Michael: Stalk the Bosi

Like space aliens
The cicadas’ tractor beam
Is pulsing and loud.

Friday, August 5, 2016

Yesterday we went to the mall not mainly as consumers, but to find answers to questions, and Kimme was smart and persistent enough to find most of the answers.

The mall was the Multiplaza Escazu near San Jose, Costa Rica. The questions were;

Where is The North Face store where we thought packet pick up was?
What are the driving directions from where we’re staying to the race?
How long will it take to get there?
What’s the course like?
How many aid stations are there and where are they on the course?
Will there be porta-potties?
Where is the bus station to get us back to Orotina?

Again, we were fortunate enough to be offered a ride by Didier, the proprietor of Turugiro Lodge, to the mall. Once there, finding The North Face wasn’t too much of a problem. Problem was, that’s not where the pick up was. The web-site says Bosi North Face, but those, as we were soon to discover, are two distinct stores. Bosi, where packet pick up was, is a leather accessory store. After a bit of walking around and two trips to the North Face for clarification, we were able to find Bosi.

The unfortunate part was the clerk there knew nothing about the race. Oh, well. On to the bookstore, a little window shopping, then to the grocery store and hope for the best if and when we get to the event tomorrow.

The fortunate part was that before leaving the mall we decided to take a break and have a little snack before searching for the bus station. The bench just happened to be caddy corner from the Bosi store where we saw runners walking in and out of to pick up their packets. That’s where Kimme took the initiative to hunt one down and ask him if he could help us out.

We were extraordinarily lucky in that the runner she stopped not only spoke excellent English, making us believe he’s an ex-pat, but also runs a trail running club and the web-site,30grados.com in Costa Rica, where we found the link to Saturday’s race. He knew a lot and was very cordial in sharing information with us.

The answers he gave to our questions:

*It’ll take about 45 minutes from where we’re at to get there. The directions are pretty straight forward, but we’ll have to keep our eye out for a small road off to the right of the main road. It may not be very well marked, but hopefully we’ll see others going in that direction and we’ll know if we’ve gone to far if we hit the little hamlet of San Pablo.

*The course is mostly on loose gravel but will have what could be a very muddy sections. He suggest I use my Inov8 Trailroc 235s as opposed to my Hokas. He doesn’t consider the hills very steep, more rolling except in the muddy section. It should also get to be very hot and humid at some point. I’m hoping that point will be very late on the way back on the mostly downhill section of the out and back course. Plan is to still start out fairly conservatively, but if I’m feeling it to pick it up a bit early on the uphill section to beat the heat and get to the turn around in under 3 hours.
*There will be 8 aid stations so we won’t have to go very long in between. Yeah, only need to carry one bottle.

*He doesn’t know what the porta-potty situation is. Will try to get up early enough to clear the pipes beforehand, but generally still need to use the bathroom at the event, particularly given the drive time.

*The bus back to Orotina we found by continually asking people and walking in the direction they pointed until confused, then asking again. This procedure has worked great for us so far.

Today we’ll work on finding travel to the race site with Didier’s help. Once that dilemma is solved, we’ll go for a little shake out jog, lay out our race stuff, relax, pack up, get up at 3a.m. and go through our morning race rituals before heading out the door to explore the trails with a few hundred other crazy people, most of whom we’ll barely understand.