I did the
San Francisco Night and Day solo, in the 7-hour division, as my prep run for the North American Rogaine Champs. I decided to load up on Mexican food in the early afternoon, and as I left the cantina, the #24 bus just left. And then, a few seconds after, another #24 left. I waited and I waited, for about 25 minutes; no #24. And so I decided to walk to the event center. And I did. Arriving there about 9 minutes after the start.
With everyone gone, I scrambled to register, pay, pack the map into a case, go to the bathroom... finally leaving the hash house 17:38 late. Instead of 1½ hours of pre-race route planning, ended up with none. Even before the start I had planned on going south, to see San Bruno Mountain where I had never been. (Turned out I haven't been missing much.)
I walked the way to my first checkpoint, my nose stuck into the map, planning the
checkpoint order. I went to Laguna Honda, then southern Sunset, along Skyline to Daly City, then SFSU, then San Bruno Mountain, across to McLaren, then CCSF, Glen Park, and finally did a loop around the Mission. There were more points to be had in the north of the city, but nothing that I hadn't seen before. Also, I get quite frustrated with urban orienteering and cars. Having to pay constant attention to traffic and to read the map at the same time bothers the crap out of me. There was much less traffic in the south of the city, and no crowds of tourists.
The only supplies I carried were 3 energy bars (2 more than necessary) and a credit card. I bought all I needed on the way: four Gatorades and a flashlight. The southern loop ended up being a lot of travel for not so many points. Mostly running. My last hour in the hoppin' Mission netted 200 points, compared to 960 for the preceding six hours. Because of this much-less-than-optimum choice, I got beaten by kswede, and by two 2-man teams: one headed by Zachi Baharav, and another one, by Nick Corsano.
I made 3 navigational mistakes, one resulting in being 27 seconds overtime; a really stupid one, racing hard to the finish to make the cutoff. There was a no-climb option that would have got me back on time, but I missed it, climbing an extrra 25 m within the last minute, HR going all the say to 182.
After the race, I helped Terry, Mikkel, and Lauren, then went home and crashed for a few hours, then went back on Sunday morning and helped them with the 16-hour category finish. After a night of hard racing, a duathlon (8 hours on foot, 8 hours on bike) team cleaned out the course, and another one got close. On foot, Wendell Doman and Greg Favor were only a few checkpoints short of a perfect score. Wendell and Greg are developing into formidable rogaining competitors! Some teams had interesting stories to tell about night travel in the city, especially about a sucker control near Candlestick. One team got stalked by a crazy guy, and some kids hurled verbal threats at cyclists. I wouldn't ever go to that part of town at night.
The length is a rough estimate. The climb is one less rough, but still straight from the Polar, needing adjustment.