Born in 1993 in Costa Rica, La Ruta was the first mountain bike stage race in the world created by Mountain Bike Hall of Fame Inductee Roman Urbina. La Ruta is considered by many to be the world’s toughest cycling event that pushes participants to conquer their limits. In addition, participants experience the most beautiful terrain that includes the original path of the famous Spanish Conquistadores; Juan de Cavallón, Perafán de Rivera and Juan Vásquez de Coronado.
In 2020, endurance leader Spartan invested in the world renown event. Spartan is a global fitness brand with a 10 million + strong community. We create transformational experiences, products, and content to help people, companies and teams tear down boundaries and expand what they believe to be possible.
Beyond our dominant hold on obstacle course racing — via the Spartan and Tough Mudder brands — we operate the world’s largest international trail race series (under the Spartan Trail and Patagonia Run brands), the Decathlon of Functional Fitness brand DEKAFIT and now in mountain bike with La Ruta.
We are leading the Extreme Wellness Category by quickly expanding our experiential footprint with halo activations at major events around the globe as well as providing our community with mind/body/fuel content in addition to our nutrition and lifestyle products.
“La Ruta is a soul-swapping hard, exotically wild, singular journey across laughably steep inclines, hysterically steep descents, through jungles, plantations, villages, across ecosystems and temperate zones, over volcanoes and beaches and terrain that you never quite imagined you could ride on a bike.”
Chris Case (2013 finisher) – VeloNews Managing Editor
“This is quite possibly the hardest of all mountain bike events on the Epic Endurance Bucket List. For perspective, consider that for time-in-the-saddle it’s like doing the Leadville 100 three days in a row. There’s more climbing than Leadville in Stage 2 alone, and in half the distance!”
Chris Carmichael (3-time La Ruta Finisher)
