My first 36 mile marathon: Golden Hills Trail

Last Saturday, i ran the Golden Hills trail marathon, my 2nd marathon in 6 days. Since I had already PR'd in Portland, I was running this for fun and get a chance to check out some California trails. The race starts at Lone Oak Rd in Tilden Park in Berkeley and is in conjunction with the Firetrails 50 miler. It ends at Lake Chabot Marina and there was a shuttle bus at the finish line to take entrants to Lone Oak as parking is limited, this shuttle leaves at 7:15am. Sharp. I decided to save on a taxi and would run from my motel to the Marina (mapquest said 3 miles) This was a huge mistake as I accidentally ran the other way (east) and got to Pleasanton which was 7 miles from Castro Valley! I really should've picked up on the obvious clues like increasing house numbers, the fact that I was running solid for 40 minutes and was still in the residential part of town. I ran another 3 miles looking for a BART station, took the Bart to Berkeley, took a taxi to the start and got there at 10:05am (race started at 9am). I don't actually have a bib on me as I was not mailed one, but I'm not banditing per se as I did register and pay for this race. I dropped off my warmup gear at the start which would be shuttled to the finish line. I briefly considered volunteering for the ultra to get some hours for Western, but the aid personnel said I could still run as the cutoff was at 7pm which gave me 9 hours to finish. It took me 6:45 although the results say 7:45 cause the clock doesn't stop for anybody least of those who ran the wrong way. Stll, I passed 5 marathoners on the course who had the hour "headstart" so that was pretty nice and my story provided a lot of hilarity for all the aid station vollies. So it all worked out. Next time, I'm gonna get a cab.