I’d done HooDoo 500 unsupported twice before: I finished the first time, just shy of the time cutoff. Last year was my second time, and I ended up DNFing around mile 370 after riding all the previous day in a devastating heat wave. That one took a lot of people out, and there were no Voyager (unsupported 500 mile solo racer) finishers.
This year, the couple of months leading up to the race, I had been planning on doing several rides from San Jose to Los Angeles. Each one took a little under 2 days, and I could take the train back up instead of fighting the headwinds. Unfortunately, on the third ride I ended up crashing after riding into some sand on the side of the road near San Luis Obispo. I didn’t end up with any substantial injuries, but took a few weeks off to recover from that. So, leading into HooDoo, I had practically not ridden at all in the past month. Not the ideal prep, but at least I was well rested.
This year I just wanted to finish. My previous finish had been on a 512 mile course, and they’d increased it to 520 miles, trading a steep and somewhat dangerous descent for a longer, less steep, and less dangerous descent late in the ride. I also thought there was a good chance I could beat my previous time, even with the additional miles, just because my previous time was so slow. If I didn’t, this year did have a longer time cutoff with the additional miles.
HooDoo has an option to race “conjoined” with another racer. That means you can’t ever be too far from them, and if they drop out, you have to drop out. The benefit is that you can help each other out, with carrying gear, fixing problems, and drafting. No one had taken that option before this year, but there was a pair on the 500 mile route attempting this.
They start all the unsupported riders together at 5am. Some of them are doing 300 miles, some are doing 500. It was a bigger group than last year - maybe about 8 of us. Thank god it wasn’t as hot.
We took off into the dark, with all the flashing lights and reflective vests lighting up the road. I chatted with a couple other racers briefly, but as soon as we got off of the surface streets, we spread out. I was able to keep the racer ahead of me in view until a little before we got into Hurricane, and I knew there were at least two behind me. Not sure if they were 300 or 500 mi racers.
Getting into Hurricane, the sun came up, and gave us our first views of the stunning scenery that lines this route. A bright rock structure glowed against the darker mountain behind it.
The climb out of Hurricane is the first real climb of the race. It’s the first taste of steeper pitches and red rocks and hot sun that you hope to avoid as the road ducks behind hills. The climb “ends” after 10 miles, but really keeps going up for a total of 45 miles, just at a lower pitch. After the first 10 miles of climbing, it levels off to a steady 1-2%, that just makes you feel like you’re not doing a very good job at keeping a good pace, since the road looks flat.
This road is rather unpleasant. It has a very small shoulder, sometimes lacking a shoulder completely. Sometimes when there is a 6” shoulder, it’s stamped with a rumble strip, making it all but impossible to ride in. So you ride in the 1-lane highway, with the semi trucks and fast cars. Most of the trucks are pretty good about giving you a lot of room when they pass. Smaller cars often are too. Some of the pickup trucks hate bikes, though, and intentionally pass as close as possible to try to scare the cyclists. They blast their horns. One of them sped up and swerved close to me to pass me at high speed, only to have to slam on the breaks a second later to avoid hitting the slower moving car in front of it. A couple blew black clouds of smoke - rolling coal - at cyclists.
Though most vehicles were fine, I’ve never seen vehicles harass cyclists as much as I did on this race and on the 508 this year. Never before on these races, and even in the cities when you’re riding in traffic more it hasn’t been this bad. I’m not sure what’s going on, but there was a huge uptick in drivers acting stupidly and dangerously around cyclists.
Finally the highway crossed the border into Arizona and we got a shoulder that was wide enough to ride in. The signs indicated that if we kept going, we would eventually get to Grand Canyon. The route turned left to head back into Utah.
There were signs indicating dust hazards. Big piles of fine red sand drifted onto the sides of the road. Little lines into the middle of the road. Some of it had evidently been swept off to the sides. More warning signs for the sand. Then the sand got deep. I rode through the first two patches I came across, and lost traction and almost fell towards the end of the second one. I walked through the next two. The sand diminished. The road climbed more, and reentered Utah.
The road passed Coral Pink Sand Dunes National Park. Even more red sand.
Finally, the little road we were on leveled off, descended a bit, and rejoined a highway. This highway was good - it had a shoulder, and it wasn’t covered in sand. Nice improvements over the previous roads.
It got hot. The road climbed to the first stop at Orderville. It’s not a very comfortable stop to hang out at - it’s usually hot and with limited shade, but they have bathrooms, and a race staff would be there with water and our drop bags. I hadn’t seen any other racers in a while, and most likely the ones ahead of me were way ahead, and the ones behind me were way behind.
Under ideal circumstances, I like to get a chance to wash off the sweat mixed with sunscreen, reapply sunscreen, and change out of my sweaty jersey into a clean one. When I rode up to Orderville, the race official staffing it flagged me down. She had her car parked in the corner of a dusty lot, with no shade nearby. The wasn’t really any place to sit, and the sun was beating down hard, so I just refilled my bottles, refilled my pockets with food, and took off again. Standing in the sun was much more uncomfortable than riding in it - at least on the bike, the moving air would cool your skin. On to the next stop.
The next section of the race is gorgeous. You go near Zion, near Bryce Canyon, near Grand Staircase Escalante. There are some hot climbs and steep pitches, but you almost don’t notice as you focus on the stunning scenery. Throughout this section the course climbs to stay around 6-8,000 ft elevation giving some welcome relief from the heat.
Up ahead, there were thunderheads. Worst case, a bad rainstorm or wind. Best case, they kept retreating. Though actually, we got something better - it sprinkled just enough to cool off the air, and threatened to get cold and wet and never did. The sparse gusts of wind didn't put up too much resistance, and after a couple short sprinkles, the clouds moved aside.
The road pitches up to something like 17% at some point. You can’t pull over, there’s no shoulder. It’s too steep to ride on my lowest gear ratio, but I get out of the saddle and push through it. It’s the hardest 0.1 mi in the first half of the race, maybe in the entire race.
And then it cools off. And the climbs ease up. And you descend into Escalante.
Previously, HooDoo had had 3 hotel rooms that unsupported riders could stop and take a break in - Escalante, Bicknell, and Panguitch. This year, they said Bicknell was unstaffed and no hotel room. Escalante and Panguitch were staffed, but I was unclear if there were hotel rooms. I figured if there wasn’t one at Escalante, it would be fine - I had stopped to nap on the long climb after it last year, and could do that again this time if necessary. Either way I didn’t want to stop for too long. The climb after it was a big one, and I wanted to get off the mountain before the mountain got too cold in the early hours of the morning.
There was a hotel room. I stopped and took a shower to get rid of all the sunscreen and grime. I carried a small bottle of sunscreen and would reapply it tomorrow morning. I spent some time stretching my quads and took a quick nap, and left into what was now complete darkness. It wasn’t cold yet, but it would probably get there.
Some randonneurs print out the entire course or set of directions, put it in a plastic bag, and keep it on their handlebars. It always seemed a bit awkward and inconvenient to me, but I had an idea before this race. Before this race, I took a piece of masking tape and wrote on it in tiny print - the mileage of each of the time stations, and the mileage and elevation of each of the major climbs. While I had the whole route on my GPS, it was nice to also have an easy reference sheet so I could know where my next goal was.
This climb had always seemed almost unending the previous two times I did this race. It’s a combination of it being dark, so you can see neither the progress you’ve made or the road up ahead, and the climb legitimately being pretty long. This time, though, I had an end mileage and an end elevation, and I appreciated those. From Escalante to Bicknell is only 73 miles, but it feels a lot longer in the night.
I reached the top. Last time I had to stop 5 times on the way up because I was too hot, or starting to get sleepy. This time I listened to music and went slow enough that it was sustainable. And it wasn’t too hot.
I made the summit. I stopped for a couple pictures. I descended the other side. Unlike last time, there weren’t cows - but last time I descended in the early morning instead of the middle of the night. Maybe cows don’t tend to be on the roads in the middle of the night.
After the descent, the next problem was finding water. Both of the previous times I’d done this, I’d nearly run out of water between Bicknell and the next stop. I hadn’t actually run out, but it was a real concern. And this time there wasn’t a stop with water and drop bags in Bicknell.
The road T’d into a highway in Torrey. Across the street was a gas station. It was closed, like everything. Buying water from a store was likely not an option. I’d scouted the route using Google Maps before the race, and found some random stores that had vending machines outside, so I could get soda - or maybe water if I was lucky - from one of those if necessary. I walked around the gas station, in hopes of finding a spigot. That would be a bit better than having to refill everything from a vending machine, though I was not yet at Bicknell, and so if I refilled here, it would be even more distance before I could refill at Panguitch.
I got lucky. There was a spigot towards the back of the gas station. I refilled both of my bottles, plus my CamelBak. A little over 3.5L of water. Hopefully enough.
I got back on the road. More miles in the dark, more music to listen to. I passed the Bicknell time station and texted in my time. Another racer - this one with a support crew - stopped at the Bicknell time station as I was leaving. Somewhere in the next couple blocks, we passed into a different town named Lyman. I shifted into a higher gear to go faster on the flat ground. Something felt wrong.
I shifted back into a lower gear. The derailleur made the noise, but not the gear shift. I tried again, and it shifted. I tried to shift back into the higher gear, and it didn’t. I tried again. It didn’t move. I switched into a lower gear. That one worked.
I stopped. The racer who I’d seen in Bicknell passed me and asked if I needed help with anything, and I told him I was alright. He kept going.
I checked pressed the various buttons on my shifters and derailleurs. My derailleurs were fine - I’d recharged them recently, and they would shift if I pushed the buttons on them. My right shifter was fine. My left one was dead.
I’d ridden about 16,000 miles on this bike without changing the batteries in those shifters. I knew that I had to at some point, but it was something I’d just been putting off, because it hadn’t been an issue yet, and if they died on some little ride near home it would be fine. Inconvenient, but fine. Here was not fine. I mean, here was more fine than earlier in the race, because at least it was flat here, but still. I looked up the batteries on my phone. Coin batteries, that weren’t guaranteed to be stocked by gas stations, but there was a chance. Any big enough general store should have them. But not in the middle of the night, and not in the middle of nowhere.
Previous years, I’d worried about running out of water between Bicknell and Panguitch. I’d stopped on the side of the road and looked up stores on my phone. There was nowhere with water. Most of the time, you’re in a desolate plain, with no structures visible in any direction. The towns you go through are tiny, dilapidated, and shut down on Sundays. One or two may have a gas station. But they are closed on Sundays. This did not bode well for finding batteries.
I texted a friend, asking him if he could look at a map and find anywhere that I might be able to find batteries between here and Panguitch. I rode a little bit more, then decided to stop for a break outside a grocery store. Maybe they would open in the morning, and maybe they would carry batteries. Maybe I’d wake up and feel like going again before they opened. Either way, I wasn’t getting anywhere fast right now. I set an alarm on my phone for a few hours, so that I wouldn’t stay there way too long. I took my space blanket out of my CamelBak and wrapped it around me to keep out the increasingly cold air. I shut off the music and closed my eyes.
I woke up. The weak morning light was just starting to illuminate the town. It would be several more hours before the grocery store opened up. There was a gas station across the road that was just opening. I went in and looked at their batteries. They had coin batteries, but not the ones I needed. Oh well. Time to get back on the road. My friend had identified 3 places between where I was that might have batteries - a gas station, a general store, and an RV park store. I vaguely remembered the general store from the previous two races. Both times, I’d hoped to get water there, and then been disappointed because they were closed on Sundays. But I would check out all 3 options.
My left shifter being dead meant that I could shift down gears on my cassette, but if I wanted to shift up a gear, I had to stop, get off my bike, and poke the button on the derailleur to get it into the gear I wanted. I couldn’t shift on my chainrings without getting off and poking the button on the derailleur. So, I could get into any gear I wanted, but it was a pain and extremely inefficient. I could shift down while riding, and that was it.
Where I got lucky was that this was the flattest 100 miles of the race. Not flat, but flattest. Climbing hills like this would be a nightmare, but doing the small climb out of the Bicknell area, and then the relatively flat several hours after that would be… ok. Not great, but doable. If - strong if - I was able to get batteries in Panguitch, I should be able to finish the race. If not, the climbs up to Cedar Breaks would be near impossible on the pseudo single speed bike that I was now riding. Panguitch was a real town, at least. They had gas stations and grocery stores and things like that. And there was a staffed time station where I could ask for help if I had to drop out of the race, in the worst case.
I put my bike into the little chainring, and a high gear on the cassette. I would go down gears as necessary. The road pitched up, and I dropped down a gear. And a second one. And a third. And then the road flattened out, and I was spinning too fast, and couldn’t go into a higher gear. Then uphill again, and I dropped down one more gear, before cresting this little bump. I pulled over, picked up my bike by the saddle, and pressed the button on the rear derailleur to go up again, spun the pedals to get it to drop into that gear and repeated. 5 gears higher. I went down the other side and started climbing again, dropping gears every minute or two until I was in next to the lowest gear, and the road flattened out. And I was spinning too fast again and had to pull over to shift into a higher gear. Again and again - pull over to get into a higher gear, ride in that and slowly shift down as necessary, then get to a point where the gear is way too low for the road grade, pull over, and get into a higher gear again. Eventually - finally - this section of climbing rollers ended.
I’ve always considered this section the worst part of the race. It’s hot. It’s flat. It’s boring. There’s no shade. There are no landmarks. It feels like you’ve been riding forever but haven’t actually gone anywhere, and there isn’t even anywhere to go. You could keep riding forever, and the landscape would feel the same. It’s not physically difficult. There aren’t really any climbs, and there generally aren’t headwinds. There aren’t many cars to worry about, and there’s nothing technically difficult to navigate. It’s mind numbing. There is nothing.
I usually try to reserve my headphones for use at night, since that’s when I’m most at risk of spacing out, getting distracted, getting bored, and just needing something to hold my attention. But I listened to music here.
I passed the first place my friend had found. It was a gas station. They had a hand written sign in the window, saying they might open in a couple of hours. I didn’t have time for that. I kept riding.
The music, the more tolerable temperatures, and constantly thinking about my shifter - is there any way it would be possible to finish the race if I didn’t get a new battery? I was making good time, but the Cedar Breaks climb was brutal. This section was not easy, but it was less of a struggle against the insistent tedium than previous years.
The land laid flat in all directions, stretching out to infinity. At the brink at infinity, hills rose out of the clumps of dry shrubs. There was landscape here, but you would never reach it. Somehow, impossibly, I was making progress through the infinite. Half way through, with a million miles behind me and a million miles ahead, and hills that could never be reached, just beyond that.
I passed through the little town of Kingston. Everything was shut. Dry. Dusty. Cars on the road, but no people. No stores. The town wasn’t abandoned, it was stuck in a weird stasis. Two blocks, in the middle of nowhere, and then it was gone.
I finally came up to the general store, and shortly following it, the RV store. Both were closed on Sundays. No more batteries. No more options until Panguitch. That sucked, but the road was relatively flat, and it was only one-third of an infinite distance away now, not an entire infinite distance.
Nearing Panguitch, the wind started to pick up. Headwinds. Not strong enough to be problematic, but definitely enough to be annoying, especially without gears. I could go into a lower gear for the wind. But then I couldn’t get back into the higher gear without stopping. I opted to stay in the higher gear and press on.
A car passed me, slowed down, and turned around. It passed again, and pulled over on the side of the road. Someone stepped out and crouched behind the car. He set up a camera, and I recognized the race official for the Panguitch time station. Most of the racers had already passed him, so he went out onto the road to check on the remaining ones. I was one of the last people - there weren’t too many behind me - so he figured he’d follow me a bit and see how it was going.
I hit my brakes and stopped next to him. He was disappointed because he was trying to get an action shot and I messed it up. Oops. He asked how I was doing, and I told him that my shifter wasn’t working. It had been broken since Bicknell. It was a long ride here from Bicknell. He told me that he would get me new batteries and help me install them in Panguitch. He’d had that happen to him before on a brevet.
I would make it to the end of the course.
The ride into Panguitch was slow, with the gradually increasing winds. Eventually the city grew out of the desert scrub, and I rolled past a couple blocks of actual real buildings before pulling up to the time station. He was there waiting for me, with new batteries. And he had a hotel room for me.
We went into the hotel room, and he helped me open up my shifters and put fresh batteries in them. He told me to not mind the racer in the other bed who had DNF’d. It was a full size plastic skeleton.
I took a shower, washed off all the grime, and took a short nap. I wanted to get out of there before it got too late, since even though I would probably make it to the end before the cutoff, it’s not like I had a lot of extra time.
I opted to forego sunscreen, and wear sunsleeves and try to keep my face covered with a hat. I didn’t want to have the feeling of waxy, salty, greasy sunscreen on me for the rest of the night if I could avoid it. And the sun would be setting soon enough, right?
With a couple last minute words of encouragement from the TS staff, I left Panguitch, and immediately started up the steep climb towards Cedar Breaks.
The climb up to Cedar breaks is not just steep. It is long. It is unshaded. It is deceptive. Each climb is followed by a small dip that you think might be a break, but quickly turns into another even more tiring climb. I remembered this from the first time I’d done this race, so at least this time it wasn’t unexpected, but it was hard. Each time you think it might let up, it does for about half the time you need it to. It’s hot. It’s sweaty. It’s twisty, so you can’t even keep track of what direction you’re going. And you’re always just a few more dips and climbs from the summit. But the summit isn’t visible.
Eventually as you get higher there are some trees, a little too far away to give shade. And eventually, right near the very top, they actually approach the road. But then you don’t need them, because the road levels off.
This time was easier than last time. I think the still-hot-but-slightly-cooler temperatures helped a lot. It was a hard climb, and a tiring climb, but it wasn’t demoralizing the same way it was the first time when I didn’t know when the false summits would end. I had my cheat sheet on tape on my handlebars.
After cresting the top at 10,600 ft, it levels off. And then it starts to go down. And then it starts to go down fast. The steep road passes through the town of Brian Head, and I hit 46 mph on that descent.
Before I left the town I pulled over to get my bearings before it got dark. About 110 miles left. Mostly flat. Not a lot of extra time, but if I averaged 12 mph, I would get there comfortably within the time cutoff. I use 12 mph as a kind of base speed to estimate by - assuming the upcoming stretch doesn’t have a lot of steep climbing or extreme winds, I can generally average 12 mph bare minimum. Usually a lot more, but it gives me a good lower estimate. So if going 12 mph the rest of the way would get me in before the cutoff, I would get in before the cutoff.
I turned on my music. It wasn’t dark yet, but I wanted music.
The route went through Cedar City, and an unmanned time station. I texted my time, went inside a gas station to buy Gatorade and candy, and kept riding. I was making pretty good time, but I was tired. A little later, I decided I had time for a short break. I pulled several feet off the side of the road, turned off my headlight (don’t want to run out the batteries unnecessarily), and sat down for a few minutes. A state trooper passing by at the same time stopped and asked if I was ok. I said yes, and that I was just taking a break. In the middle of nowhere on the side of the road late at night. He asked me how far I was going. I told him I was doing a long race, and eventually to St. George. He seemed skeptical, but was satisfied that I was ok, and drove off.
I sat in the darkness for a while. I closed my eyes. I let the song playing on my headphones finish, then got back up, turned on my lights, and got back on the road.
My handlebar cheat sheet said that there were 2 more little climbs. Everything else was flat. I had to average 12 mph to get to the finish by the cutoff now, but that seemed like it would be ok. As long as I could keep a reasonable pace on the climbs. I came to the first one. It wasn’t too steep, and I decided to put a lot of my remaining energy into it, and get past it quickly. It worked. The summit was easy, and the descent alternated through warm and chilly patches of air. I debated putting on warmer clothes, but reconsidered every time I hit a warm patch. I kept riding.
Another few miles in the dark passed by quickly - I was getting close and could start to see some lights that might be connected to the city. The road pitched up for the last climb. There was roadwork that pushed everyone towards the middle of the road, but fortunately no one else was driving out on this dark highway in the middle of the night. It got steeper than I would have liked, and kept climbing just a little further than I could easily push through, but I stood on my pedals and pushed through to the top. The last climb. Everything else was easy.
The road flattened out. I reached the top of Snow Canyon. I called the race director, as instructed, so that she could note my time and be prepared for me at the finish.
The roads down Snow Canyon were the nicest of the entire race. I wish I could have ridden them in the light - smooth, well banked curves, steep enough downhill to be fun without being too dangerous.
All too soon, Snow Canyon was over, and the road leveled out onto city surface streets. I hit a stoplight. I checked the time and my distance. Plenty of time. Past the intersection, I had just a handful more miles on surface streets, interrupted by the occasional stoplight. There were a few cars on the road at this odd hour.
A few more turns, and I made it to the finish line. Well within the time limit, and I’d beaten my previous time, but only kind of. Previously, I had finished the course in 48 hrs, plus a 1 hour time penalty, adding up to 49. This time, I’d finished in 48.5 hours. New course record. I’ll take it. Next time I’ll do it without a major mechanical and beat my time by a solid few hours, at least.
I beat my course record. My friend Lori set a course record for the stage race (dividing the course onto 3 different days, and summing the time) at 33h 9m. The 2 guys racing Voyager conjoined finished just after me, setting a course record by virtue of being the only ones who've attempted.
Left - 2 guys racing voyager conjoined
Right - me in 3rd place (though I have 1st place for women)
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