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Bay to Breakers 2011
May. 17th, 2011 12:41Happy Constitution Day, Norway! At my alma mater there will be cake for everyone today.
So on Sunday morning I got up ridiculously early to bike to the BART and get my butt on a train for downtown San Francisco to run the 100th annual Bay to Breakers 12K. I finished in 1:24:57, well within my personal goal of 1:30:00. The Bay to Breakers race is notorious for many things, among them the Hayes Street Hill between mile 2 and 3, which rises at about a 12% grade. Looking at my split times, I actually sped up on the second half of the course, after the hill; at the top of the hill my split time was 11:45, but at the finish line it was 11:24. Compared with the 8K I ran last year (split time 7:19), there's a lot of room for improvement, but I was pleased that it wasn't, on the whole, anywhere near as much of a challenge as I thought it would be. If anything, I took it too easy. (Fun fact: when I was at the crest of the hill, the winners were already at the finish line.)
The other thing about Bay to Breakers aside from the hill and the rather lovely course through the city's microclimates to the finish line on the Great Highway, with the Pacific slamming onto the shore in front of you, is that it's basically a giant excuse to have a citywide party. Those of us who actually ran it got a bit less of this, and this year the city also enforced the alcohol regulations and barred floats from the race course, which I understand put a bit of damper on things. Still, I have to tell you, it was one of the most awesome things I've done: the weather was perfect, if just slightly on the chilly side, the sun shone bright (except for the 2/3 of a mile that it rained in Golden Gate Park), and the people flinging tortillas at the start, the Elvi (plural of Elvis), the sharks (they run the course backward), the people running naked, the tons of people running in costume, the people cheering us on from their houses as they blared music and drank at 8am--it was all really, really fun.
So on Sunday morning I got up ridiculously early to bike to the BART and get my butt on a train for downtown San Francisco to run the 100th annual Bay to Breakers 12K. I finished in 1:24:57, well within my personal goal of 1:30:00. The Bay to Breakers race is notorious for many things, among them the Hayes Street Hill between mile 2 and 3, which rises at about a 12% grade. Looking at my split times, I actually sped up on the second half of the course, after the hill; at the top of the hill my split time was 11:45, but at the finish line it was 11:24. Compared with the 8K I ran last year (split time 7:19), there's a lot of room for improvement, but I was pleased that it wasn't, on the whole, anywhere near as much of a challenge as I thought it would be. If anything, I took it too easy. (Fun fact: when I was at the crest of the hill, the winners were already at the finish line.)
The other thing about Bay to Breakers aside from the hill and the rather lovely course through the city's microclimates to the finish line on the Great Highway, with the Pacific slamming onto the shore in front of you, is that it's basically a giant excuse to have a citywide party. Those of us who actually ran it got a bit less of this, and this year the city also enforced the alcohol regulations and barred floats from the race course, which I understand put a bit of damper on things. Still, I have to tell you, it was one of the most awesome things I've done: the weather was perfect, if just slightly on the chilly side, the sun shone bright (except for the 2/3 of a mile that it rained in Golden Gate Park), and the people flinging tortillas at the start, the Elvi (plural of Elvis), the sharks (they run the course backward), the people running naked, the tons of people running in costume, the people cheering us on from their houses as they blared music and drank at 8am--it was all really, really fun.