“I was crawling in the mud and grabbing branches to pull myself up the thick, slippery steps,” said Beverly Anderson-Abbs, examining her thumb, bruised from a fall on the eroded, muddy steps in the Costa Rican jungle. “But then the payoff came, on the fabulous stump-hopping downhill.”
Anderson-Abbs, forty-two, was among the sixty-eight international competitors from twelve countries participating in the six-day, 200-kilometer (120-mile) Coastal Challenge. The staged expedition run, scheduled February 4–9, 2007, passes through the northern mountainous and Pacific coastal regions of Costa Rica—from La Fortuna to Bahia Salinas. The competitors would have close encounters with jagged volcanoes, mountains, lush jungle, steep gravel roads, and uninhabited beaches. Anderson-Abbs, an environmental specialist from Red Bluff, California, won the event in 2005, the first year it was held.
Along the course, staffed checkpoints supply water, energy drinks, and snacks, allowing racers to carry minimal supplies. Gear is transported by big-hearted volunteers to camp, where racers refuel with sprawling buffet dinners, which are followed by communal camping in tents under starry skies.
The race’s 21-kilometer first stage started in La Fortuna, near the Arenal volcano, one of the world’s most active. Within half-an-hour the leaders crossed checkpoint (PC-)1. Fifteen minutes later, they were “hip-high” in mud, slugging through the jungle upward to the shoulder of Cerro Chato, an extinct volcano. Later they would cross over a part of Arenal.
“I didn’t expect so much mud, but I love jumping and grabbing trees on steep, technical downhills,” said Ligia Madrigal, a Costa Rican adventure racer, who placed second here last year. “When I was a little girl, I remember going up hills just so I could run down them.” Despite her speedy descent, Madrigal was trailing Anderson-Abbs by nearly 20 minutes approaching PC-2. “It’s a long race and I don’t want to hurt myself like I did last year, so I’m going at my own pace.”
While Madrigal and Anderson-Abbs fought it out at the front, other runners like Dune Watson, from Calgary, Canada, and Dot Helling, fifty-six, from Mount Pelier, Vermont, shared the same game plan. “I’ve never done anything remotely like this,” said Hale, who has done mostly half-marathons and thought the mud was fun.
