A Triumph at Bay to Breakers

I have neglected to write about our experience running in the Bay to Breakers in May. If you haven't heard of it, Bay to Breakers is a quintessential San Francisco institution, a 7.46 mile race from the Embarcadero to Ocean Beach.

The race is famous for the centipede teams and outrageous costumes (and lack thereof). I think I saw about three dozen naked runners. Fortunately, the majority of them were in pretty good shape. The most surreal moment of the day came right at the beginning of the race when I saw a naked guy with a disposable camera taking pictures of other people.

If you know me well, you may have heard me say that I run "only when chased." Running hurts. That high feeling runners describe? That's never happened to me. In high school, when the football coach made us all run one mile after a long, hot practice, I finished dead last.

When I exercise, I typically need to have the duration and intensity of the regimen imposed upon me to some degree. That is, I'll walk 30 minutes on the stair climber because I only have to make the decision once, as I enter my preferred program. I can finish an hour long yoga class, because once I've started, I feel committed to finishing.

Running outside or on a track is a different story. I am constantly fighting the urge to stop. Every step is a new decision. While some people hum or breath to the rhythm of their pace, I am chanting, "I must stop. I must stop. I must stop." And I usually do.

But for some reason, I got motivated to train for this race. After two three-mile runs in the hills at Stanford, I felt I could actually run the majority of the 12 kilometers. As it turned out, I ran most of it, and only walked when pains started shooting through my knees.

Another tradition, for some unknown reason, is to throw corn tortillas at the beginning of the race. As we made our way to the starting line, we walked on top of a huge blanket of corn tortillas. Quirky, but a clear falling hazard.

After the grueling Hayes Street hill, the rest of the race is a steady decline which works for me. Once we entered Golden Gate Park, every crappy garage band in the greater Bay Area had set up a street performance every few hundred yards. The urge to get out of earshot provided a good motivation to keep on running, but I don't think that was their intention.


To motivate myself, I tried to keep up with an Austin Powers guy (one of three I spotted). I figured I should at least be able to beat a guy in a crushed velvet leisure suit. And then I determined that I would not be outpaced by a guy who was pulling two kids in a Radio Flyer wagon. Later, I set my eyes on the red-pajama-clad Thing One and Thing Two (and a superfluous Thing Three and Thing Four). To my delight, I beat all four of those little house-trashing creeps.

My time was 1 hour, 30 minutes, exactly. It may not sound impressive that I finished in 13418th place, but that doesn't account for the fact that we didn't cross the starting line until 25 minutes into the race. To put it another way, about 47,000 people finished behind me, and that ain't bad.

The trippy part was watching a replay of the race on television later and seeing the Kenyan guy who won. While he finished in under 35 minutes, he and I were in the same race. We ran the exact same course. You don't get that in any other sport. I can't plop down 25 bucks and play in a baseball game with the New York Yankees or race a car with an Andretti.

After the race, a number of people were promoting future runs. I actually feel like I want to do this again. Yesterday, I just bought some better running shoes. Am I a convert? I don't know about that. But next year, I want to beat that Harry Potter and all those Elvises.