It has been two years since I took part in an official race.

I changed country from Germany to Canada and I failed on my goal to do one marathon per year since the first one but I’m workin on it.

I haven’t stop running obviously, mostly alone and since summer 2017 I’m exploring Montreal and sometimes Los Angeles with my running shoes.

A few months ago a friend based in the Bay area proposed this environsport event above the Golden Gate bridge, so we both registered. Only thing is we both discover the word trail in the event name a fews weeks before and later as a few hours before the race I discover my local friend had only signed for the half-marathon.

Day of the race

6:30am my Lyft driver is bringing me from SF downtown to the Marin Headlands park just after the Golden Gate park. Dropped on the side of the road where it was indicated I walked 10min as planned and find the people building up the official departure/finish line.

8:11am the event organizer from environsports is speaking to us, welcoming us and introducing the race path, the words up, up and up again are voiced over many times. One loop of 21km meaning I will have to do two loops.

I keep three visual memories of this race.

One is a quarter of the race relativery fine with a slope down where we could run fast without risks.

A second where one of the frenchies is passing me in another slope down, he is smilling, a few seconds later I see him doing an involontary stunt legs in the airs, smile is broken but he continues running behind me.

Third in the second loop after a third of the race. I’m at a refueling station and I’m so thirsty, drunk a lot, ate half a banana and continue. One runner is eating like crazy and leaving the station super fast. A few minutes later I will pass him while is puking like he never puke before.

Run, walk, run, walk and run again, pain. In the last km I managed to go over one or two runners.

1:23pm it’s over! 5h19 of race, I walked sometimes but never stop except for eating or drinking at the stations.

After the race

4:50pm I continue walking a few km to find network, catch a Uber, direction a beer in SF.

A mixed experienced about that race as I wasn’t really trained for a trail. But running all winter in Montreal I was trained to run on not flat surfaces. Not sure I will sign up again for a trail.

Map of the race

Using folium I managed to overlay the gps run traces on the top of a map, and you can interactively zoom in and out.