Lloyd Kahn made a promise to himself 16 years ago, and now he aims to keep it on Sunday.

“I decided to run the Dipsea Race when I was 90,” said Kahn, who has challenged the race 19 times in the past and earned 10 black shirts. His best result came in 2000 with an 18th-place finish in 51 minutes, 11 seconds.

The years and his wild white hair might suggest Kahn is getting older, but the energy in his voice and the spirit with which the longtime Bolinas resident lives his life suggest Kahn is still a youthful soul.

“It’s a romantic race,” said Kahn, who last ran the race in 2010, when he finished in 1 hour, 2 minutes, 17 seconds, with a 25 minute head start.

Running the Dipsea is a celebration for Kahn, whose pre-race ritual includes an oatmeal breakfast, taking a dip in Redwood Creek, “tuning in to the mountain and bowing to the Four Corners,” and maybe taking some herbal medicine for his aching joints.

“I think I’ve been stoned every time I’ve run the Dipsea,” Kahn joked.

Kahn, who attended Lowell High and Stanford University, spent much of his youth surfing in Santa Cruz, living a “California Dream.” But those early days laid the fertile seeds for much of what was to come in his life.

For a time, he worked as an insurance salesman, but quit that job. He began a new career building geodesic dome housing, picking up the tools he used as a teenager when he worked as a carpenter on the docks in San Francisco.

Kahn, with his wife Lesley Creed, who died in 2023, enjoyed the kind of counter-culture lifestyle that Bolinas has long supported. Together, they raised chickens and foraged food and materials for dyes and textiles on their half-acre property.

Over the past 60 years, in books like “Builders of the Pacific Coast” and “Home Work”, Kahn has highlighted unique forms of dwellings — tree houses, caravans, tiny houses, yurts — celebrating designs in harmony with nature and shunning large footprint mega-homes. His work on alternative architecture has brought an international following to Kahn, who is often happy to share his insights with others eager to follow his example.

His journey to the Dipsea Trail started when “I saw a book in the Whole Earth Catalog on stretching and I had a bad back,” recalled Kahn, who became the Shelter Editor for the Whole Earth Catalog and established the famed Shelter Publications in his home.

The exercises, all designed more for athletes, helped Kahn’s ailing back and he reached out to the author Bob Anderson to collaborate on a version of the book for waitresses, delivery drivers and carpenters. “Stretching” has sold nearly 4 million copies since 1979.

“I learned a lot about staying in shape and running,” Kahn said. “Running a 10K was painful, but then I discovered the Dipsea.”

Kahn was encouraged to run the Dipsea when he made friends with members of the Pelican Inn Track Club 25 years ago. The first time Kahn ran the Dipsea, at age 52 in 1987, he finished in 1:20.38.

“In the early days, runners could take a shortcut to Stinson Beach,” said Kahn, who admitted “I never knew any worthwhile shortcuts.”

Kahn has finished among the top 50 in 16 of his 19 Dipsea races, according to race records, although it hasn’t been easy.

“When I was running the Dipsea, I blocked out the pain,” he said. “The Steps are so hard and so high. The Dipsea just hits you so hard. I want to get up Cardiac and not puke.”

Kahn has stepped away from the Dipsea, in part on the advice of his doctors who warned him of the deteriorating meniscus in his knee. But now he’s back, to keep a promise he made to himself.

“I just want to stay on my feet and have a good time,” Kahn said. “I’ll be running the Moors for the first time, and that’s beautiful.”