Herodirtus and the Hemmorrhoid – Atlas Mountain Race 2025

I have just returned from the Atlas Mountain Race, a 1300km mountain bike race running in a large greater arc from Marrakech to Essaouira through the Atlas Mountains. There is 23,000m of climbing on the route, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Many hilly parts are sometimes faster going than other harder, more rugged flat sections. It is reasonable to expect overall speeds while traveling of 11-15kph, which means, roughly, 80-110 hours of total travel time within a time limit of 7.5 days.

That’s as much information I have for you about the route. It’s a beast. It was my first organized ultra bikepacking event, and it took me a little over 6.5 days. Your mileage may literally vary based on your ability to deal with sleep deprivation and the conditions of the year. Not to spoil anything, but if you go in with a hemmorrhoid, maybe also anticipate adding some hours and take it a bit slower on the rough bits.

I’m going to avoid giving a complete blow-by-blow recap. The vastly more meaningful part of this journey was putting myself in a place to go do something like this. I’m a strong rider, I love bikepacking, but there are more pieces to this puzzle than an ability to push the pedals harder. We are not all blessed with Endless Summer. Life has twists and turns, and things to balance. Work at my secret job in the genome mines has been busy. How did I get to the starting line? I’ve long wanted to write a post about my ‘Singlespeed Summer’, the year before the race and the great routes and terrain that helped me prepare in California. I’ll talk about the glorious month I spent in Truckee skiing uphill at Sugar Bowl and how that helped in the race. I’ll talk about the bike, and the gear, and the things that I did differently on this trip from previous ones. I also have some photos from the race, of nice scenery. Then, life throws a curveball, I’m going to talk about the two weeks immediately leading up to the trip, which were a mess of stress and pain from a totally unexpected hemmorrhoid. In short, here I’ll focus on talking about The Preparation, but also the Preparation H!

But when it comes to the route, that’s a bit sacred. The route is pure poetry. If you are approaching the route for the first time, it will make you feel things when and where Nelson Trees intends you to feel them. Good times will be followed by bad times, and bad times followed by good resupply spots and checkpoints. You should have available to you, from him, as much as you need to complete the route and know where the general obstacles are. Follow that GPX track. Some obstacles are clear, others will be unanticipated and will make you change your plans wildly during the day. No few-sentence description of a section will be sufficient to describe an 8hr mixed hike-a-bike and rock scramble at 3am, so why try? I encourage you to take the information from Nelson and use that, because that’s what he believes is sufficient to complete the route.

If you are really competing, then you know where the obstacles are. You’ve done the route before, you know what will take time, and how much time it will take. You are now optimizing to the race course. I can’t give you advice there. There are many things I could do to improve my time in huge chunks, but that mostly comes down to things that I am not willing to sacrifice, broadly, on a bike trip. Spending a few hours here and there to have a Schweppes and watch other racers go by and hear their stories. Lingering at a good view, or a bakery. Taking that extra hour of sleep. Don’t get a hemmorrhoid. I’ll always be a dirtbag tourer at heart.

Which brings me to the bike. My muse. My steed. My heavy-as-sin Surly Lowside in Dream Tangerine, Herodirtus Maximus. ‘Herodirtus’ because when it’s set up as a singlespeed, I like to say “it’s imperfect but it’s all I got”, much like how modern historians regard Herodotus and his somewhat fanciful accounts of ancient history. Maximus because I wasn’t riding it singlespeed. The 40mm travel fork is scratched, it’s brutally heavy, and the geometry is not great for something like this. But it’s my ‘lil bulldog of a bike, it goes everywhere with me now and I adore it.

Singlespeed Watershed Wandering

Most of my ‘training’ for this race was carried out in two distinct regions of California. Work has been busy, so I’ve spent most of my weekends the last two years putting distance in between me and the Bay. I put ‘training’ in quotes because it happened before I even signed up for the race, more accurate would be to say ‘I spent a lot of time in these two watersheds trying to break out of a fitness plateau.’ The first is in Mendocino County, connecting Ukiah to Mendocino and Ft Bragg via a dense network of logging roads. Many of these require prior approval to ride, they are not public roads, but are maintained by the Mendocino Redwood Company and other land trusts. There is a prison work camp out there too, Site One, which you should avoid. I would maybe leave this area to the bears during the week and if you are going to ride some of these roads, do it very early on a Saturday or Sunday when the bears are at church. There is a Grasshopper Series event which starts in Ukiah, and many of these are just shoots off that course.

The second area is this roughly defined area spanning from Auburn and Grass Valley up to Graniteville and eventually Truckee. These roads are more publicly accessible than those in Mendocino, as the vast majority of the land is BLM and National Forest. I am surprised to find how few people in the Bay are aware of the Yankee Jim and American River watershed out of Auburn, the ‘Endurance Capital of the World’. Make sure you avoid the Western States trail unless there is a sign specifically allowing bikes. I cannot say enough about these two regions. They are gorgeous, remote, and perfect places to just wander and be my meditative, somewhat anti-social cycling self.

Singlespeed Summer

Then I started racing singlespeed last summer a few times, once in Ukiah at the Ukiah-Mendo Epic, once in Washington at the Bon Jon Pass Out (winning some tires) and finally at Truckee Gravel XL outside Tahoe. My race bike is another singlespeed that I greatly enjoy, a Standert Kettensage with an eccentric, offset rotating T47 bottom bracket. This ‘eccentric’ bottom bracket means that the whole spindle rotates around a fixed point to give some ability to tighten the chain, allowing for any bike with fixed dropout length to be turned into a singlespeed. I love the bike, it amounts to a super lightweight gravel bike, and I usually run it (in a race with significant climbs) in either 34-20 or 34-17. When I race Unbound in Kansas next summer, it will be much higher, maybe 42-18.

Truckee

Ski touring has been on my mind since I visited Georgia in 2018. I skied a lot as a kid, and then took a break for some time before making a commitment this year to refresh my skillset and find a way to make it work for me. The ski world has evolved a lot since… 1998, and it has been fun to return to find similar same advancements in the gadgets and gizmos that have blessed the bike industry in the same timeframe. Touring skis and skins, binding that make transitions between uphill and downhill a breeze. Really cool. I have a set of Armada Locator 104s now with ATK touring bindings, the ones that flip and twist and go click and chunk and snap in a variety of satisfying ways.

You can get a season uphill pass for Sugar Bowl for $200, and they typically open the uphill routes from 6:30am-7pm on days where conditions are good. Intermittent good snow in the Sierras makes full ski touring a bit hit or miss some seasons, but uphill travel is always good, because the groomers are always laying out that corduroy. I spent a good month in January before work getting my laps in, and pumping up those red blood cells. It was an awesome way to get around the awkward timing in the year of this race, and avoid burning out on the bike, which is always a bit of a struggle for me. I love riding bikes, you are reading my bike blog after all, but damn, some of you out there really like riding bikes.

The Hemmorrhoid – Ack!

After all of that, I was sitting in Truckee with two weeks to departure and noticed one morning that I had suddenly developed a raisin-sized external hemmorrhoid, which was making it painful to walk. I have no history of hemmorrhoids, I don’t know the specific cause of this one. My diet was good leading up to the race, plenty of fiber, plenty of good… flow. But there it was! Suddenly, my plans were in flux. Should I still go? Will I even be able to make it out of Marrakesh if I do go? Who should I tell? What happens if I get out of town and it rips and goes horribly wrong? There are no online resources which answer the question “Should I embark on one of the more difficult ultra cycling races in the world with a fucking hemmorrhoid?” That means also that ChatGPT is not trained on enough information, so it’s not any help either! I’d already uploaded my doctors note to the race, attesting that I was in good condition to complete the race. My taper was starting, so I wouldn’t really be training much more anyway!

Readers, I was not in a good place. I had spent a lot of money on this endeavor. The idea that this little thing would just magically go away or not be bothersome for a 1300km mountain bike race (where I was barely even running front suspension) seemed like a pipe dream. Not only was I going to scratch, I suddenly believed myself to be in serious danger of scratching in, like, the first half day of the race, not at all due to my fitness or the bike’s mechanics. There was a lot of soul searching. The day spent outside at the hotel in Marrakesh waiting for the race to start was absolute agony. I truly believed that everyone in that courtyard was about to glide away and leave me in a pool of my own blood at the edge of town once we hit gravel.

To make matters even worse, the Lowside was getting some traction online. I had submitted the build to the Rigs of the Atlas Mountain Race page on Bikepacking, and a handful of people had started to weigh in in the comments calling out that they loved the bike and would be dotwatching the Lowside. They followed up by sending me messages of support throughout the race. Thank you, all of you. I cannot tell you how convinced I was that your last dispatch from me would be “Surly Lowside guy scratches when his ass bursts open going up Telouet.”

The hemmorrhoid had shrunk about 25% by the time the race began, and maybe 75% by the end. So it was always there. But it didn’t burst. And I finished the route. God bless.

GEAR

Highlighting a few key pieces of gear and gear philosophy:

• Dynamo light – I am a huge fan, but mostly because of my equipment. I used to have a Sinewave Beacon V1 attached to a Shutter Precision dynamo hub. A year or two ago I upgraded to a Schmidt SON hub and a Sinewave Beacon V2. The V2 is a dramatic, dramatic improvement over V1, and I consistently had a bright beam down to 8-10kph, with none of V1’s notorious flicker. I hardly had to use a headlamp as a result, and the light stayed connected to my Garmin, which meant that I’m very close to the dream of my phone being the only thing requiring external power.
• Payday Bars – 6g Protein, don’t taste like shit, don’t melt in the sun. I had a whole bunch with me stuffed in every bag.
• Vittoria Mezcal – No notes, indestructible tire. Impressive performance, everyone runs them.
• Revelate bags all around, Swift industries seat pack – All good things.
• Clothing – It was a cold year. I did well with clothes, but I naturally run pretty warm, so I am fortunate in that regard.
  • Full down jacket and down vest – Found myself in all three states, both on, one on, neither on.
  • Patagonia sun shirt with hood – These lightweight sun shirts are impressive. I wore mine the whole way and was never in short sleeves. But again, cold year.
  • Pedal Mafia Bibs – Could have used better bibs, I just sort of grabbed some of my road bibs before I left, and they weren’t really sufficient for the terrain.
  • Lightweight rain jacket – Didn’t use, but if it had rained, it would have been nice.
  • Helium Bivy and Enlightened Equipment -6C Quilt. I love my down quilt from EE. But again, I run very warm.
  • Multiple pairs of gloves. Not because of the cold, but because my hands sweat.
  • Socks – DeFEET merino, had two pair, wish I had another pair, mine got disgusting.
  • $30 Uniqlo Smart Ankle Pants – These are my favorite pants. I can’t recommend them enough.
  • ENVE lightweight shorts – Got these some time ago, I don’t think they’re on sale anymore, but I love them. The phone hip pocket is excellent.

THE RACE

That’s a huge intro and leadup to what amounts to my shortest international bike trip to date. That’s not quite accurate, I covered roughly the same distance in this race in 6.5 days as I did in a month along the length of the entire Carretera Austral (also 1300km) in Chile a decade ago, which is a wild thing to say. There are a dozen posts here on this blog covering each section of that experience and about how much it shaped my life, but it was a different time.

The roads are rough. These are not the nice neat gravel roads of the American gravel scene, they are rugged, Sahara-adjacent tracks with non-uniformly-sized rocks and some gnarly hikes. The sheer number of dry river beds to wander through will leave you frustrated and exhausted. The sand is occasionally deep and unrideable. Nelson often chooses routes that push the race onto tougher roads where an easier alternate is available. I would not do this route with a rigid fork. It is currently several days since I finished, and my hands are still struggling to regain sensation. Granted, I had toy grips and toy suspension, but that was a sacrifice for the vibes. I would be faster on this course with a full suspension fork, and probably more comfortable with full squish. And of course probably more focused on the race without Mr. Hemmorrhoid laughing back there like a damn maniac. The fatigue in your body is not to be understated, you will be doing 125+ miles/day on rough roads, with very few “easy” descents. It’s gonna hurt, you’re going to be relentlessly shaken and jostled, and when it hurts, you will get frustrated, and will make mistakes. Wrong turns. Everyone laughs when you tip over at a gas station because you’re tired. Blame it on Mr. H and keep those pedals turning.

What did I personally learn? That the name of the game is consistency. For example, I found several people out there who were so gung-ho about going out and doing 48 hours straight to kick off the race. I’m not sure the right approach is to do hardcore hero efforts for 36+ hours followed by long sleeps. If those 36+ hour efforts end with 12 that are miserably burnt out, you’re just going to be… miserable and burnt out for those hours. I was starting to realize by the end of this race that a cadence with short sleeps followed by rides in the 8-10hr range will probably reduce your variability and keep the quality of your efforts high. Same with nutrition, a steady intake of omlettes and calories, rather than huge meals at resupply points is probably better. By all means, guzzle those tacos when you find them, but steady as she goes otherwise. Don’t force things. Avoid ‘burning matches’.

There were very high highs and very low lows in this race. I would say that the lowest for me was probably around 200k in, when I was exhausted for the first time, the novelty had worn off, and now I’m staring down the barrel of 1100km more. Checkpoint 1 reached, but not even a quarter of the way in. That’s a hard moment. A high was absolutely reaching Checkpoint 3, and tears were flowing hard when I hit the ocean for the first time. The section after Checkpoint 2 was positively euphoric, done in the sunset with good company, but the subsequent night had one of the more difficult stretches of road I’ve encountered anywhere on my travels. Pavement can be deceptive, a slow, consistent effort at night can put you right to sleep. There was a flat section in there that was tedious, and by the time we reached the tough climb and pass at the end of it, I found it incredibly difficult to restart my engine and find my focus for rough, technical roads in the dark.

The race was lengthened last year, to switch the finish line from Agadir to Essaouiera. That is all well and good, I’ve been to both towns before and Essaouiera is definitely a better vibe. But that last stretch adds about 4-5,000m of climbing to the route, mostly paved, but still tough. That said, I think those were some of my favorite climbs I’ve ever been up. Huge, sweeping views of the Atlas and eventually the ocean, incredibly twisty roads, spaghetti, which just look really cool on a map. The ‘Moroccan Stelvio’, the last climb, I did at night, but the little valley before it is full of nice little restaurants.

Going Forward

I learned a lot in this race. A lot that would help me drop significant time and find more consistency to my performance. I was quite sleep deprived, but I generally felt better, stronger, on the last two days than the first two. That’s likely because of those two weeks beforehand where Mr. H had me down bad and I wasn’t walking very well. My case for “never again”, which was really dominating my mind on Day 2, had very little to do with my ability to complete a race, it has so much more to do with just how philosophically different this experience was from my usual dirtbag bike trip. The spontaneity isn’t there. The little things, the uniqueness of your presence in a new place. The watching, the observing, the soaking in new information and new settings. Immersion. When I rode out the first time more than a decade ago, the best part of the trip was just wandering. The freedom. The isolation. Bikepacking races are a bit different. This was remote, but the clock is always running, there’s always someone arriving where you’re stopped, and always someone else leaving in a hurry. People further up in the field weren’t saying ‘hi’, they were racing. The towns are seeing a string of cyclists coming through, it’s not just you. At first, that was a shock to my system, something bad that corrupts my precious dirtbag experience. But it’s not, really. It’s just different.

By the end, my ambitious side was kicking in a bit more. I was starting to recognize patterns to my performance, if I wanted to ride better the next day, I would have to take a rest and avoid burning matches. If I wanted to ride hard throughout the day, I have to eat consistently. I’m not a coffee drinker, or really consume any caffeine, but I suspect caffeine gels or chews would have helped get through a few difficult hours. That piece of my mind, the part that likes to optimize and achieve, that I am much more familiar with while riding on my road bike in the Bay, was getting tickled a bit. There was more to do here, more work, choices to make to train and push myself in ways that would lead me to having better results. That path was clearer, and once those goals became more apparent, it was more reasonable to think of doing more of these. So maybe…

But for now, back to work. We have some therapeutic milestones to hit. Unbound 200 later this year. Thanks as always for reading. ❤️