Running The Tightrope

Connecting with the mountains from an urban landscape

By Stio

The morning run is always worth it. But you never remember that when the alarm goes off at 5:15am.

We arrived at this ungodly wakeup time through an intricate accounting the night before with my friend. He has a 9:30am meeting; working backwards, it takes him 10 minutes to shower at work before the meeting. 30 minutes to get back into the city. The run should take no longer than three hours. With no traffic in the city or on the Golden Gate Bridge before dawn, it’s 30 minutes to get to the trailhead, including picking him up from home. 15 minutes for me to get ready in the morning. 20 minutes of buffer time, in case anything in this lockstep plan goes wrong.

I should really wake up at 5am, but we compromised the buffer to allow for another 15 minutes of sleep. So at 5:15am I groggily fetch the car and drive through the quiet city, still half asleep. The streets are empty in that way where traffic lights become pointless sentinels, blinking their steady, silent rhythm in the streetlights. We whisk across the Golden Gate Bridge, entirely enveloped in fog, and find ourselves at the Coastal trailhead in the Marin Headlands.

That first hill is always a rude awakening, but one of the magical things about running uphill by headlamp is you can’t see the top of the hill, so you can’t see how much you’ve got left to go. Freed from the ability to form an expectation, you can, instead, just focus on the twenty feet illuminated in front of you. Let the trail take you where it will go, twenty feet at a time.

Slowly, a twinge of light appears above the East Bay hills, creeping slowly across the sky, a persistent yet distant presence, like a far away foghorn. It’s still too dark to see anything, but the heaviness of the night sky begins to lift. We’re past the first hill now, cruising down the steep, rutted trail that leads to the Conzelman roundabout. If you came here on, say, a Saturday afternoon, you’d find a line of cars trying to squeeze into the small parking lot, a queue for the single pit toilet bathroom. This early in the morning, there are no people, no cars; if you are lucky, just the occasional bobcat slinking away from the beam of your headlamp. It’s silent in the hills now. At the cusp of dawn, even in the crickets fall quiet.

By the time we reach Tennessee Valley, it’s bright enough to turn off our headlamps. A popular trailhead even on weekdays, there’s a few cars parked this morning; evidently, we’re not the only folks determined enough to go running before dawn. We decide to go see the ocean, so we cruise down the trail to Tennessee Beach. This may be the most popular trail in the Headlands, and this morning we see one other person: an older gentleman walking alone, shuffling along slowly with determination. We say hi cheerfully; he nods kindly, looking slightly overwhelmed. I’ve never heard him speak, but every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, I see him on this trail, always in his red jacket, without fail.

The waves on the beach are the loudest sound we’ve heard in hours. Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep, or just the dream-like experience of running at dawn, but I feel a sudden urge to touch the ocean. As I bend down, the damp, brackish, cold water, shakes me out of my stupor. Running shoes have this way of insulating you from your surroundings – the layers of foam muzzle the tactile quality of the trail, but the coldness of the ocean water on my gloveless hand has a sharpness that brings you back into the present, into your body. I straighten up. The soft light of dawn, glowing pink, hovers above the horizon, the incessant crashing waves, my friend, and I.

This is the magic of running in the Headlands at dawn. It is absurd to play this logistical tightrope game so early in the morning, where one misstep means you’re embarrassingly late to work. Without leaving the city limits of San Francisco, we could have run its famous, steep hills, and rediscovered its hundreds of micro-parks, hidden away like gems under a blanket of fog. But alone – or, in this case, with a dear friend – in the stillness of the Headlands, you can find a sense similar to being in the mountains. A sense of settling into the slow rhythms of nature, of serendipity, and freedom to explore. I’m lucky to get this sense a few times a year on those long weekend backcountry trips. To touch that feeling, ever so fleetingly, before work – it’s worth the 5:15am wakeup.

I drop my friend off at his work at 9:23am – in a morning metered out by the minute, seven extra minutes is a luxurious blessing. As I struggle through the hustle and bustle of the morning commute, traffic lights now stern guardians of order, there is a quietness inside, something secret and untouchable. It insulates against the stresses of our hectic, modern lives, because whatever happens today, I know I’ve touched the mountains this morning.