hairylunch

I went down to SF last weekend to run Bay to Breakers. I thought it was a fun race, but there seems to be a lot of discontent about it. Some of the coverage from the event:

• SFGate's main article - 60k participants, a little over half who were registered.


• There were plenty of complaints about the revelry


• An image gallery of the event


• Some race interviews


• And of course, wikipedia . . .

Personally, I ran a 1:17:57 for the 12k, finishing 6325 overall (which means my name was printed in the paper as one of the top 10,000, wheee!). A little slower than I thought, but not too bad for me. Here's a graph of my pace according to my iPod.

I didn't participate in much of the revelry this year, but it looks like a blast. While running through the city, it's basically one big, 12k block party. You see people outside their houses or on their balconies, drinking and cheering on the participants. Any bar you pass has a table setup outside with drink specials, and there are entrepreneurial folks who are selling water, jello shots, and energy drinks.

Lots of runners in costume and themes:

• folks in salmon suits running the race backwards (I saw them while I was struggling up the hill on Hayes),
• the group that was dressed as Amerian Gladiators,


• a fun crowd dressed as circus performers,


• near the end, I passed the Olympic torch (a girl in white carrying the torch, with a half-dozen guys in matching blue being the security escort, and making witty banter about alternate routes and suspicious runners)
• plenty of streakers (I counted 6, all male, while I was running) - perhaps the most amusing were the two guys running together with only their shoes and the straps for their heart rate monitors

There were lots of others that are too numerous to mention.

This is an event I'd like to participate in again, both the run, and the revelry.