For the Inaugural Hoodoo500, NUBS fielded the team of Tracy Fisher, her son, Cory, Myself (Scott Dakus), and my son, Andrew in the open relay division.  Our professional level crew consisted of Gilbert Buco.  The Hoodoo is a 519 mile race starting and ending in St. George.

There were a total of nine teams and we started at 11AM on Saturday morning.  One rider from each team rode a short six mile parade out of town and then the racing began.  At about the 16 mile point on the course, the first exchanges were allowed.  We did our first exchange after the steep climb heading out of Hurricane (pronounced HURkin).  All the starting riders went out very hard (including me) and were happy to get off the bike for the first rest.  At the top of the climb, Andrew was waiting at the side of the road and we did a quick overlap and he was gone for his first pull.  We had decided that the grown-ups would do 30 minute pulls and the kids would do 15 minutes pulls until it got dark and then we would wing it. 

At this point in the race, there was a strong south wind.  It was a cross/head wind that would punish everyone until we made the turn at the southernmost part of the course and started heading north; it was a strong tailwind at that point and 30 mph was easy most of the time.  Andrew and Cory were a bit shaky with the strong crosswind, the traffic, and all the other riders and crew vehicles still pretty close together.  By the time we had done a couple of exchanges, we were in a good routine and everyone was riding strong.  All day it was Andrew – Cory – Tracy – Scott (repeat as necessary).  The preliminary goal was to reach Time Station 2 by sunset (8PM).  This would be 154 miles in nine hours.  As it turned out, a lot of teams were on that pace.  For the whole first day, it seemed like we just weren’t being separated at all; everywhere we went, there were the same crews and riders over and over again.  Everyone was very friendly and enthusiastically cheering every time we went past.

As far as our crew went, things were going great.  Gilbert hadn’t crewed like this before, but up until this point, he had done almost all of the driving and most of all the other support functions.  We mostly did leap-frog support.  This meant sending a rider up the course, waiting for a few minutes (usually between 10 and 20 minutes), then driving up and finding a nice place to pull over and getting ready to do it all again.  The most tedious task seemed to be constantly rearranging the bikes on the rack to have the right one ready for the next person.  It was nightfall, but nobody was complaining yet.  Each time the boys got off their bikes, they looked whipped and seemed tired, but an hour later, they were ready and willing to climb back on.  Tracy was a real diesel; each time she was on the bike, she was in the drops and doing solid tempo riding.  She seemed to becoming more alive with each pull and clearly wanted to spend as much time as possible on the bike rather than in the van.  Once it got dark and hilly we were able to persuade Tracy to ease up a bit and save some for the next day.  They boys each took a good pull at the beginning of the night and by the next time it was their turn again, they had both fallen asleep in the bed at the back of the van.  They were done for now.

We tried to be proactive with the sleep, but sleeping in a moving van is tough.  We decided to each do a long pull and to let the other two sleep while we were at it.  Gil kept saying he wasn’t tired, but you know how those uber-crew guys get.  All day long he had been driving, slinging bicycles, and taking hundreds of photographs; it was his turn to at least try to sleep.  My pull consisted mainly of a 25 mile long climb, the steepest of which was just plain punishing.  The one solo rider that we passed on this steep section was walking his bike and not very fast either.  At the top of the climb, Tracy took over for a cold decent and some high desert rollers.  While cramping in my leg kept interrupting my sleep attempt, Tracy was out of water and both of her headlights were failing.  When we finally caught up to her, she had been on the road for 2 ½ hours and was quite glad to see us.  She was riding strong and was in good spirits and had covered a LOT of miles.  This next exchange took a while, because we were having issues with the lights; we really couldn’t get any of them to work perfectly and decided to just do the follow behind thing until sun-up.

We were now on the long, generally flat run into Panguitch and time station 5 and the sun was ready to poke up again.  The boys were awake and ready to ride.  We were hoping that the previous days wind had abated, but it hadn’t.  As the sun rose, the wind picked up.  The cold wind whistled right into our faces and it took everyone a couple of pulls to get their clothing right.  Morning was here; everyone was wide awake and we were looking forward to Panguitch, because there was the very real possibility of getting real food there.  ALSO, the sooner we got to Panguitch, the sooner we would tackle the 30 mile climb out of town, and the sooner we would start the 100 mile coast to the finish.  (at least the route profile made it look like a 100 mile coast to the finish).  Breakfast turned out to be Subway brand sub-sandwiches.

On the first pull up the hill, we came across Jan Christiansen.  She was riding in the voyager division, which meant not only was she going solo, but also totally unsupported.  She looked like heck (she always does), said that she had fallen apart during the night and was just in survival mode.  She ended up finishing in 44 hours.  Up ahead was Corey; we were still in the rotation.  The entire 30+ mile climb was against a very stiff headwind and the only way that we could move up was to shorten the pulls.  The longest pulls that we took were in the 20 minute range.  The never ending hill eventually ended and there was a great, ripping decent into Cedar City.  After all we had been through in the previous 24 hours, the hardest was still in front of us.

Some of us raided the Sonic at the edge before we headed due west to start the last 80 miles to the finish.  We knew that it would be windy, but this was ridiculous.  The cross wind coming from the south was so strong that it made just riding very difficult.  The boys are in the 80 to 90 pound range and they were tossed around quite a bit.  The only safe way for them to ride was to pace the van directly behind them and protect them from traffic so that they could ride in the middle of the lane; Andy actually got blown off the road a couple of times.  All four riders had something in common; nobody rode very fast and nobody complained.  We just kept rotating our riders and every minute we were a tiny bit closer.  This was the point where we just wanted the ride to be over.  It took us over 5 ½ hours to cover these 70 miles; every other crew had similar experiences.

We muscled over the last two short climbs and starting preparing for the finish.  It was now dark again and Cory and Andrew took one last, long pull.  Tracy rode the last 19 miles and the three of us met up with her two blocks from the finish line so that we could all ride across together.  Our time for the 519 miles was 34 hours and 37 minutes; we finished 5^th out of nine teams.

Once again, we proved the importance of picking the right people to surround yourself with.  Andrew and Cory rode hard and also contributed plenty assisting to anything that needed to being done.  Tracy brought many attributes to the show.  She was enthusiastic and optimistic the whole time, made great decisions, and showed total awareness of the whole operation all the time.  In spite of all that, her strongest suit was her riding.  She never did slow down and never wanted to be off the bike; in short… Tracy came to ride and she proved it.  Most of our conversations after the race revolved around Gilbert and how lucky we were that we got him.  If you know Gil, nothing else needs to be said.  He is a stand-up guy, 100% maintenance free, and he knows the game.  He really fit in well; we just couldn’t get him to shut-up.

This was a fun, fun race and it is practically in our back-yard.  With two teams there, Henderson had a great showing; we should be embarrassed if we send less than two dozen athletes there next year.  There is really not a reason to not go.

The weekend spent with my son was pure gold.  We made some memories that will never go away.  It’s going to be real hard to avoid this race in the future. 

Scott