San Francisco Night and Day Challenge ­ 2006
HillBusters, 7 hour foot:

When Zachi talked me into this event, I did not know what to expect.
Last year he ran it with Jim - 2400 points, 16 hours, 53 miles. Gee,
that's not for me. I never ran any ultras before. A marathon look
long enough to me. However I would take almost any opportunity to run
in SF, short or long. He hit right on a soft point. So what could go
wrong running with Zachi in SF ? right, I never ran more than a
marathon before, nor I ran more than 5 hours on the same day. But
these are only technical details. Moreover, Zachi is the one who
talked me into marathons, so why not N&D ?

The week before N&D I was sick. A cold/flu, something involved
with wet eyes, coughing, fever and congestion. It was no fun, but I
was determined to get better and not to let it stop us. On Friday I
did feel better and decided to run.

The first few hours passed by very quickly. We followed our planned
course, and were flying from point to point, pausing only to record
the time and circle the answer. It was fun to run Columbus, watching
all these people sitting at these little tables on the sidewalk,
eating great Italian meals, and raising their eye brows to the sight
of two strange-looking guys running in and out between the tables and
the parking cars with backpacks and maps. "What's all the rush, you
guys ?"

After 15 miles and three hours we arrived at checkpoint 106 on the
Golden Gate Bridge - one of my most favorite running locations in SF
! we stopped at the visitors center and I had a hot tea. It greatly
help me with my tough congestion. From there we continued along the
coast, past China Beach and the Legion of Honors, and to the GG park.
Well, we were not as fast as before, and it was near sunset time. A
guy who saw us running asked "how far do you run ? " we said "20
miles, so far". "No", he insisted, "I asked how FAR do you RUN". When
we took off he was still sure that we did not understand his
question.

At this point, with about two hours left, it was clear that we will
not be able to finish our original course. So we decided to cut out
several points. Our course was planned in such a way that allows easy
cuts towards the end - going in a banana shape in the middle of the
city and allowing to cut the banana short and turn back at any point.

Our average pace gradually dropped from 5.5 to 3.5 miles per hour. We
were still navigating pretty smoothly up to this point. But this was
all going to change soon.

We found that we stop much more often to look at the maps than
before. I would call it "map addicted", or just "tired". It was hard
to force ourselves NOT to look at the map, but this is exactly what
we did: "Ok, six more streets on the right; four quick ones, a long
gap and then two more quick ones - we will turn right on the sixth".
Sounds familiar, but then added " - and we do not open maps until
then" - that was new. Our judgement and confidence were not as good
as five hours ago, but if we want to make any progress we must trust
our senses.

The cramps started in the seventh hour. I stopped and took a couple
of electrolytes capsules.  We were still several miles from the
finish line, now heading pretty much straight home.  At this time,
going downhill from 53 and uphill to checkpoint 35 was no fun.
However the e-caps soon kicked in and I felt better. It was a bit
hard to find the wooden stairs shortcut to 35 in the dark, and even
more so to climb them. And what a surprise it was when we arrived at
the top and found a locked gate !!! Well, we must admit, this was not
the first locked gate on our way...  luckily this one was easy to
pass on the left.

Zooming back to the finish line we failed to find checkpoint 17 - it
was right on our way, however it was more important to be back on
time, so we left it and took Clipper street back. But - the junction
with Market did not look like our maps at all. Are we in the right
place ? Seems like there were some road changes here. We were also
surprised to go DOWN, wasn't the start point up there on some hill,
where we left from, almost seven hours ago ? as I said, our judgement
was not as great as before. Being unable to match the map with what
we see, we decided to let our feet do the thinking for us. We knew
that Clipper should eventually take us there, so let's just do it and
trust our senses. It would be very ironic to get lost just before the
finish line.

Overall, we ran 30 miles, visited 26 checkpoints (1310 points). Well,
we must have missed one of the answers, and lost 60 points. Our
original route had some 1600 points, thus. And we estimated it to be
just about a marathon long and 5.5 hours to complete. We were very
far off with this underestimate :-) but never the less, it was my
first ultra !! and a full 7 hours of thrill, going around in SF and
checking in points. It is the most memorable run I ever done !

I attach our GPS route (Garmin 305). This KMZ is a Google Earth file,
so you would need the application to be installed - but isn't GE such
a great way to spend lots of time ? :-) Just double-click the KMZ
file, and navigate around. I only started the GPS at our second
checkpoint, so the first mile is missing. I also forgot to press the
Lap button at a few checkpoints, but the course still goes through
them, only the lap marks are missing. Lap marks display distance and
time.

If you don't have time for all of that, here is also a map of our
course.

This was a fantastic event. We are looking forward for the next one.
Many thanks to Terry and Eric and all the dedicated volunteers !!!
And special thanks to the chilli cook  !!!  


Arnon and Zachi