When @Lululemon and @Strava get together, it’s usually pretty epic. Remember the last challenge where you ran XX number of miles and got a little something for your achievements?!? Yeah, I remember it vividly because I missed out on it. Luckily Paula was able to participate and loves her “prize” and wears it often.

Well, they did it again and it’s called The Ghost Race. Throughout cities in the U.S. and Canada, routes have been mapped out as courses for the ghost race. The Ghost Race is taking place from October 13-22. It’s about an 8k for each course, which for my metric adverse folks, is 4.97 miles. You begin by registering on theghostrace.com and joining the Strava club and you’re all set! You run the course, make sure that run is recorded in Strava and that’s pretty much it.

In the lovely Bay Area of my home state of California, we are lucky enough to have 4 cities to choose from. The folks at Lululemon, especially @LululemonSF, decided to throw out a challenge of completing all four courses. This is where the wacky, crazy, hijinks come in. I text my boy Brian, @pavementrunner - on a Friday night because what else would dads of multiple kids be doing on a Friday night? - to ask him if he would be down to tackle a couple of the routes in the Bay Area. Remember, there are 4, in diff. cities which are pretty spread out.

Now if you’ve followed us for any amount of time, you know we’re not ones to shy away from running challenges, especially ones that involve multiple races in the same day, different states, etc. So, guess what happened? Yup! All 4 cities in one day. Why. The. Hell. Not. 😜🤣 The folks at Lululemon have deemed this “BRIDGE THE BAY.” Only we’re doing it all in one day.

So after quick planning, mapping and texting, we virtually shake hands on completing this crazy, hopefully, more fun than painful, challenge. We decided to use Instagram Stories to document the day so if you followed along this past Sunday, we hope you enjoyed some of the sights (and sounds) of the adventure.

We started out in Walnut Creek, a lovely city in the East Bay (our previous home), at the butt crack of dawn. It was cold and dark but we were prepared with trusty headlamps. The routes are mainly out and backs and this one led us along the Iron Horse Trail. It was eerily quiet and Brian casually made a joke about a mountain lion that I freakin' couldn't get out of my head the entire time we were out there. Yeah, thanks, Bro!

Oh and did I tell you that we brought different outfits to change into for each of the 4 cities? Nuts. Completely bananas but that was the best part about scheming this whole thing out.

The run wasn't that bad and it was over before we knew it. We obviously didn't rush since we knew we had a long day ahead of us and about 15 more miles to go. We changed into outfit number 2 before jumping in the car and driving to the next city, San Jose. But first, Dunkin!

We arrived in San Jose and the sun was up and shining bright. We took a bit of time eating parts of our energy bars, pb&j sandwiches, etc. Then we set off. If I had to pick a favorite course of the 4, it would have to be this one. We ran along a shared paved path with tons of runners and bikers. It reminded me of the parkway we have out here in Sacramento.

We kept posting to social at the completion of each course. Again, we changed, set the map on the GPS, hopped in the car and drove. This was probably the longest drive of the day. We made good time into the City and surprisingly found an awesome parking spot near the start of the 3rd course.

We found the start and I kept remarking how beautiful the day was in San Francisco. If you're not aware, September and October are San Francisco's summer months. It even got pretty warm out there along the marina. If you've run The San Francisco Marathon before, you'll be familiar with this route as it follows pretty much the same path and turns you around back to the start.

No fun. No fun AT ALL. Pumpkins at Ghirardelli Square, No @Karlthefog in sight and we even saw friends along the marina! We talked the entire time about doing this again next year and we totally fell off the rails. We see you, #THEGHOSTRACE 2018, we see you!

15 miles down and to be honest, we were really feeling it. Getting in and out of the car, driving for long stretches, and maybe knowing that we had 5 more miles to go made that 3rd course hard to swallow.

We changed again, and set off for the last course to finish off and "BRIDGE THE BAY."

The car ride wasn't that bad from SF to Marin. Oh to be a fly on the window of the car on this day....

I didn't know what to expect for the last course and that was a good thing. You see, i've never really run on trails before and little did I know, I was about to get a crash course in trail running 101.

It was very pretty up on that hill and when Brian showed me where we'd be running and ending up at, I was a bit nervous. I was motivated only by food, the imaginary "finish line" and the sheer joy of completing another crazy running challenge.

We found the starting point of the loop course which took us along the Miwok Trail. Right off the bat we started climbing and walking. It was breezy and warm. As we ascended we decided that we would try to run along the somewhat flatter portions of the course and the downhills. This was just so we wouldn't take more than the time we allotted ourselves to complete the loop.

Screen Shot 2017-10-20 at 1.25.44 AM.png

The views on this last course were AMAZING! I was hurting, yes, but i kept going up because I wanted to see more. The Sutro tower, the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, the freakin' Pacific Ocean?!? Man, it was so worth the climb. I got schooled on running trails and had a blast.

We were so happy to be finished, still standing and with smiles on our faces. Hey, guess what? I didn't die! If you click on the pic of Brian above, one wrong move, and you're taking the hard(er) way down the mountain. Yikes!

I must say the 20 miles was daunting back when we were scheming about this whole crazy adventure but chunking it up in 5 mile bites, wasn't so bad. Was it tough, hell yes. Yet it turned out to be very rewarding as well. I spent a good part of a day, with a really good friend, doing what we both love. Thanks LululemonSF and Strava for putting on yet another fun challenge.

Home

#theghostrace BRIDGE THE BAY Recap

FitFam6

Check these out: