2018 Day Bat Marathon

It's highly probably that more thought and preparation went into putting on the ~30 participant Day Bat Marathon than the majority of races across this country. Race Director Derek Cernak is a friend, but I feel like anyone who came to the event not having known him would be impressed with the amount of work he put into entertaining, challenging, and torturing a small group of people for several hours on a November Saturday. This is not your father's marathon. The best way I can describe it is one part trail race, one part ninja warrior competition, and one part scavenger hunt.

A Panorama of the Start/Finish Area

The start was at 10:00 a.m., right after Derek gave a detailed description of each of the 15 loops that left me more than a little confused and concerned I'd miss something I was supposed to do on a given loop. Fortunately, Derek had printed out sheets for each loop with its requirement. Any description I give it will be too simplistic, but essentially, we had to find and bring back a foreign coin on most loops--they were in small jars along the trail, but occasionally we were also tasked with taking selfies (which I hate) delivering items to certain places, and carrying gallon jugs of water back and forth over a 1/10 mile section (but only if the jugs were there when you got to that point.) On the right is a sample of the loop instruction sheets. When we finished a loop, we deposited our coin in our designated jar at the finish, wrote the time of day we finished the loop on a big board, and checked the instructions for the next loop. There was a lot to remember for some of the loops and it paid to make mental notes of what characters and features you saw on each loop so you could more easily find it when it came time to use it. Of course when we reversed course on loop six, it totally threw me off on where things were in relation to the course.

But, back to the beginning. Derek had our start/finish area decorated with flags from around the world--and a few I was pretty sure were state flags and some that were possibly just flags. Before arriving, we had to create and bring Nepali prayer flag and hang it on an arch between his driveway and the woods. Inside the arch was a giant bell and a gong. We had to strike the bell with a decorated stick and yell "Chemba Loy" at the start of each lap. There was a backstory to this but I'm not sure I ever got it. So, somewhere around thirty of us slowly made our way onto the single track trail off the edge of his driveway. Dennis and I stayed with some veterans of this race because we wanted to get a feel for how the loops would go and what to expect. On every lap, we were to hug "Polooloo" which was a fairly obvious tree by the path where a footbridge went over a small crevice. I don't think we'd have missed that, but for everything else, it was good to be with someone experienced. An example of this came almost immediately after Polooloo when one of our co-runners stopped to get a coin out of a trailside jar. I knew about the coins, but once I started running, all I could focus on was staying vertical and most of the requirements just left my mind. The rest of the first lap helped orient me to the course. It was almost always single track, but sometimes "1.5" track, meaning there was passing room. The early part was tight and twisty, but runnable, but then we descended down to a creek where we would later face several short but pretty steep climbs up and down as we made our way upstream along sections of the same hill. On this first lap, we got to skip them. 

Throughout the woods, we'd encounter named characters and locations straight out of Derek's imagination, all of whom were parts of a greater story we would uncover as the race wore on. The trail came out and crossed his neighborhood road several times each loop and beginning with lap four, if we saw one of the two gallon jugs of water when we came out to the road, we had to carry it to where the trail went back into the woods. Fortunately, this was never more than a few hundred feet, because the way it worked out, I think everyone ended up carrying the jugs quite often.

After the first lap, we recorded our time, put our coin in the jar, and got our instructions for the lap two. It was a process we would repeat many times over the day, but with a slight variation each time. 

Rather than give a complete mile by mile, I'm going to highlight each lap.

Lap 2: A steep hill was added. It was named "Lecto Molashiboo" and we were to yell its name at the top each time we began descending. (We had to run up it as well.) I began running my own race at this point, taking care to remember where I saw the jars. The coin to find on this lap was from Bhutan.

Lap 3: Another steep hill was added. There were ropes we could use but early on, I just relied on the grip of my Salomons. Later, as the hill got abused by repeated foot traffic, it began to deteriorate into a muddy mess and the ropes became more of a necessity. And actually, they became a brief way to take some of the work off my legs and put it on my arms--kind of like using trekking poles. For this lap, we were seeking the coin from China.

Lap 4: This is where the jug carrying began. Interestingly, the instructions said we only had to carry the jugs. It didn't say anything about the water inside. I wondered about emptying them, but didn't want to take advantage of a technicality. This loops coin was from Italy. Interestingly, there were two Italy jars, but I just got my coin from the first one.

Lap 5: This is where Derek cranked up the challenge a notch, by adding a layer of complexity. At the start of this and each subsequent lap, we had to flip a playing card out of a deck. If the suit was clubs or diamonds, we ran the lap as normal. If we drew a spade, we had to run one of the big hills twice (our choice of hills) and the Queen of spades meant we had to run backwards up two of the hills. If we drew a heart, we could skip a hill and the Queen of hearts meant we could skip all of the hills. My first card was a diamond, so I just ran the loop as normal--thankfully. I was the first one to arrive for this lap and since the deck hadn't been opened, I asked one of the volunteers to shuffle it. Otherwise, it might be possible to figure out where the desirable cards were. The coin here was Peru, which worried me because I couldn't remember seeing that jar along the trail. Fortunately, I would actually notice it by chance as I went by, otherwise I might have been out there for quite some time looking for it.

Lap 6: On this lap, we reversed the direction we ran the loop in. This was very confusing at first as I had gotten in the rhythm of the turns and where things were along the trail. It also meant runners would be going in opposite directions on the trail for a while.

Lap 7: For this lap, and fortunately only this lap, we had to run along two of the seven fallen trees along the trail. Anyone wishing to compete for the Tree Running Trophy could elect to do all the trees (recording their times for each tree--fastest combined time wins) but after slipping off the first tree (my Salomons are not good for trees) I just looked for the easiest two. The trees each had a jar (or two) of coins. I got France on the first tree and Italy and Costa Rica on the second. This was the second jar of Italy coins I mentioned earlier.

Lap 8: The coin (Columbia) was in an old barn along the trail, along with clues for our ninth lap. 

Lap 9: Another lap with some extra duties along the way. We had to find "Baq Choy," an unhappy peacock who had lost his favorite item, which we were to bring him in exchange for our Nepali coin. This involved reading the clues in the barn. I read the clues closely enough to know about where to look, but it wasn't until someone else was with me (someone who took pictures of all the clue sheets) that we determined we had to go way off the trail to find the peacock. When we did so, we didn't have what we were supposed to bring. Fortunately Derek was there and said that someone at base camp was supposed to have given it to us at the start of the lap, but we could bring it on the next lap. It was a small football. Apparently Baq Choy is fan of American Football.

Me with one of the Spiders.

Lap 10: This time we had to take photos of us with the various "Flying Spiders" along the trail. I don't do selfies and these were terrible. This lap I later realized was a little messed up. I took pictures with what were obviously spiders (they had legs) but some of the named characters that looked like just trees I didn't realize were spiders. The coin was from Japan and was inside one of the trees/spiders.

Lap 11: We reverse back to the original course and get to skip all the hills. Yeah! The coin was from India and inside an uprooted tree made to look like a big spider monster.

Lap 12: Starting with this loop, we diverted off the regular trail and made our way through a steeply banked creek (like a small canyon) with one pool of water that was pretty deep. At the end of this canyon was "Vader," another spider hanging over us. Also at the end was our coin, from Australia.

Lap 13: At the start of the lap, we were to take a strip of white cloth and write a name for a tree on it. During the lap, we had to tie the cloth to the tree. My sharpie handwriting was terrible, but I named a tree "Barkolemew" and tied it to a tree pretty early on so I wouldn't have to carry it far. The coin was from Thailand.

My Lap 14 Requirement

Lap 14: Derek's son stuffed a mystery item into our running packs and we were to remove the items at a predetermined point and take a picture of them along the trail. We show the picture back at base camp to get our Honduras coin. My terrible attempt at getting it all in the photo is shown on the right. Again, I misread and though I had to be in the photo. This made it more difficult to get everything in and led to this solar flare.

Lap 15: We got to skip all but one (our favorite) hill. I chose "Lecto" because there was someone coming down the previous one when I arrived. The coin was from Mexico and that was the extent of the duties for this loop (other than to have hugged Polooloo.)

I didn't mention the cards I drew on each lap because I couldn't remember which card was on which lap. However, I never drew a spade. I did mess up, however, and for the three or four hearts I drew, I thought that meant I had to repeat a hill rather than skip it. So, I got some bonus hillage along the way. 

Somewhere along the course, the bizzare movie "Being John Malkovich" came to mind. I watched it once, it's simple version of the plot being that a guy finds a door in his office that is a portal to inside the mind of John Malkovich. In the portal, he sees through the eyes of John Malkovich as he goes through his daily life. It felt like while on the trails, I was inside the mind of Derek Cernak, slowly understanding (as much as anyone could) how he ticks and his thought process. In the movie, the portal only lasts for fifteen minutes, after which the characters are unceremoniously dumped into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. My time in Derek's mind was much longer (roughly 6:14, I believe.)

My Strava map looks as scattered and random as Derek's e-mails sometimes look. And the characters in the woods might well have been derived from real characters in Derek's life...well some maybe were. 

Most race directors will claim that they are "doing it for the runners" and showcasing the trails and community that they love, but in the end, it often feels like a money grab. Since this was a free event (everyone chipped in to help with food costs--he had a LOT of food brought in,) chances are quite likely that Derek went in the hole to put this event on. But, in doing so, he gave around thirty people a great Saturday experience and souvenirs that will remind them of that day for years to come.