New Year's One Day Race Report: Saw The Golden Gate Bridge Roughly 41 Times.

The Course: Just keep turning right until 2014. 

I ran 41 laps for 43.7 miles in 12 hours. I made 164 right turns. I saw at least twice that many people taking selfies with the Golden Gate Bridge. 

I made two mistakes. 

The recap:

Lap 1. Hour Zero - High Noon - The Start - Current Mood On Top Of The World -

The grin spread across my face as the group of us, everyone with their hands on their watches, waited for Wendell to count us down to the start. "Norphel came out yesterday and ran the course, so he knows where he's going...follow him." And then we were off, "Have fun out there".

I had never faced a start line like this one. There was no finish line in front of me, only time. Lots and lots of time. 

I didn't realize it was possible for Runner's High to kick in three seconds into a run but WOOOO-WEEE! The earbuds went in, the music went on, and everything was beautiful...the air, the sun, the bay, the bridge...I wanted to high five EVERYTHING. 

Lap 2. How do I already have to pee, and these shorts were clearly a bad choice...first pit stop was lap 3 and I was good to go. The plan was to get in the zone, just run, and not think about time. 

All of a sudden 20 miles went by. That's a weird thing to say. 

Somewhere around 22 laps in. Photo by Jim

I was having some blister issues, so I changed shoes and put on compression socks around lap 27 or 28.

GeNene did lap 30 with me which is when I discovered a hill at the second turn that I swore hadn't been there before. Also, it continued to get bigger each lap. Very strange. 

As it got darker, looking across the lagoon or up ahead at a turn, a line of bouncing headlamps lit the way. Night time transformed everything. The Bridge glowed, and the city sparkled. 

Hour 8 is when I made my first mistake. I thought about time. My Garmin called it a day right around 8 hours, and it was the first time I'd thought about how long rather than how many laps or how many miles. Everything hit me. This was the longest amount of time I'd ever spent running. It was the most amount of miles I'd ever run at once. I'd been looking forward to this for months and now I'm here! I'm doing it! I'M ALMOST.....DONE....!!!

I rode that wave of weepy bliss for all of about thirty seconds before the 4 hours I still had in front of me slapped me across the face and brought me back to Earth. So that's how it went. 8 hours in, and my race was just beginning. 

I tried to find the zone, but the zone had left me. My body was giving up. The hill on the second turn had become a mountain. My brain had begun to bargain, and it didn't help hearing other people deciding to call their races content with their number of laps. GeNene walked with me and let me moan and groan for a couple of laps before I decided to make a pit stop at our camp for who even knows what. I'm not sure what genius thing I came up with that I thought I needed at that point. "I'd like to take a look at the blister that I've been running on for the past 10 hours, or, I don't know, tape something." 

This is when I made mistake number 2: I sat down. Not only did I sit down, I got under a blanket. So long everybody, wake me up next year! That lasted long enough for GeNene to tell me I wasn't done and she'd walk with me the last two hours if I needed her to. That made me happy. It also got me out of the chair because the thought of walking the last two hours was not how I wanted the rest of the story to go. I got moving again, not very fast or in a straight line, but I was moving. It was very quiet out there the last hour, everyone fighting their own fights, focused on the five or six feet of ground ahead of them. Time was winding down, and Poss joined me for a lap before I decided to call it. I had time to get one more lap completed. 

On that last lap, on the third turn, I walked over to the fence to look at the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge one last time. I had my moment to be grateful and breathe the ocean air and drink a toast to the New Year.

The final lap toast.
"The picture's not going to come out, your headlamp is on."
"Just take the picture. I'm going to fall over."

Thank you to everybody who helped me by being there, sending messages, adding to my playlist, or being there in spirit, and thank you to GeNene for getting me out of the chair. 

It was the most fun. I will be back next year...