Daniel “Danny” Chew with Robert “Rob” Zelmore at the 2024 Dirty Dozen.
Pittsburgh residents love to poke fun at the city’s infamous hilly terrain, but this is precisely what inspired the Dirty Dozen, an annual bike race featuring the 13 worst hills around the city.
Daniel “Danny” Chew, a Pittsburgh native and Pitt alum, wanted to incorporate the city’s challenging hills with his passion for biking.
“I lived in Pittsburgh my whole life. I knew it was hilly in this city … I wanted to showcase the hills in one bike ride where you never get too far away from the center of the city,” said Chew. “So that was the concept — to showcase the steepest hills that were available on a bike ride that would stay fairly close to the city and be about 50 miles.”
In 1983, Chew held the first Dirty Dozen.
The race starts with hills in Aspinwall and climbs more in Sharpsburg, O’Hara, Etna, Millvale, Pig Hill/Rialto Street and other Northside streets, Mount Washington, as well as two in Beechview, two in Southside and a final hill in Hazelwood.
While all of the hills the riders have to fight are challenging, there is one Chew believes is the worst.
“The one that appears to be the toughest is the seventh one — Suffolk, Hazelton and Burgess on the North Side — because it’s it is one of the longer hills, and by the time you get to [the seventh hill], you’re starting to feel fatigue from the first six that you’ve already done, and you’re just slightly more than halfway,” said Chew.
Each year, riders seeking the uphill battle pour into Pittsburgh from all over the United States. These riders form a community while working towards a common goal around a beautiful city.
“They like the challenge to do something that’s difficult. And now people come from all over the country, where, at first it was…only local riders,” Chew said. “But as it grew … people started coming from all over the country. And of course, the internet helped and social media to promote it, but people like the challenge of something that’s difficult, and they’ve got to train for it.”
In early races, less than 10 riders would compete, but in 2024, 322 riders participated in the Dirty Dozen.
Dr. John Steers, a Maryland native and two-time Dirty Dozen participant, first heard about the race through the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“One day [my neighbor] came across this article about the Dirty Dozen, and he cut it out because we were all bicyclists and put it in my mailbox. And he said, ‘Can you believe what these nut jobs do in Pittsburgh?’ And I read the article, and I said, ‘I gotta do that,’” Steers said.
“As a Ravens fan my whole life, I always thought Pittsburgh was a shitty place that nobody wanted to go to,” Steers said. “When you do the Dirty Dozen, it takes you to pretty much all these really nice, significant neighborhoods, starting at the North End and going all the way around.”
However, Robert “Rob” Zelmore, a Butler, Pennsylvania, native and 2024 participant of the Dirty Dozen, has a different motivation to complete the race.
“I had decided in my late 40s that it was time to do something about my weight,” Zelmore said. “And once I lost the weight … I started riding a bicycle to maintain it every day. Cycling has become a passion of mine, and I just thought it was natural. I’ve never been in any bike races, but the Dirty Dozen was less about being a race and more about just the personal challenge, I would say. And I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could even do it.”
Chew, an avid bicyclist and 1996 and 1999 Race Across America Champion, holds several records within the Dirty Dozen. He was the oldest winner in 2003 at age 41, had the most finishes at 32 and most consecutive finishes at 25. He is the highest low-gear winner, has the highest score to ever win and has the most Dirty Dozen hills ridden in one day.
In 2016, Chew suffered an accident while riding his bike. Paralyzed from the chest down, the accident pushed him to implement several changes to the race format over its 41 years of transpiring. Chew made the race groups smaller and added “rangers” to lead the groups in orange vests, which made the overall race safer.
“That year, 2016, we broke it down into smaller groups of 50 or less riders so that it would be safer to go through the city. Only two groups that lead the men’s group and the women’s group would be going for points … the rest of the people would be doing it … just to finish the hills themselves,” Chew said.
The impact that the Dirty Dozen has on riders goes way beyond cycling. Zelmore’s wife is paralyzed from the chest down, and part of his motivation for losing weight was to take better care of her. The race connected Zelmore and Chew well past the Dirty Dozen season.
“I told [Chew] about my wife. We exchanged emails, and we emailed a little bit back and forth for a month or so, and then about Christmas time, we talked on the phone,” Chew said. “And now we text every day, you know, and he’s got so much … experience in cycling … he was just on a completely different plateau from anybody I’ve ever met. But our neat connection is my wife and him having the same injury, so we were really looking forward to the weather breaking and them getting together and being able to compare notes and really get to know each other.”
Zelmore is now preparing to participate in the 2025 Dirty Dozen this October, with the sole goal of finishing.
“My goal this year would be to try to become an official finisher and be able to climb all the hills without stopping. It was one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever tried in my life, and I felt an enormous amount of pride just being among people trying,” Zelmore said. “Everybody that I mentioned to that I rode in a Dirty Dozen typically says, ‘Oh, wow, you actually did that.’ So it’s got the reputation of being something super hard, and I’m proud to say that I tried.”
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