ornoth_cycling | Dirty Dishes

As planned, I didn’t ride, but spent the day photographing this year’s Dirty Dozen race.

This has already been the second-wettest year in Pittsburgh history—with more than a month left to overtake the all-time record!—and race day was commensurately rainy. I was glad not to be riding!

I played leapfrog with the nine separate groups of riders all day, hitting the five toughest hills: Logan (#5), Suffolk (#7), Canton (#9), Boustead (#10), and Eleanor (#12).

I was out from 10am to 5pm, and took about 350 shots. I weeded those down to 67 decent pics that I shared on my Flickr photostream. Then those got culled down to the ten that you see on this page.

When I asked for Inna’s help selecting the keepers, she made an interesting observation. Whereas I’d focused on close-ups to capture the pain and human drama of the ride, she was more interested in establishing shots that captured the ridiculous steepness of the hills. It was a good lesson to put more thought into thematic considerations next time I shoot an event.

But overall, given that I wasn’t riding, it was a pretty enjoyable way to spend the day, and I got to cheer on (and socialize with) a bunch of my riding buddies.

And despite standing around in the rain all day and walking several steep hills, it was a hell of a lot less painful than riding them all!

In addition to the following small selection, you can see my edited collection of 67 photos in my 2018 Dirty Dozen Flickr album.