Dream Log: Marathon in San Francisco

I dreamed that a marathon was being run in San Fransisco. The route of the race was marked by a series of blue rectangles printed onto the surface of the roads and sidewalks, apparently in some sort of temporary ink, which formed a blue dotted line which one could see for quite a ways ahead. San Fransisco has a lot of long steep hills,

and this race was being run over some of the longest and steepest ones.

One could see the route for a long ways ahead if it wasn't blocked. The problem is that all sorts of things and people were blocking the route. I stood on one hilltop and saw that on the next hilltop, pedestrians were all over the blue dotted line. I ran there and yelled at them to get away from the blue line, that the blue line was the path of the marathon. Some of them moved when they heard me, some of them apparently didn't hear me or didn't care.

Some runners came up behind me. They clearly saw what I was doing and appreciated it, and started to join in with me in urging people to stay clear of the blue line. This made me extremely upset. I begged the runners to just keep running. The whole point of what I was doing, I told them, was for their run not to be interrupted.

But they didn't seem to care much about what I was saying. Also, I wasn't entirely sure whether they were actually in the marathon. If so, it seemed that they were not among the leaders. I looked but I couldn't see any numbers on their shirts. And they were wearing shirts rather than racing jersies, and in general did not look anything like world-class marathoners, in apparel or in physique.

There was a large-scale documentary film crew there filming the marathon. They had piles and piles of boxes of their equipment blocking the blue line. I frantically picked up these heavy boxes and moved them clear of the line. I was beginning to get very tired from all of this exertion, and very discouraged by what definitely seemed to be a very uphill battle. Also, I began to wonder whether the leaders of the race had passed through long before, and maybe that's why nobody cared much about what I was doing or saying. Also, I wasn't sure, but I thought maybe that I actually wasn't working for the marathon, on a paid or even an official volunteer basis. And I started to wonder whether all those other people might be right not to care much about what I was doing. If the main part of the race was actually already over on this part of the course, then, suddenly, all those other people's behavior made a lot more sense, and I was the one who was being unreasonable. Then I woke up.