Are you faster than a train? Hundreds race Heber Creeper to find out

Soldier Hollow • Superman was “more powerful than a locomotive.” On Saturday, 134 Utah runners proved that they are faster than one.

Sure, the train they outran is called the “Heber Creeper” by locals and is known less for blazing speed than for allowing leisurely viewing of pretty mountain scenery.

But runners still had to average faster than 10-minute miles over 12 kilometers (7.45 miles) from Deer Creek Dam to Soldier Hollow to beat that train — gaining 1,022 feet in altitude over the dirt-trail course, with inclines as steep as 18 percent.

“In the first Superman movie, he ran side by side against a train. In my mind, I was doing that the whole way,” said Mat Crandall of Salt Lake City. He sported a Superman T-shirt and Superman socks to help with the illusion. “Superman got to run like that 35 years ago. I did it today.”

Crandall finished 17 minutes ahead of the train — 1:01:00 compared to 1:18:38 — so the physical education teacher didn’t actually see much of it after the race began. “They said to slow down and not race against people, just the train. So it was nice.”

Skeeter Moreno of Salt Lake City was the last runner to beat the train — just barely. He crossed the line a second before the train arrived blasting its horn.

“I’ll take it. I feel like I’m going to start crying,” Moreno said as he began to cry with joy and knelt to catch his breath. “I didn’t think I could beat it. It’s a very nice surprise. I had to really speed up over that last half-mile when I saw it was coming.”

The race winner, Reed Muir of Lindon, accidentally gave the whole field and the train a head start. Because of a trip to the bathroom, “I started 400 yards behind everyone else. It was hard working through that.” But he finished in 46:24 — more than a half-hour ahead of the train.

Because the race starts at Deer Creek Dam, organizers call it the Dam Train Race. A few runners add an “n” to the “dam” and used other expletives to describe their attempts to outrun the locomotive — although most said how enjoyable views on the course were.

Brent Messel and his 14-year-old son, Taylor, finished just behind the train. “I swear that train speeded up at the end. I just couldn’t catch it,” Taylor said. His dad was proud of his running-partner son. “He didn’t quit, he finished running hard.”

“It was a beautiful day. You ride the train to the starting line. You begin in the moonlight, and end on a beautiful sunny day,” said Brent Hill of Park City, who beat the train. “It’s a uniquely Utah race.”

This is the second year for the race. Last year, it had 160 runners — while nearly 400 entered on Saturday. “So it doubled in size,” said event director Carter Hurst. “That’s about how many seats there are on the train, so that’s our maximum capacity.”

Racers check in at Soldier Hollow, then board the train at 6:45 a.m. for a ride to the dam — and then race it back.

For full disclosure, the train actually starts several minutes after the runners — but they must cover a somewhat longer distance.

“The runners get a bit of a head start in front of the train because there is one point where the trail crosses the tracks, about a half a mile into the trail,” which may otherwise cause safety problems, Hurst explains.

“So the train waits until the last runner has crossed that point, and then it gets going. So that’s maybe 15-20 minutes after the start.”

But, he adds, “The train track is a little bit shorter of a distance than the trail itself because the trail goes into a couple of ravines and meanders a bit.”

Hurst said the train “will keep an average pace of 6 miles per hour, so about a 10-minute mile.” But he expects that will vary a bit every year.

Still, it tends to work out so that it “maximizes the thrill of the train finishing about the same time as a good chunk of the participants so they have that thrill of coming down to the wire, and whether they are going to beat it or not,” Hurst said.

Mark Nelson, executive director of the Heber Valley Railroad, said the diesel train usually travels about 14 miles an hour in its excursions — but scales it back a bit to make the race more exciting and fun for more people.

He said the event is part of an effort to “help familiarize people with the Heber Valley Railroad” and the preservation efforts it is conducting.

While it is using diesel engines now, it is attempting to refurbish two old steam engines that are now in its shops. Nelson said the problem with finishing them isn’t so much money — he says the railroad has been operating in the black — but in finding and hiring skilled craftsmen to finish the work.

“We would hire more laborers if we could find them,” he said.