Time in San Francisco was short, and we got on the road quickly in order to get ready for our first run in the US by midnight of the same day. A short drive north and across the Golden Gate Bridge brought us to Petaluma, our first place back in the US and starting point for our journey across the west. While the yellow team went out on the road by midnight, I was moved to the morning shift and run into the Dow site at Pittsburg, CA by 9 am. On my run to the exchange point I was accompanied by Dean Karnazes, the ultra runner who a while ago ran 50 marathons in 50 days. For me personally, it certainly was one of the running highlights on the trip so far, especially for being in the company of a person who truly can relate to our endeavor. As with all the other Dow events, Pittsburg also was a great experience, and I very much enjoyed running the last mile to the exchange point with the group of local kids. In the evening we went for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. While the food was o.k., a seven-men mariachi band was playing right inside and the noise was deafening. We hurried up with our meals and just got out before the band was able to advance to our table…

The next few runs took us out along the scenic route of Highway 1, and I started out running into Big Sur state park on a very scenic, but also very hilly route. The weather was beautiful, but the visibility not great due to the lingering fog over the Pacific. We continued on over the next few days towards Los Angeles, pretty much following the coast for most of the way. The running was quite nice, unfortunately we were still short by two due to the lingering injuries of Rudy and Laurel. Simon was running with us for the next two days, then Victor was helping out, and finally Will run with us in order to cover our shifts. On Sunday, August 5 we passed through Santa Monica, and later that day we reached Beverly Hills and Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. The temperatures had been increasing soon after leaving the coast, and now we started to deal with near 100 F heat during most of the days. Running at those temperatures is extremely difficult, very slow, and requires constant attention towards keeping hydrated and the body temperature under control. On our last run before Las Vegas, Will started our shift at 3 pm just outside of Barstow at a temperature of 103 F, and I finished at half past eight, still running at 96 F. On Tuesday, August 8 we finally made it to Las Vegas and also to a day off which we had been waiting for quite some time. Our last two “off-days” we had spent flying from China to Japan and from Tokyo to San Francisco.