Sometimes wretched excess is its own reward.

ear Editor, [ince my surprise when I found the inaugural issue of Marathon & Beneath in my mailbox today. I especially liked the Short Clinic column “Is a Cool-Down Really Necessary?” and Marc Walker’s article on the history of brief races.

For too long the footraces of foolish length have captivated runners. It is about time that races of shorter distance get their due. I’m talking anything under 26.2 miles and as low as you want to go. Last weekend I participated in the Crazee Burger 10-Yard. I’m not sure where I placed. It ended rather quickly, and the timing-chip system was not prepared for the deluge.

Don’t get me wrong. Marathons are fine; I’ve done a few myself. But really, let’s start talking about other distances.

Sincerely, Phil Dawdles

My first race ever was a marathon. Future historians might argue that my participation in four track meets during my eighth-grade year should count as my first, but all I really did was suck in the dust kicked up by those in front of me, and those in front of me included everyone else in the races: dead last every time. I kid you not.

The only reason I ran the 880 was that I couldn’t lift the shot. I had no upperbody strength, so the coach suggested running track—perhaps just to get rid of me. I had never been a runner and wouldn’t try again after that spring, at least until 23 years had passed.

So I started big, the marathon and only the marathon, from 1999 to 2003, sometimes more than one a year. For the three years after that, marathons accounted for about half of my races, and over the last couple of years shorter races have

taken precedence. The dabbling in shorter races is to be encouraged, I believe. I have found that it makes up for a lack of differentiation in my training (not that I really participate in any real form of training).

In April 2009 I ran a one-mile race with my daughter Kelsey and her friend Randi. The girls were both excellent high school field hockey players but didn’t have a lot of interest in running. They were more interested in helping raise money for a Zimbabwe-orphan fund the race sponsored.

The race didn’t officially start until after noon, and younger kids got to run in grade-level groups—every 15 minutes or so, a new race. We three were scheduled for the high school and post-high school group—the last to run—at 3:30.

It was a fairly warm spring day with little shade to find on the elementary school campus where the race was held. Kelsey and Randi sat on the pavement in the small shadow stretching out from a basketball backboard while I investigated the course. It was two loops of the field, with an out-and-back through the school driveway. The fifth- through eighth-graders that we saw were finishing as fast as 5:30.

When our race began I started too quickly. As a famous marathon runner (cough, cough), | felt Lhad this one in the bag, yet halfway through the first loop I considered walking. I had not hydrated nearly enough, given the time and heat of the day, and the air was full of dirt and grass motes. I seemed to be choking on my swollen tongue. I slowed my pace and kept running, finishing over the uneven grass in 7:26.

The girls were somewhere behind me, happy to not come in last.

Amateur mile runners competing in their primary (and preferred) sport of field hockey. Kelsey (#5) and teammate Randi battle for possession of the ball on their way to another Del Mar High School victory.

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Lessons learned

As the shortest race I have run since 1976, this mile-long event taught me the same things I have learned at 5Ks, 10Ks, and half-marathons. Pace and preparation are key. Each race is different and must be approached seriously. You can stumble, physically and psychologically, at any distance, even the fictitious Crazee Burger 10-Yard, held on the 35th of Never, in a small town you can’t find on any map.

The one-miler was my fifth race of the year, including one marathon. My running activities had changed, and perhaps not intentionally. It might have been the general lethargy of age, or just a loss of focus, and though there was not a year since 1999 without at least one marathon—and 31 of them over all, for goodness’ sake!—I began to feel like a faker.

So I sought change, and June 09 would be my beachhead. Not only would I attack the marathon world, but I would go beyond.

On the first weekend of the month, June 6 and 7, competed in the San Francisco Night and Day Challenge (www.nightanddaychallenge.com), an urban rogaine if you know what that is, or a scavenger hunt if you don’t. It is a form of orienteering, if that makes it any clearer. It is a spectacular event, with awards five deep in more categories than you can count, virtually guaranteeing me a ribbon.

Kurtis Kalivoda, a younger and faster friend, joined me for the second year in arow at the Night and Day. In 2007 I had competed in the event with my brother, Scott. This year, Kurtis and I had something to prove since our team—Reality Czech—had never quite lived up to expectations.

The Night and Day is a race on many levels. Folks compete in three-, seven-, and 16-hour events. The longer two can be completed entirely on foot or bike or in the biathlon division with the time split in half for either mode of transportation. Additionally, teams are denoted as men, women, mixed, veteran, family, or corporate.

It seems everyone can place in the top five of one group or another, but I have always done the 16-hour race. I don’t know if those returning after three hours have more competition than we do, but it turns out not many people want to run around San Francisco all night long, unless they are competing in a pub crawl.

Since elapsed time is not used to separate the winners from the, uh, nonwinners, teams use a map to identify and reach different checkpoints throughout the city. At each checkpoint, participants find the answer to a multiple-choice question; turning in the correct answer earns the team the checkpoint number in points, rounded down.

For example, checkpoint #33:

What words are etched in the glass in the middle of the bridge? a. Hush puppies. b. Pig feet in vinegar. c. Too many black beans.

Thirty points for the correct answer and minus 30 for choosing one of the other two—guessing is fiercely discouraged. If the reader wants to know the answer to this question, simply visit the Fillmore Street overcrossing at Geary Boulevard; that’s where we found it at 10:16 p.m. that Saturday night.

Marathoners, especially new ones, love to set a series of goals. It makes the experience enjoyable no matter what happens. The first goal might be just to finish, the second could be a specific time, and the third is always “to qualify for Boston.” That’s in the Marathon Runners’ Bylaws and Commandments, 2″ Edition.

The same goes for nonstandard races. My multiple goals for San Francisco were: beat the previous two years in points, stay on the course all 16 hours, and reach at least 40 miles in distance (measured by the handy-dandy GPS on my wrist). The last goal would be important for the second event in this month of foolishness.

The Night and Day begins at 4:00 p.m. at a small playground in the area of Noe Valley, with plenty of time before departure to map out our potential journey. Competitors are allowed to make changes midrace, but if the organizers have at least a tentative plan for each group, there is a phony sense of safety.

Yet another tour of the city

Our plan this year was basically to run a counterclockwise circle through the city, shooting off occasionally to nab one of the 60 available checkpoints. This was the opposite direction from the past two years, chosen so that we could see different parts of San Francisco during daylight as well as during the long hours of darkness. It was also a psychological change; we wanted to shake off the doldrums of fading badly in the early-morning hours.

We made several improvements in our game plan this year, based on what Kurtis and Scott and I had learned over the past two years. We would share a single backpack rather than run with one each, stuffed with too many clothes and other nonessentials. We would make wise use of convenience stores, gasoline station minimarts, and coffee shops, drinking early and often, instead of loading ourselves down with quarts of water. Also, last year we carried far too much food, as though we feared starving to death before 8:00 a.m.

At four o’clock we started fast and furious, reaching the first few checkpoints at 4:03, 4:14, and 4:30. At this rate I calculated we would reach all 60 potential stops in just 10 short hours, a foolish prognostication, given the eventual slowdown and those dark and dreary midnight hours where the distance between stops seems interminable. Despite the fact that this was my third visit, | was deluding myself earlier than usual.

Northeast through the Mission District, we visited two murals before turning north along the wharfs and passing the baseball stadium. There were other teams

<4 Checkpoint destinations in the Night and Day Challenge might be a fire hydrant, a plaque on the wall of a school, or a park bench. Outside the Norwegian Seaman’s Church at the corner of Francisco and Hyde streets? Pretty sure it must be this big anchor.

in the vicinity, but given the nature of our self-selected routes and the earlier finishes for most of the groups, we would see fewer challengers as the hours ticked by.

We toured the Financial District, North Beach (also known as Little Italy), and Chinatown, and we also encountered the stairs that lead to Coit Tower. This was to be our most time-consuming and tiring hunt, as we traveled between

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Sansome and Montgomery streets, looking for a parking meter at the northeast corner of a wooden platform. The description even included “8 meters north of foot of stairs.”

Up the stairs we went, quickly, because a team of cyclists was there, too. At the top of 300 or so concrete steps, we found no parking meters, despite an extensive search. We headed back down to contemplate the meaning of “foot of stairs.” That meant the bottom, right? The other team was having no more success and told us they were going to complain to the organizers about this particular stop. Kurtis and I were unbowed. There were parking meters at the lower area, but none matched the meter number we were looking for.

Our next destination was in the same direction as the stairs, so we set off a second time. We were slower—due to exhaustion, not because we were trying to be more methodical—and about halfway up we noticed a short path off to the right of the stairs, well hidden by bushes. Eight meters in (eight meters, as described!) we could just see a wooden platform. Pushing through the foliage we found a nice resting area, complete with a bench and a parking meter as some sort of surprise decoration. Certainly no vehicles were going to park there. And the number matched choice C on our answer sheet.

It had been 40 minutes since our last checkpoint. We were definitely slowing down.

We traveled through the Marina and found two checkpoints on the coast just as the sun was setting, then the Western Addition, and onto Golden Gate Park, where we happened upon an enormous windmill. It was after midnight, the grass was

A The morning after running around for 16 hours. The author (left) and Kurtis Kalivoda rest outside the Douglass Clubhouse and Playground in the Noe Valley area of San Francisco. Consciousness cannot be assumed just because their eyes are open.

wet, the shadows were long, and the silence was eerie. As soon as we determined that the windmill restoration was completed in 1981, we skedaddled.

In the Sunset District we counted park benches at one location, studied a sculpture at a police station at another, and stumbled around Vicente Park for too long due to some inexpert map reading. Farther south we even ventured into Daly City, where we began the long slog northeast to the finish line—bagels, chili, coffee, juice, and other things I did not eat and was too tired to recognize. It was the best breakfast I had ever eaten.

We did get back a little before the cutoff time, though not as early as in previous years. In the final analysis, we got first place again in the men/foot division. (Yes, first of one; what’s your point?) However, among all 16-hour foot teams we came in third of four, a vast improvement over our perennial last place, like those 880s in the years of my youth.

Third goal? Not quite

According to the GPS, we achieved 40.27 miles, neatly reaching my third goal. The reason I had hoped for 40 miles in San Francisco was that just six and a half days later, on June 13, I was signed up for what would turn out to be the craziest race of my life: the Lake Merritt Half-Day (www.pctrailruns.com).

This event, as it sounds, is a 12-hour race around a lake—about a 5K circuit. Run until you stop, or when time is called, whichever comes first. It put me in mind

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of the old “go as you please” races, well chronicled in past issues of Marathon & Beyond. Thad three goals this time: don’t make a fool of myself, keep moving all 12 hours, and hit 60 miles. The last one was important for the third event in this month of foolishness.

As measured by the race organizers, the loop around the lake was 3.166 miles, in and around its odd shape. One runner’s spouse told my wife, Kristin, the lake was shaped like fallopian tubes; I can’t confirm or deny that. To me it was reminiscent of a cow’s skull left out to bleach in the hot desert sun for 20 years. The start/finish was a wide-open area on the northern edge of the lake, between the two horns of that cow. There were plenty of benches and shade and room to collapse without blocking other runners who weren’t stopping for a break.

A right turn just after the start led to the worst part of the course, a couple of hundred yards of pavement that were in no better shape than if they had been strafed in World War II and never repaired. Fortunately that stretch ended fairly quickly, and we were soon navigating one of the horns.

Running counterclockwise resulted in mostly left turns. At the tip of the horn we were near the intersection of Harrison Street and Grand Avenue and a recently constructed cathedral that dominated the corner. Even secular folks would be awestruck by its nonlinear design and the reflected light from over 1,000 large glass panels. I never stopped to stare, but it certainly did slow my steps on a few laps. Or maybe it was exhaustion.

As Harrison turned to Lakeside Drive, we ran alongside a narrow parkway for a while, away from traffic and with a few neighborhood folks out for a walk or a skate or some dog exercise. It was not crowded and the sky was nicely overcast. Temperatures were down from the expected high for this time of year, and nothing could be more welcome to a bunch of ultramarathoners than dissipated heat. After a few minutes we joined a newly

<@ The short but rocky and root-strewn downhill finish for each lap around Lake Merritt—just dangerous enough to keep the runners mentally alert.

cemented walkway near the local marina before running between various cordons and concrete blockades—construction not yet complete.

At the far end of the lake there was a bit of a beach, though that might be a generous description. It was sandy, but dirty, and without a single human specimen anywhere nearby. Given the number of people I saw around and about, clearly this end of Lake Merritt was not where families went to enjoy a little surf and turf. The only occupant I saw was a fellow lying sound asleep at one of the access stairways, his shopping basket partially blocking him from view and his pants dropped just below the curve of his buttocks. I left him to his slumber.

The promised aid station

Other than the start/finish, there was one aid station just a bit beyond the midpoint of the course. Three steps led to the platform where very friendly folks were ready to dispense with food and drink and positive words of encouragement. I bounded up the steps on the first half-dozen circuits. After that I kind of dragged myself up.

For my first four laps, at nearly 30-minute intervals, I found Kristin waiting patiently where I had left her. She cheered me on and then quickly returned to her conversations with other supporters. I never stayed to chat, other than to grab a drink or a smile, and so she occupied herself as any friendly person would. Then she went back home to parent our three teenagers. When she returned that evening she was alone again, the teens all having seen enough of their dad’s running foolishness in the past.

Before Kristin came back to witness the spectacular conclusion, I had accidentally kicked a pigeon when it didn’t move fast enough (don’t tell Aimee, Kurtis’s animal-loving wife), I had stepped over a veritable ton of goose guano (in oneounce increments), and I had high-fived a number of toddlers and explained at least twice to unbelieving adults that I was running around the lake for 12 hours.

“What’s the point?” one woman asked me. I had no answer.

Several pedestrians on the path carried bags full of produce, evidence of a possible farmers’ market in the area. Others were carrying groceries, a bag or two at a time, a benefit of downtown living when adequate shopping facilities are nearby. Most were using earth-friendly cloth bags, touted more often nowadays as the correct answer to the paper-or-plastic question.

One fellow was using plastic bags and might have fallen victim to any roving band of environmentalists if not for the large smiley-face balloon that trailed from his right hand. He was too cheerful to pummel with facts concerning the half-life of plastics.

Around and around I went, occasionally passing a competitor but more often being passed myself. Competition thinned when the six-hour racers left the course

<4 Proper foot care is paramount in a 12-hour race. The author slathers on some antifriction lotion after four laps and briefly wonders if the best foot care of all would be to throw in the towel and drive home.

and so I was left with common citizens. Yet many of them I saw repeatedly, so they must have been out for more than just a friendly jog, further proof of my theory that marathons and even ultras are within reach of folks who generally wouldn’t believe themselves capable.

Around and around I went—the same views, the same turns, the same bumps and roots and low branches to avoid, to a mind-numbing repetitiveness. My lap times slowly increased from 30 to 35 to 40 minutes. Other than friendly banter at the two aid stations, I barely spoke.

Kristin returned while I was out enjoying lap 14. Enjoying it? Well, that might be a stretch. When I found her at the start I was sufficiently winded that I encouraged her to do lap 15 with me. At the very least I could slow down to her pace.

“T won’t be able to run much,” she said.

“Neither will I,” I croaked.

She enjoyed seeing the course where I had spent my day and marveled along with me how beautiful it was in the middle of downtown Oakland. I guess the city has its share of problems, but on this Saturday, at this place, you never would have known it. I deposited Kristin back at the start and left for one last big lap.

The rules stated that at our first arrival to the start/finish at or after 6:00 p.M., we would be redirected to a smaller loop of 0.713 miles. This would ensure that we weren’t miles away at the moment the race came to an end. The Fairyland Loop, so known because we ran around Fairyland—an Oakland amusement park for children that was built in 1950—was shady and quiet. The park had closed an hour before we started our miniloops, probably a good thing, lest we spend the last hour tripping over exiting urchins.

Lusting for Fairyland

As I tapped my stopwatch after lap 16 at 6:10, I told the race organizer that I had no intention of going back out for a full loop again and that he probably wouldn’t let me, anyway.

“That last one took you 44 minutes,” he said. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

If [had left again for the 5K distance, I might have just barely made it back in time, and I might have dropped to my knees halfway around and cried myself to sleep, losing valuable mileage. Plus, I didn’t want to miss Fairyland. I told him of my intention to switch to the shorter loop, hoping to complete its circuit at least a few times. If I stopped much before 7:00 p.M., that would be all right.

Each time I came around Fairyland, Kristin was again engaged in joyful conversation with other supportive friends and family members and a few runners who never made it around the short loop, opting to call it quits after their last big loop. I would grab a quick drink and startle Kristin with a hearty “Hello!” before running off to the terrible asphalt. Around and around I went in those last 50 minutes, five times in all, enabling me to just barely pass two other runners in total distance. Despite my lack of experience—only one other ultra thus far in my life—I placed 16th out of 36, with 54.2 miles. It was not quite the 60 miles I had aimed for, in preparation for the next foolish event, but enough to satisfy me.

Two weeks after Lake Merritt, still in the month of June, I was considering a homemade event: the Run to Oakley, also known as the Run to My Brother’s House. In April 2006 I had attempted it for the first time. The problem then was I started on a Friday, after teaching kindergarten all day, and sporadic drizzles were