New Year's One Day 12 Hour (Uh, 7 Hour) Race Report

Here's the idea: You pay actual money to run around in a circle for either 6, 12, or 24 hours. This is how you choose to spend your New Year's Eve. 

That's it. That's the course. Just keep turning right until midnight. 

Each time you complete a lap, you pass under the finish arch, that is never actually the finish line, and over a timing mat that tracks the number of laps you've done and displays it on a screen.

This should actually say, "KEEP GOING FOR MORE HOURS"

You're looking at the same people lap after lap. It's the Golden Gate Bridge over and over again. You're not actually getting anywhere. 

What is the point of what we are doing.

That question is exactly why I love this race. 

Here are hundreds of people, lap after lap, living entirely inside their own heads for hours and hours, each with a different answer to that question. 

Last year I ran because I just wanted to find out if I could do it. I wanted to know what it felt like to run for 12 hours. I wanted to see what was possible. I completed 43.7 miles in 12 hours before raising a champagne toast at midnight with everyone else (read about it here) and knew right away I would be back again this year. 

My goal was to break 50 miles, but I ended up calling it a day after 7 hours. Within the first hour my stomach turned on me. Maybe it was the Gu, which has been causing me stomach issues recently, or the Cytomax that I drank a bunch of that I don't normally drink. Maybe I wasn't fully recovered from The North Face 50k. Maybe I jinxed myself or the stars weren't aligned or maybe it just wasn't my day. 

I completed 29.7 miles in 7 hours, and it feels like a victory. My reason for being out there, for signing up for 12 hours, initially was to accomplish a goal, but I very quickly realized it wasn't about that at all. My reason for being out there was to revel in the highs and push through the lows, to watch the sun set and see the city light up, to live inside the hours of music I'd spent hours putting together, to stare at the Golden Gate Bridge, to meditate, to pray, to think about the past year, to mourn, to celebrate, to forgive. 

That's why I signed up for this. It's not a race, it's an experience. 

We start out as strangers and come to recognize each other every lap from the back. Whether you're passing or being passed, you see familiar gates and pony tails and backs of shirts hour after hour. We chat, we throw a thumbs up, we stay quiet. We feel great, we suffer, we feel great again. It's just relentless forward progress. There is no finish line, only time in front of us. This is the reason I'm out here. To experience this along side everyone else. 

If you were out there, I recognized you from the back as we circled the lagoon. I remembered you each lap and wondered, why are you out here doing this...I'll bet it's a beautiful reason. 

Thanks, Wendell, for a great experience.