Broges of Costa Rica: Hot and Cold

One of my coworkers has blossomed into what I consider to be a pretty darn good triathlete. She also likes to organize team building activities, so she recruits coworkers, including me, to participate in triathlons across the country. Now some of us (that would be me) are not accomplished triathletes who have won their age bracket in national races. She has solved that problem by forming relay teams. She is pretty clever at it too, since she participates in the “Sprint” triathlon (.75K swim, 20K bike, 5K run) but conveniently signs the rest of us up for the “Olympic” relay (1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run), although some of our associates participate in the “Half Ironman” (1.9K swim, 90K bike, 21K run) either individually or as a relay team.

Anyway, I ran as part of a team in Quepos on the Pacific coast in December. Even though the course was flat, the weather was hot and humid and I did not run particularly well (our team was 6th, I was 8th out of a dozen or so teams). Afterward, my coworker announced that the next race was going to be at Conchal in Guanacaste in February. I signed up, since Guanacaste was the only province we had not visited and I figured by putting in a few longer training runs I would be more prepared for the coastal climate. After all, the Guanacaste coast is supposed to be relatively arid and it was going to be February right? The dead of winter. I mean how hot could it be? And as we all know, coastal areas are always flat, right? Well, what they say about people who make assumptions is true. While the weather was not humid, the sun blazed so intensely that I felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. The temperature at 9 in the morning when I started running was over 90. Add in some steep hills just off the beach and the “variety of running surfaces” (as the web site described it – which meant sand, gravel, rocks, streets and sidewalks) and I melted like an ice cream cone in August. I may have been the only male competitor not wearing the visor each participant received before the race (think about it) or a hat (but I had on plenty of sun screen). Another one of my coworkers who saw me on the road part of the course later quipped that my head “looked shinier than usual”. Our team took 4th and I was 8th out of 14.

After the race, my triathlete coworker asked if I was up for another race further down the coast in March, to which I gasped “no more beach runs”. She replied “OK, I’ll wait a few hours and ask again”. When she did, I told her that I was going to sign her up for the Hamel MN “Freeze Your Buns” run held every Superbowl Sunday, where the temperature has been 13 below at race time. She said she’d wait until Monday to ask me again.

So why bring this up? Two reasons, not counting my tremendous athletic ability. First, the area was beautiful and we have some great pictures to share. Second, one week later, after making a fast trip home to attend the funeral for our close friend Jeff Johnson, I found myself sitting on a chairlift near Biwabik MN in below zero temperature where the sun blazed with an intensity so faint that the Ticos would probably confuse it with night. It was quite a week.

For part of the drive to Guanacaste, we thought we were back in the States.

Nancy has always been fascinated by the Costa Rican fences.
They plant trees along the fence line and let them grow.
The wires grow into the tree. They call these fast growing trees "cercas",
which means fence in Spanish.