Bay to Breakers 2014

A month before the San Francisco Bay to Breakers, I decided it would be fun to trek the 7.46 miles. (That’s 12K to those of you who are runners or love math.)

I hadn’t run or even walked 7.46 miles since the last time I did the Bay to Breakers, 20 years ago.

But this would be a chance to hang with Ruth and get back to the City. So I trained as much as I could, running and walking and adding yoga to the mix. At Highlander, Susie and Scott gave me advice and "You got this!" pep talks. Ruth, on the other hand, needed no such encouragement: She just ran seven miles the week before the race.

On race day, we went to our corral with plenty of time to check out the costumes. Fortunately none of the naked runners started in the 10–12-minute-mile group.

As SNL’s Stefon might have said, this race had everything. Tutus, capes, unicorn hats, girls in body paint, men in see-through mesh shorts. People sitting on the course and spectators wandering in.

Ruth and I lost each other about a minute after we crossed the starting line. (To her credit, she actually tried to find me.) I spent most of the race jockeying for a position among the runners and walkers, looking for those mile markers.

Thankfully the only hill was about two miles in. It doesn’t look bad, but I felt it more than I saw it.

After getting Ruth's finish-line text, I decided to run the last bit. Unfortunately I had an idealized vision of the finish line, thanks to seeing too many races in movies: I'd imagined the finish as a straight shot, but the course kept curving around and around.

I finally wound past two penguin-costumed walkers for a finish in 1 hour, 51 minutes: 17,007th out of 28,253, if you must know. But it was a 12K sans incident, with a burger and fries afterward!