100th Bay to Breakers Rookie Recap

This year it was the San Francisco Bay to Bakers Race 100th anniversary. I read online they were giving medals to all finishers for the first time. I wanted one. So I signed up.

My alarm went off at 4:50am and I ate a quick breakfast of cereal with almond milk. I had debated what I should wear due to a rainy forecast. I settled upon wearing shorts that had a side pocket large enough to house my iPhone in a Ziploc sandwich baggie, that way I could capture all the Kodak moments. I also wore a tank top, long-sleeved shirt, a biking windbreaker with a handy pocket for money, BART ticket, license and a credit card.  I wore my Road I.D. bracelet, a Polar watch and my marathon necklace for good luck. I topped it off with a baseball cap and drank some extra water, heading out the door by 5:10am.

I waited for friends to join me at the Walnut Creek BART. We left on the 5:56 train and arrived in plenty

of time to begin our run (it's not a race).  We began to see runners dressed up. "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" (a mother/daughter duo) rode the escalator with us.

When we landed at the top of the escalator, I noticed blue skies. A good sign.

From there we headed toward the starting area. Waiting for the run to begin, we were able to witness the traditional tortilla toss. It's rumored that seasoned runners initiated the toss, but who knows? It was great fun. One landed on my head.

After the tortilla tossing (and landing) we were waiting in line to get into our corral. While waiting, the crowd was rather tame, albeit dressed in a myriad of costumes. 

There were a few teens smoking  "funny stuff" in this area but not blatantly. The line to get into our corral was moving v-e-r-y slow. There was an opening in the fence to the side so a large number of us followed an alternate group into the B group area. Though our start time was 7:00 I don't think we began until 7:12 or so. We were all walking close together and it was crowded but organized. I might mention just as were getting ready to begin, there were beach balls flying. I yelled to the woman in front of me to kick it. She let it roll past herself so I decided to give it a giant kick myself. BIG mistake. It landed on her back, ricocheted off of her onto the chest of the woman to my right. It hit her hard, startling her. "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I will never kick a beach ball again!" I implored. I felt terrible. I continued sheepishly forward. Note to self: never kick beach balls in a crowd.

Soon music was blaring, the crowd was slowly spreading out and we neared the starting line. We were off! No sooner had we begun than the Oreo man and friends were there passing out cookies to all of us.

He was so friendly. My friend, "Pamela, not Pam" ate two as she had not eaten breakfast yet. I ate one, just to be nice. Besides, who can resist a cookie?

As we moved forward the festivities continued. There is a tradition of the Upstream Salmon who run opposite the pack in order to find other fish to spawn. I stopped to photograph them.

I counted at least eleven naked men and two women. There was a naked couple but I didn't know until I ran past them that one of them was a woman. If you want to see the backs of them, you'll have to be my friend on Facebook. Later, there were four men running together and I said to a runner next to me, "Must pass naked men!" She laughed at my joke as we passed them.

The crowds continued forward. Thousands of people. I will say there were lots of porta potties lining the streets and water stops along the route too. No floats this year, no centipedes near me and a rather tame crowd. There were lots of bands playing music throughout which made the time fly. There is one pretty big hill but the sea of people are so entertaining it didn't seem half bad. There was at least one elderly gentleman being helped Hayes St. Hill, but he didn't seem to mind (he "found his thrill on Hayes St. Hill").

The weather continued to cooperate with the sun shining the entire race, up until the very end when the sprinkles that landed on my cap were a welcomed reprieve. After I ran across the finish line, I noticed a couple being interviewed on T.V. They were headed to Hawaii after today's run and their grass skirts and coconut shell tops landed them the news segment spot.

One fellow had a giant grin on his face but his shirt told another story:

From the finish line it is quite a far walk to collect medals and t-shirts.  As we began gathering, eating and socializing, there were more noteworthy costumes, including the Prince and Princess of Wales.

I saw a  few of the folks from Forward Motion in Danville, including Pamela not Pam, who had found a cape during the run. It was getting chillier so she put it on for some super powers, I'm sure.   

And at Bay to Breakers were some of my running mates, including Roger Shaw and Lynn Jowett and our "coach" Rhett Bratt from Walnut Creek, Kathe Oster from Alamo, myself, Kathy Dillingham from Danville, Tony Phillips and Marian De La Torre Easthope also from Walnut Creek.

Our day was nearly over. We rode a bus to the Daly City BART station. We were so chilled we took time to sun ourselves a little bit.

At long last, we headed onto the BART train and headed home sweet home. It was, by all accounts, a really wonderful fun-filled day. 

                                                               And, I got my medal.