La Ruta Loves the Queen of Pain

La Ruta de Los Conquistadores kicked off on Wednesday, and runs for four total days over 240 miles and five mountain ranges as it takes racers across the continent from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.

photo: Cycling News

Suunto athlete, Rebecca Rusch is taking on La Ruta and keeping us informed on her blog. Here's a bit from her Day 1 update:

Day 1 of La Ruta is in the books. I had a great day and it felt so good to be racing and working hard again. I’ve sort of had a couple months of really unstructured training, so I had no idea if my legs would remember how to race. I was pleasantly surprised with how I felt today on what they call the hardest day of La Ruta. There was over 10,000 ft of climbing in about 110 km. The jungle hike a bike portion is a bit of a slip and slide event, but it went OK.

Make sure you take a look at this photo gallery from Cycling News!