After months of races being cancelled or going virtual due to the COVID pandemic, I was really excited to be able to participate in an actual race again at HooDoo 500 last weekend in St. George, Utah. My friends Rob, Dee, Phil, and I had planned much earlier this year to race the challenging 512 mile HooDoo 500 course as a four-person relay team. At the time, I had planned it as something fun to do after finishing RAAM. Then RAAM was cancelled and it just became something fun to do. We came up with the team name “We’re Fine” as a play on my usual slogan of “It’s Fine”, and picked up a couple of crew members to help us out during the race.
While I am familiar with the HooDoo 500 course after doing the race solo last year, this was an entirely new experience for me altogether as I’ve never done a race like this on a relay team. I’m used to jumping on my bike and pacing myself to ride for a really long time. Here I would need to push myself much harder for a shorter period of time, rest and recover while my teammates took some pulls, then jump on the bike and do it all over again. I was a little worried that all the starting and stopping and sitting in a van would make it difficult to pace myself properly. My coach Rachel has been having me work on higher intensity efforts since finishing VRAW back in June, so I went in feeling prepared to put in some work on the short pulls. We also figured this would work well into my training for the 6-12-24 Hour Time Trial World Championships coming up at the end of October (assuming the permits go through and the event doesn’t get canceled).
We had a few virtual meetings on Zoom leading up to the race. Our coaches, Rachel and David, joined forces to help us put together a general strategy for the race – how long we should be taking pulls, how we should try to get some rest at night, etc. We had a meeting to discuss our strategy the week of the race, and another meeting with our crew to finalize all the details. I was a little apprehensive going in as we didn’t seem to have a detailed plan laid out in terms of how we would rotate and what sections of the course we would each be taking, but I had a lot of confidence in our crew chief Curtis, who had extensive knowledge and experience with the course and sounded like he would have no problem taking charge and putting the right people on the course at the right times. Regardless, I was just looking forward to traveling to a race again, seeing a bunch of my ultracyling friends for the first time in months, and having a fun ride with my teammates.
All four of us along with our two crew members made it to St. George on Friday afternoon without incident and got ourselves checked in for the race and settled in at our condo we had rented for the weekend. We had a nice pre-race dinner at the condo then settled in to get some sleep before our 9 am start on Saturday morning. We woke up Saturday morning to cloudy skies and a few sprinkles and wondered if we might get some rain. On the plus side, we didn’t have the triple digit temperatures we had been expecting.
We decided to let Phil roll out for the neutral start while the rest of us drove out to the first exchange location about 9 miles away. I was scheduled to take the second pull, and it occurred to me that this meant that I would be the first one riding once the actual racing started, so I was a little nervous about that. There were five teams in the 4x relay division. I waved to my friend Shane Trotter as he flew by just before I took the handoff from Phil. He was on the team “Soaring Coots” and I knew they were going for the course record and that would more than likely be the last I would ever see of him. I wasn’t sure where we would fit in with the rest of the teams, but I was hoping we had a good chance of winning the race for second place.
Our team had spent a few minutes practicing exchanges when we got together for hill repeats on Glendora Mountain Road last month, so I hoped my first handoff would go smoothly. When I saw Phil getting close I started riding and held out my left hand so that he could hand off the GPS tracker (attached to a small spatula with electrical tape). Once he was close enough, he placed the tracker in my hand, I yelled “got it” once I had it in my grasp, he let go, and I placed it in my pocket while trying to accelerate and not collide with Phil as he slowed down to be picked up by Curtis and our van. It all went off without a hitch and I started looking to dial into my steady effort for approximately 25 minutes. I hadn’t kept track of how many teams were ahead of or behind me, but I could see another cyclist trying to catch me in my rear view mirror. Within a few minutes he had dropped back and I didn’t see him again. I passed one other team, and could see another rider a little bit ahead of me for most of my pull. I probably put in a slightly more intense effort than planned in an effort to keep my position, but I tried to keep reminding myself to save my energy for the rest of the race. I was basically about to do a 30 hour interval session.
After about 25 minutes, I saw our van pulled over and Dee waiting to exchange with me. We had another flawless exchange and we got in the van to keep an eye on Dee and get Rob ahead for his pull. I knew I would have about an hour or so before getting back on the bike and knew I should probably take in some fluids and calories, but once again I was in unfamiliar territory and wasn’t sure of the best strategy for fueling. I figured I was best off taking in small amounts shortly after getting off the bike and tried to stick with that strategy for most of the race.
Rob took the handoff from Dee and we made our way out of Hurricane, Utah, where Rob tackled the first bit of substantial climbing of the race. He also managed to pass Team 303 Gruppetto and put us solidly in 2nd place. Once I got back on the bike taking a handoff from Phil, 303 Gruppetto was closing in and I could see their rider in my rear view mirror. After a few minutes the storm hit and I spent most of the pull riding in the rain. I tried not to let the sight of the rider behind me force me to push beyond my limits. I kept my effort steady and just hoped that he was pushing himself outside his comfort zone trying to chase me down. I handed off to Dee again and we made our way into Arizona for a short portion of the course before going back across the state line into Utah. We maintained a bit of a lead over 303 Gruppetto as we headed towards the first Time Station in Orderville.
Rob took over just before the Time Station, where the rest of us stopped for a restroom break and to chat with the volunteers. We hadn’t been there long when two frantic texts came through from Rob that he’d had a flat. We all rushed back to the van to get to Rob to help change his tube while putting the next rider on the course. We lost about five minutes getting to him, but I believe we got Phil out on the road before 303 Gruppetto caught us.
As we got closer to Bryce Canyon, we started figuring out our plan for the unsupported zone on the bike trail to the next Time Station. Because the van would need to gas up at the Time Station, and the course flattened out at that point before a long descent, we decided that I would take a long pull and climb up the bike trail then take the descent into Tropic. I knew 303 Gruppetto was not too far behind and am always worried about getting caught on climbs, so I was constantly looking in my mirror to see if anyone was coming up behind me on the bike trail. Once I reached the flat section, I breathed a sigh of relief and started flying across the flat section. Just after exiting the bike trail onto the highway, I saw that I was about to catch up to both of the two solo female racers, Seana Hogan and Tami Kearns. I cheered both of them on as I passed them, just before bombing down the long descent.
Once I hooked back up with the team, we started making our way to the third Time Station in Escalante. I was getting ready to ride again when we saw our friend Brook Henderson about to get back on the course. He started four hours before us as he was riding in the Voyager (solo, self-supported) division, and was having a really rough day. He perked up when he saw us, and we got to cheer him on for the next hour or so as we leapfrogged him a few times. It was really cool to be able to see him at that point, as it was the exact spot where he passed me last year and helped me through a rough spot in the race.
I took a bit of a longer pull out of Escalante while the rest of the team grabbed some food and went on an unsuccessful search for coffee. After that, Rob and I started resting a bit to get ready to tag team Boulder Mountain, the first of two big climbs on the route. We took turns riding 10-15 minutes at a time, and I was shocked at how quickly we tackled the climb compared to my slow grind last year. We were building up a nice lead on 303 Gruppetto but kept crossing paths with their RV leapfrogging us. I bundled up at the summit and rode most of the long descent towards Bicknell, where I was looking forward to seeing my friend Brian at the Time Station and finally getting some coffee.
Unfortunately, we had a miscue at the turn to Bicknell and Phil turned right towards Capitol Reef National Park instead of left. By the time we realized he was off course, it cost us around 20 minutes to get back on track and 303 Gruppetto had taken over 2nd place. We stayed calm and had a good sense of humor and figured it just made the race a little more interesting.
We made it to Bicknell and once again I found no coffee. Rob and I got to spend the next few hours resting in the back of the van while Dee and Phil took turns pulling. I don’t know that I slept much, and it definitely was a little cramped in the back of the van, but at least I got to rest my eyes for awhile. Still, when it was time to get ready to ride again and go out in the cold dark early morning, I wasn’t really feeling it. I think my first pull was a little weak, but I started feeling a little better on the second one. We even had our first glimpse of the 303 Gruppetto RV for the first time in awhile, and not long after that I could see the lights of their rider ahead of me. I was starting to close in on him towards the end of my pull and Curtis asked me if I wanted to catch him first. I had no desire to push myself beyond my comfort level to pass them, so I let Rob take over and he made the pass. Then the pressure was on me to hold the gap. As we got closer to the next Time Station in Panguitch, Curtis let me know I would need to ride through Panguitch and then take a long pull up the steep climb towards Panguitch Lake while the team stopped for gas and ice. We only had a six minute lead at the Time Station and I kept looking behind me to see if they were closing in on me on the climb. I managed to hold them off and was relieved to finally see our van pass me and set up for an exchange. And they had coffee for me!!!
We started tackling the second of the two big climbs on the route as a team as Phil and Dee woke up and got themselves moving again, and made our way to Duck Creek Village and then the summit at Gooseberry Point at nearly 10,000 feet. Once again, I was amazed how quickly we put the climb behind us after the slow slog I remembered from last year’s solo race. The team let me take the long descent into Cedar City, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We then put Phil on the bike for a long pull while we stopped at the Time Station to get ice. By the time we caught up to Phil, he was struggling and 303 Gruppetto was quickly closing the gap.
I think I hit my lowest point of the race right around that time. I was waiting for my turn to pull again and remember sitting there thinking that I was exhausted and just didn’t care about the race anymore. I felt like there was no way I could get back on my bike and keep working at the same intensity I’d been putting in up to that point. Somehow, I managed to rally by the time I got back on my bike and found that my legs were still willing to work for me. We kept up a strong rotation of 10 minute pulls in the headwinds heading back to St. George and starting building back up a healthy gap. By the time we reached Veyo we knew that barring some disaster, there was no way they could catch us. We decided to ride the final segment through Snow Canyon and back into St. George as a team and took it nice and easy to the finish.
I have to give a lot of credit to our coaches, David and Rachel, for helping us put together a great racing strategy that worked out well for us. The team we were battling with the entire race seemed to be sticking to a rigid approach of trading off long pulls and it seemed to be exhausting them. Our rotation was much more fluid and our crew chief Curtis did an amazing job of reading our body language and adjusting for the terrain and race situation. With each of us putting in 20 or so pulls, Curtis also had the exhausting job of getting out of the van about 100 times to unrack one bike for the outgoing rider and then racking the bike of the incoming rider. And huge kudos to our driver Megan, who managed to stay awake and behind the wheel for us for the entire 30 hours of our race. It definitely was a huge bonus for us to be able to relax in the van between our pulls without having to take over shifts driving, especially towards the end of the race when we were all exhausted.
Big shoutout to Planet Ultra for managing to put this race on during the crazy times that we’re now living in. I think everyone involved was excited to be at a real live race again. We were still able to have a fun outdoor celebration at the awards breakfast on Monday morning before heading home. I’m really enjoying getting to know the HooDoo course a little better and definitely plan to continue participating in some variation of the course whenever I have the opportunity. I’d love to go back and better my solo result from last year, as I know I could have improved on a lot of things. But I’d also like to try out some of the other race divisions, like the stage race and the self-supported versions of the course.
So I’m back home and back into focused training for the 6-12-24 Hour World Time Trial Championships (WTTC), which has been pushed back to the end of October in hopes that the permits will come through. We’ve also been given the news that support crews will not be allowed at the race, so I’ll have to spend some extra time organizing and strategizing how to minimize my time off the bike while riding self-supported. The hopes I had of coming back after last year’s dismal race and taking my course record back are most likely gone, but I still plan to put it the best possible mileage under the circumstances, and am keeping my fingers crossed that we get to race this year.
