...the east bay seis...
“I could never resist the call of the trail.”
-Buffalo Bill-
It was 33 minutes into running up the second scraggly cracker dusted hill of an impromptu marathon when my friend, named after a letter, informed me that the first marathon ever ran was through the entirety of Athens. It ended with the marathon runner delivering a message of “We Have Won!” as a warning that the Persian army was returning for war. After delivering the message that runner collapsed and died. 21 hills and 284 minutes later, after attempting a similarly distanced feat, I am alive to give you my message.
“What Have I Done!?!”
The East Bay Regional Park District is the largest urban regional park district in the United States. With 73 parks and over 1,330 miles of trail, you can hike or run from the delta of the Sacramento valley to the peaks of the Ohlone wilderness stretching sky pose in the backyard of San Jose. In 2020 I made a deal with Covid to try every trail in the park system. 2-3 hikes a day helped buffer the madnesses and joys of lockdown life.
During the day I alternated dreams of toilet paper purchases with a checklist to-do of trails named Dunn, Graham and Golden Spike. Doing is the distractive enemy of anxiety, and by advancing these trails I systematically shed shells of self that held fears finagled across decades of dreams. I had always told myself that someday I would hike all these trails and all it took to do so was a global epidemic.
I completed my mission as the spring of 2021 brushed wildflowers onto the walls of the bay. My achievement was a puffy nothing, a final one mile in and out trail on a cow covered mud road in Concord CA. I celebrated by giving my dogs water and some light ear scratches. Completing a goal brings the gift of more goals, and one of the discoveries I made while exploring the parks was that most of them connected through the oak rooted veins of the trail system. You could hike a trail in one park and theoretically end six park lengths away. A hike of that distance might take days though, which is why I decided that my next goal would be a single day run through these connecting portals.
It is called the East Bay Seis. Starting at the marina at Lake Chabot and threading through parks named Redwood, Huckleberry and Tilden, the Seis would offer me the opportunity to run a marathon without distractions like sponsored sashes, well placed water cups and sandwich stations.
In 2018 I had decided to run only one of four legs of a marathon in Chisinau, Moldova. I was considering doing all four legs of the loop but three miles into the race I saw a sixteen year old shit themself on the street. The power of that stench, and her perseverance to continue, inspired me to stop and run instead alone along the stray puppy sidewalks of the city’s garbage caked creek.
The goal for the Seis to be successful was simple. Attempt a marathon run from one the the East Bay parks through other East Bay parks and end at another East Bay park. Complicated tasks become simple when you break them into smaller pieces. This run could be six parks, twenty one hills, fourteen trails, hundreds of minutes, thousands of trees, or millions of pebbles pending what I wanted to count along the journey.
After the first ascent of the day, a paved incline aside a handful of dying eucalyptus peeling skin on Chabot’s lakeshore, I decided hills would be my guiding count. I let my running mate know that this was hill number one of what I was guessing might be a couple dozen more. The air was forty degrees of chilled autumnal exhale. I had saddled myself with an ass pack of salt packets, goos and gums that I felt clop-clop to my crack on each stride of the run, an all day pat-patting to let me know “hey kid, good job, keep it up”.
The sun squinted through the branches of burnt yellow leaves hovering above the wavy paved curves of our runs start. And in all that beauty all I could think about was the end. I was less than ten minutes into this untimed timeless task and already the minutes had become miles. The key to success in an assumed to be painful endeavor is to endeavor that it is anything but that. I knew this run would be difficult so I told myself it would be easy. I knew this run would hurt so I told myself I don’t feel pain.
After our first water break we bobble footed a thousand foot climb to the peak of park one. Ninety minutes had passed and we had already gone from joking about extending the run to a seven park siete, down to a two park dos. I paused and took a picture. Admiring golden green tree tops The Beach Boys sang to my consciousness back to a trot. I galloped deeper into the woods.
As we crossed a creek into the second park I told myself more lies. I am the earth, I said. I am the trees and the leaves and the hills I run upon. A bug bit me and the whispery scratches of trail bush upon my legs brought me deeper into the woods. We passed horses crapping dog snacks at the start of hill number five, a tight half mile ladder named the Tate trail. I started singing to the trail more lies. “Tate is great. Tate is great. I can’t wait Tate. You are my fate, Tate.” The melody was mush and both trail and I were happy when the song ended.
The flatter sections of our run gave my feet a chance to breathe. My toes untied had found relaxation between the crunch of elevation gains. I was running in a pair of orange grey sneakers purposely hiked over one hundred and fifty miles of the same trail, broken in to avoid blisters. At this point of the run my senses forgot about all the gear it took to be here. My ass sack’s pat-pat had become cloud cover. My lie was I was the sky now. I was naked on the trail, man became marathon, marathon became man.
In the film version of this story, a 1970’s action thriller titled “Marathon Man” starring Dustin Hoffman and Roy Scheider, a nazi doctor asks in repeat “Is it safe? Is it safe?”. I thought of the movie title and the doctor and instead asked myself “Will I chafe? Will I chafe?”
The fall falls well along these East Bay trails. Everything looks like leaves to me as we enter the shaded mouth of park three. I want to feel like a dirt bike, a tire chewing sandy chalk. I concentrate on the tree root cavities spiking through the winding forest maw. My pace is plod. I’ve taken to naming the hills now. This hill is named Jill and I won’t go tumbling down Jack. The next hill is named Lauryn and I will Doo Wop this thing. If there is a final hill I will name it Benny and play yakety sax upon it.
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
-John Muir-
I’m in a park called Huckleberry and decided to mock it for energy. I call the park Chuckleberry. I call it Fuckleberry. My knees buckleberry and I use these brief bursts of yuks and merry to move me further up the paths.
The trees have begun to grow faces and names. I meet a redwood named Randy, and Oaks named Harriet and Henry. I greet Ortho and Fingus, two ancient trunks that tell me jokes that crows caw. “Did you know that before crowbars were invented that crows mostly drank alone?” I fuckle a feathery laugh.
Would people be interested in a comedy hike I ask myself? Stand-up comics performing jokes on paths with 2 drink minimums? They could roast marshmallows and trail names. Multi-tasking exercise and entertainment seems an enterprising market solution for brains waned by technovation to tik tok the hours off of the clock.
I become distracted by a shrub named Suebert that starts singing disco. “I’m a steppenwolf'' she howls in bassy tones of masculine mirth. “I am no longer running a marathon. I am running a manathon.” I say to myself.
The stupidity had set in a few miles back.
I am at the top of hill number 16, a hill named Will, when I decide to become a ghostwriter. I will write one book and call it Boo. It will be one page long and be made of just one word. Boo. I wonder how in a world filled with tens of thousands of ghostwriters, why we don’t have more vampire, werewolf and witch writers as well. I know now that we have A.I., we will see a steady increase of zombie writers.
I’ve made it to hill eighteen and park number five. I have consumed 2 gel packets, 3 hydration salt pours, six gummy goo squares and two peanut butter chocolate cookies. I put on a podcast about a movie named Napoleon and listen to three film lovers lament the directorial misses an 85 year old British filmmaker named Ridley Scott made while committing two hundred million dollars to recreating century old wars. I wonder why a mom would name her son Ridley. And then I wonder why my mom didn’t name me Dudley. And then I pretend my mom’s name is Middley. I don’t know diddley.
We spend so much money on war. The richest and most “productive” thirst for machines filled with blood. Napoleon apparently gifted the cannonball that killed his horse to his brother. I am at war with myself. I was a kid once and my war was G.I. Joes. I am a kid again and my war might be A.I. Bros. I am mad because I want to live without war. Maybe not mad, just daffy. A real daffy fuck.
As I finish hill twenty and turn into park six I consider if I am ready for replication. Would I ever want to do this run again? I think that another run of similar size, but with different stories would suit me better. I think I need a west bay uno.
The run ends with the rounded whistle of a toddler carrying steam train that lives atop one of the peaks of Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley. I hear Wilco singing Choo Choo Charly on a song called Monday and think that this was a fine way to spend a portion of my Saturday. The lyrics say “I only want to wonder why when I don't die.” I am no more alive than when I left this morning, but I’m no more dead either.
We have made it twenty two miles, six parks and twenty one hills deep and decide to run a cursory loop to close this leg and the Seis. I call in our chariot gift to take us to pizza and the hopped foamy riches of hazy IPA poured in a warehouse called GhostTown. I DJ’d here just sixteen hours ago, spinning funk and disco through the buzz of barely grounded cables while considering whether or not to eat a cheeseburger the night before an impromptu marathon. The internet said drink pasta. My friends said to eat water. My mind said one pilsner, two handfuls of gummy bears, and enough rest to pack an ass sack worthy of pat-patting me on the trail.
I took a shower and then ran 3.7 more miles to meet my friend for espresso at another pub serving blanco tequila sixty four streets away from the house I rent. My legs yell at me as I lay them on the shoulders of my sleeping vizsla hound mutt.
I passed a piano holding old sneakers and stove top stuffing. Broken bananas slept next to squashed squashes under a freeway tunnel. I drank a god’s amount of celebration and watched the Lakers jump up and down a bunch. Meanwhile my wife and her friend practiced ribald in the kitchen of our home, making Thanksgiving two days late just in time for my tired grimace to come back with bad jokes I can’t remember. I forget which hill I am on now or which trail I am running. I am the earth and trees and the trail. I am lying [on a couch].
I made it through six parks so I can make it to six thousand more. I haven’t made it to Athens, but I’ll keep trying.
“We Have Won!” said the Greek messenger Pheidippides in the dying last breaths of his first marathon run. “What Have I Done!?!” I say as I eat two chimichurri topped slices of pizza in West Oakland.
And while history says this all may be myth, I am certain I ran the East Bay Seis. But unless you try running it yourself, how can you be sure that any of this is true? Here is the trail map again in case you want to give it a go.
“Will you chafe?” I ask you. “Will you chafe?”
"Doing is the distractive enemy of anxiety, and by advancing these trails I systematically shed shells of self that held fears finagled across decades of dreams"
So many excellent bits to this article, much more fun to read than to run. I am so impressed by you, Sasquatch in an A's cap, can't wait to see what the next goal brings.
Okay, well, THIS was an experience too.
I have no idea what this stuff is, but I do wonder how one survives on such a meal
"I have consumed 2 gel packets, 3 hydration salt pours, six gummy goo squares..."
And this is simply good strategy, noted:
"I knew this run would be difficult so I told myself it would be easy. I knew this run would hurt so I told myself I don’t feel pain."