Our Ultra Cycling Race - HooDoo 500 Miler

(The lowest point on this Elevation Map is about 2,000 ft and the highest point, near Cedar Breaks summits at just over 10,500 ft)

The Thurston Cycling Team (powered by Bounce)

There are few things in this life that really bring people together with a purpose. My dad (Gary), my brother (Heath), and my brother-in-law (Blu) discovered something special this last weekend as a team of athletes on a quest to pedal our bikes 519 miles around souther Utah for the first ever HooDoo 500 Ultra Marathon Cycling Race.
We had 48 hours to complete the distance, which included over 30,000 ft of total elevation gain. Our goal we set for ourselves (not really having any idea what we could do for such a long & grueling event) was 34 hours.
We really thought that riding together in two's, three's and sometimes all four of us would help since we could draft off each other. It was by the first Time Station (mile 82) that we realized that 400+ more miles to go was going to be a LOOOONG way to go and we had to rest.
So we changed tactics and went to a one-person-at-a-time routine. We took one hour shifts for the rest of the evening and on into the night.
Here's Gary and Rob getting ready to handout refills of water and electrolyte drinks and food :)
Heath was "Lance Armsrtong" of the team. He lead us with his speed and ability to put on the most miles of anyone on the team...easily 200+ miles himself. Even Heath said that there were several moments when he didn't think he could go anymore.
Blu was always finding every opportunity to get out of the truck and onto his pedals. It's Blu's fault we got into this event since he knew we could do it. I would never have even considered it.
Biking isn't my favorite sport, Endurance Running is, but I learned to respect those athletes who can pull off a 500 mile race SOLO. I was able to put in 160 miles for the team, over 10 hours of total ride time. The lack of sleep is what really makes it hard to go on.

I look like I'm having fun in this picture, but I really wanted to get back in the truck and rest. I pulled this uphill section of the course and many others throughout the night and into the next day.
A lot of the scenery in this county is BEAUTIFUL....to bad we missed about 10-12 hours of it in the dark.
We had a blast see wildlife come out at night. Gary even ran over a rabbit (a live one) and managed to stay up on his bike. I saw a Hyena even....although the others said I was delusional because they all said it was just a deer...ya whatever!!! I know what I saw....lol
Here's Rob in the bed of the truck helping with a transition of riders. Rob was the only one-man support crew in the event. The other teams had several vehicles and crew members who took turns providing support and driving, while Rob managed to stay awake the entire 31 hours it took us to finish the course. We couldn't have done it without him!!!


By halfway I really didn't think we would make our goal of 34 hours. The night was long and the second day we had headwinds for miles on end. But we pulled it off. We were in third place until the middle of the night when another team passed us and left us in the dark far behind.

However, once we made it to the next Time Station in the morning we discovered that we were trailing that team by about 15 min. So we made a mighty attempt to climb to the highest summit on the course and catch the team ahead of us.

(Finish: 3rd out of 9 teams with a time of 31 hours 20 min)

We finally made up the 15 min gap and my dad pulled ahead of them placing us third overall and somehow we all got our 2nd, 3rd and 4th winds on the last 90 miles of the course and increased our 3rd place gap by nearly an hour.


1st place: Team BHB 26:47:00
2nd place: Team Swarm 28:29:00
3rd place: Team Thurston 31:20:00*
4th place: Team Tri-Cyclers 32:10:00
5th place: Team N.U.B.S 34:37:00
6th place: Team Las Vegas Express 35:37:00
7th place: Soloist Ton Van Dealen 36:45:00
8th place: Team Poser Velo 37:01:00
9th place: Soloist Jared Fisher 38:29:00
10th place: Team HooDoneIts 43:19:00
11th place: Team Clydsdale 44:23:00
12th place: Soloist Matt Ward 47:19:00
13th place: Soloist Jim Auwen 47:27:00
14th place: Soloist Voyager (no support crew) Janet Christiansen 44:37:00
15th place: Soloist Voyager (no support crew) Keith Krombel 51:21:00
(There were 3 soloist DNF's)