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Hard Things: A Mid-Race Reflection on the 2024 Arizona Trail Race
As the 2024 Arizona Trail Race hits its stride, most of the battered riders tackling the 800-mile route are in Central Arizona, and course alterations have changed the game. Eszter Horanyi reflects on how the event has unfolded and asks what keeps bringing people back. Read it here with a brilliant selection of photos from the first four days since the grand depart…
PUBLISHED Oct 22, 2024
While a handful of riders are still out on the AZT 300 course, the vast majority of the action in the southern portion of the Sonoran Desert has wrapped up. Most of the 800 men are through Picketpost, and all three of the remaining women racing the 800 are headed north and in Central Arizona proper.
As of 6 p.m. on Monday night, four and a half days into the event, race leader Justina Leveika has crested the Mollogon Rim, officially marking his entry into the high country of Arizona, leaving the sweltering desert in the rearview mirror. This is probably welcome, seeing that the heat has turned on again after several days of cool temperatures.
Much of the 800 field is in the central part of the state making their way from the Phoenix Valley up to the mid-elevations of Payson via a lot of really rugged dirt roads, some nice singletrack, and some absolutely heinous trail tossed in. Of the route dropping into Jake’s Corner, race director John Schilling says, “If you ever want to do a day ride of that section, do it in the opposite direction of the race.”
The big news of the day is that the Highline Trail from Pine to the Mollogon Rim remains closed due to an old fire. While the burn went from a wildfire to a controlled burn and then to a smolder, crews kept the trail closed, forcing Leveika to take the parallel control road instead of the trail. While rumor has it that the Highline Trail has been cleaned up to the point of being unrecognizable to those who rode it previously, the road is still significantly faster. This detour means that any time the race winner sets, it won’t be considered an FKT on the trail.
This begs the question: When the goal you’re chasing, and both Leveika and Alex Schultz were very clearly chasing that FKT, is suddenly pulled away from you through no fault of your own, what do you do?
Leveikas went to That Brewery in Pine and had himself a beer, posting a photo on Instagram with the caption, “It’s my holiday after all.”
Which just emphasizes that these races are about so much more than chasing times.
In chatting with race director John Schilling at Picketpost while waiting for Alexandera Houchin to finish, he remarked how it was so good to see people returning to the event year after year, that it was heartening to know that people still sign up to do hard things. No one enters the AZT, either the 300 or the 800, if they aren’t committed to tackling something really difficult. Having watched this event for over a decade, it seems that regardless of the outcome of any race, everyone whose tires touch the trail has an unforgettable experience.
But it did get me thinking: What keeps bringing people back? It’s definitely not the complete annihilation of shin skin by catclaw and cholla. It’s probably not the long water carries between water sources. It’s definitely not the final eight miles of the 300 from Telegraph Road, that, while trending downhill, is potentially the most frustrating part of the entire course. I doubt many people really look forward to descending Oracle Ridge either.
So why are there so many repeat offenders? I think it’s the community that has been built around this event, potentially more so than many other bikepack races. As Alexandera wrote in her Instagram post before starting:
I love this community so much and respect all the athletes lining up. To all my girls and all my singlespeeders. All yous. Love you. 😘 … No records on table? Who gives a shit. Grand departs are the only thing that matters, because without people you love and respect competing alongside you— there’s no glory to be had.
As someone who raced the 300 in 2013 and has been involved with the event to some degree ever since, I have to agree: It’s about the people. It’s about this community of weirdos of the best kind committed to doing hard things together.
And now we get to the place where I’m supposed to write a race recap about how the first half of the race has unfolded, to relay the stories that have been told to me about the experiences people have had out on the route.
But here’s the thing — while I could tell tales of the exhaustion in Aaron Johnson’s eyes this morning as he told me about how the new additions to the course have made it much harder than when he last raced it 10 years ago — and that he was a decade older to boot — or of Karin Pocock’s decision to get a hotel in Superior last night for the sake of relative cleanliness, or Abe Kaufman being so cracked on his ride into Picketpost that he rode with his chamois inside out for nine hours before noticing, or Johnny Price’s crazy eyes (if you’ve ever met him, you know what I’m talking about!), I think it feels more appropriate to invite everyone who is watching this from afar to consider coming out to see this place for themselves.
The Sonoran Desert, and the AZT, will get under your skin, both figuratively and literally, and I suspect that the tiny little cactus spines that embed deeply — as well as the memories made here — will never leave you, for better or worse.
Check out the Arizona Trail Race 2024 Tracker page to follow along on the live tracking map, watch for ongoing race updates, and tune in for more event coverage. Find it here.
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