La Ruta de los Conquistadores Course Changes

La Ruta's course will have a few changes (1st and 3rd stages mainly). San José, Costa Rica - The La Ruta de los Conquistadores' organisation have just announced a few changes for this coming 2006's race course.

The 14th edition of the "hardest race of the planet" will start on Thursday, November 2, when it will be officially presented to racers and media, while all the entrants will have to make their official registration as well.

Nevertheless, the challenge won't begin until next day; with the early kick off (5:15 a.m.) at Jacó Beach, on the Costa Rican Pacific Coast.

The organizers believe that La Ruta will have at least 300 non-local competitors this time, which will reduce to only 200 the available spots for Costa Rican mountain bikers.

The 50% of the field reserved for foreigners was already filled, but the on-line registration will remain open until October 8th. If this quota gets filled earlier, the organization will make a waiting list.

Some changes…
A few changes will be introduced for this year's competition, trying to avoid as many pavement roads as possible. The Costa Rican Government has been building new roads and highways in places that La Ruta used to go thru.

Besides, the La Ruta team will try to cut the local's chances to get support from their relatives, friends or team members. This way, they and foreigner cyclists will compete under the same conditions.

The race will begin, on day 1, at Jacó Beach, where La Ruta used to depart in prior editions, except last year's.

This will produce a little change for the first half of the course. Even so, the racers won't elude the dreadful Carara National Park's jungle (checkpoints 1 and 2). This humid, muddy and breathtaking pass has been traditionally the filter of the challenge.

After third checkpoint, located at the beautiful and warm town of San Pedro de Turrubares, the contenders will have to face off against another big difficulty: they'll have to get to the rural location of Grifoalto thru a muddy trail across the mountains -full of slippery climbs and exuberant views- instead of last year's long asphalt uphill.

First day's finish was also changed. This opening stage will close around the El Rodeo Estate, because it will helps to keep the competition away from the streets of Ciudad Colón and Santa Ana cities, frequently full of vehicles traffic.

The second day will only have one variant. It won't start at San Pedro as usually (east of the capital city, San José ). In its place, this stage will initiate near to Tres Ríos city, in the province of Cartago. This will cut off almost 10 Km (6 miles) of pavement roads highly used by cars, buses, trucks and eighteen wheelers.

The third and final stage will start at the coffee town of Aquiares, the same typical place where the prior day finished.

The course will go thru the Indian National Monument of Guayabo, around the lowlands of the Turrialba Volcano. The finish of La Ruta will be at the Moin Port, right on the Caribbean Coast, once again.

"We are expecting to post all the maps and course profiles into our website by the end of this month. We have made all the course research with GPS, so it will be 99% correct", says Diego Víquez, La Ruta de los Conquistadores' Operations Manager.