was like watching kids in a candy store. Racers rushed off their buses (some straight to el bano), and took in the beauty of our basecamp and valley below. If you look for Providencia on Google Maps you will see a dot with no roads accessing it, this area is so remote and so unknown that the racers had no idea what to expect. Ben Pye commented that when he arrived at the airport and told the custom’s agent where he was going, the agent replied, “where the hell is that?”


After a long morning of bonding on buses, everyone was happily embraced a warm and quiet couple of hours to build bikes, eat lunch, and lounge before racing. Racers had one stage today, the Prologue. The prologue set seeding times for the rest of the week and will also count in the overall times. Racers climbed 250 meters out of basecamp to the start. From there they descended 200 meters for Stage One. The course was short and punchy, starting in an open meadow with some funky rock features, followed by some steeps about halfway down before ending just about basecamp. Designed to be a nice and easy introduction to race week, the Prologue gave racers the opportunity to get their legs going and have some familiarity with the terrain.


Marty Lazarski, one of the on-course medics for the event, was blown away by his first day, “It was wild, it was fun, and there was amazing scenery! Good vibes, good people, and wicked organization. The hospitality has been amazing, the food has been great, the locals are fantastic, and all the logistics have been smooth and easy so far! I didn’t really have any expectations coming into it as far as trails go but it’s mountain biking for sure. It’s rooty, it’s rocky, it’s loose, it’s steep, and there’s a bit of everything. It’s shaping up to be a technical full-on week.”


More than a few racers struggled with the second corner out of the start; a quick and technical right-hander after a sweeping left. Aaron Bradford managed to rotate his bars as he bailed and hit the ground running, “it’s a brand new bike, so I got that out of the way.” Chris Johnston had even less luck when his blew his tire off the rim on the same corner. “I scratched my head for a bit and wondered if I should change it,” he says, “and decided to just carry on down and run the rest of the track. Pretty crappy start to a race for sure! I’m just going to hang in there and have fun – and still go hard!”


Most racers were early to bed after the first day with jet lag, altitude, and heat all to adjust to – not to mention that even though it’s blind racing, you just have to look around at the valleys and mountains here to know that they have some big days coming up!


Results

www.racetranscr.com

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MENTIONS: @parisgore / @dbaker

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