The Dirty Dozen is a Unique Bike Race in Pittsburgh

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What is the Dirty Dozen Bike Race?

The Dirty Dozen race challenges riders to tackle 13 of Pittsburgh's steepest hills over a 50-mile course. The race began in 1983 with a few friends riding the steepest hills, and has become an annual tradition ever since. Although this one historically took place the Saturday after Thanksgiving, it has recently changed to the end of October.

Now, although this one is called a race, the format is a bit different from what you expect. The current iteration of the Dirty Dozen is not a first-to-the-finish style ride, where whoever finishes the 50-miles first wins. Instead, riders are broken into various heats with the first heat featuring the competitive racers, later heats including those just doing it for fun (the Party Bus heat being the last one), and participants are scored based on who reaches the top of each hill first in their heat.

The top rider receives 10 points per hill. The last rider receives 1 point per hill. The final scores are tallied across all 13 hills, with the victor having the highest score total overall.

This is an interesting dynamic for a race, as riders in any given heat ride together between hills. At each hill, they stop, regroup at a starting line, and only race on the respective climbs. Those who finish first cheer on the rest, and those who stop or fall over have to go back down and try again. While the person who finishes first gets the most points, the person who finishes last gets the most cheers- from racers and spectators alike.

Sometimes, getting to the top is victory enough!

In terms of specific hills, the list can and does change over the years. In the past, Rialto Street was one such hill, but it has recently not been included (we can only imagine it is for safety reasons, since the roads aren't officially shut down for this race). Other streets are staples, like Canton Avenue, the steepest street in the lower 48 states. So before visiting a Dirty Dozen event, it is important to look up the current year's lineup, and make your plan for watching the ride accordingly- and we have some tips for that now!

How to Get the Most Out of the Dirty Dozen as a Spectator

Since the Dirty Dozen covers more or less the entire city, you may be wondering the best way to approach watching the ride.

There really are two main schools of thought here that you should consider. The first is traveling around and catching the riders at several hills around the city, starting with the first riders at the start. The second is picking just one hill and arriving before the bikers do.

During the day, the former is perhaps easier than the latter, if only because riders go in waves, typically starting the first hill between 9 and 9:40 AM, and you can cover ground between rides via a car much faster than those on bikes- especially if you start towards one of the first hills on the route. Here, you may want to be strategic on stopping at a few hills, and then decide if you want to watch all the heats finish a given hill or move on after a certain amount of time. (I missed the Party Bus heat at the end, and regret leaving early!)

Picking a single hill to catch riders on, as I did with Canton Avenue during my first event as I only had a limited amount of free time on ride day, is a guessing game on timing. In 2025, for example, riders started climbing the hill, the 9th in the lineup in 2025, just a little bit before noon. But as I did not know what time they'd arrive exactly, I had arrived at about 10:30 am based on an educated guess of how long it would take bikers to ride 30-something miles around the city. This resulted in a lot of waiting time since I was off by a fair bit by not accounting for regrouping times between climbs.

Still, either of these options work out well insofar as you get your timing right. But for me in future events, I'm definitely going to do the former and see as many climbs as I can!

Another concern with the Dirty Dozen is parking, but for most hills, I felt like this one was a bit more in my head than a problem in reality. The race is popular, but not insanely popular that logistics come into play- even on the popular climbs for spectators.

On Canton Avenue, for example, all of the side streets had ample parking even during the middle of the busy heats. Some hills may have designated parking areas to get out of the way, or you may have to park slightly further away and walk a bit, but for the most part, a good number of hills are fairly accessible to drive over, park, and spectate.

That said, be mindful that there will be dozens of riders out on the roads on any given day. If you are driving to/from a hill, that likely means bikers will be on the roads as well, so be sure to be mindful of this as well.

Overall, the Dirty Dozen is an incredibly fun bike ride to watch each year, and between competitive riders and those just in it for a good time, we really have to hand it to all participants for tackling streets that we, as avid bikers ourselves, would never, ever try.

This really is one fun event not to miss!

The Dirty Dozen typically takes place on the Saturday before Halloween in October.