My Bay to Breakers weekend
A couple months ago I signed up to do the bay to breakers race in San Francisco. I did the run last year and had a real good time. Well, the day after I signed up is when the accident at work happened so I really haven't been up to the run because I really wasn't up for it after everything. The race was last weekend and up to the end of saturday I really wasn't sure if I was still going to do it. The reasons being the high gas prices and my lack of income, etc. After talking to my sister on saturday I thought "why not" and went for it.
Now everytime I visit my sister in SF I always have trouble with the parking. Each time parking turns into a thirty minute drive around the neighborhood. Since the race runs right out front of my sisters place and the city closing down those streets, I thought it would be even more difficult. So I tried something that I have thought about for a while. I took the subway of BART to the city. There is a station in Richmond that you can park overnight that I have used before. I rode in problem free and met my sister in downtown. We had some lunch and decided to see The DaVInci Code. We went to two cinemas and all the shows were sold out. I guess despite the protesters out front people still went and saw it. So instead we just went back to her neighborhood for some drinks. We met her friend Becky and barhopped a few places which was fun. I didn't get to sleep late and I still had the race early in the morning.
I woke up at about 5:30 in order to catch the bus to the downtown starting area. If you are serious about running it and want to avoid the massive crowd this is a good idea. I got to start near the front. Last year I started further back and didn't cross the finish line until about 14 minutes after the race had started. Yesterday I crossed right at 8 o'clock. The other reason to get there so earlier is partaking in all the pre race events. That mostly consists of throwing tortilla's and beach balls up in the air. A couple of us turned that into "try and throw the tortilla's into the stop lights". We weren't having much luck, but alot of close calls.
The race started and I ran the first mile and a half. My goal was to beat my time from last year which was around 1 hour and 54 minutes. I was in much better shape last year so I didn't think that I could do it. I tried to finish the rest of the race running as much as I could but my legs weren't going along with the idea. So I battled them the last couple miles and finished at 1 hour and 42 minutes. I beat last years time by fifteen minutes! After the race ended and I stopped running my legs just quit on me. I could barely walk. I limped to the footstock festival to pick up my shirt and then over to the shuttle to the starting area. From there I took a cab back to my sisters.
I met up with John who is my sisters boyfriend and after a shower and drink, we went back downtown to go to the movies. I eventually saw The DaVinci Code and overall I thought the book was much better. Maybe it was the pain in my legs or knowing all the plot twists, but it just didn't have the whole great movie feel. It's still good, but I think they could have done it better. Afterwards we got some lunch and I headed back to the subway to get to my car to and head home. On the drive home I did something that I never done before. Probably due to not sleeping the night before and running the race in the morning, I started to feel myself going to sleep. I still had a long way to go. So I pulled over at a closed vegetable stand and took a quick 20 minute powernap. What a feeling! That gave me enough energy to get home, where I quickly went to bed.
Now everytime I visit my sister in SF I always have trouble with the parking. Each time parking turns into a thirty minute drive around the neighborhood. Since the race runs right out front of my sisters place and the city closing down those streets, I thought it would be even more difficult. So I tried something that I have thought about for a while. I took the subway of BART to the city. There is a station in Richmond that you can park overnight that I have used before. I rode in problem free and met my sister in downtown. We had some lunch and decided to see The DaVInci Code. We went to two cinemas and all the shows were sold out. I guess despite the protesters out front people still went and saw it. So instead we just went back to her neighborhood for some drinks. We met her friend Becky and barhopped a few places which was fun. I didn't get to sleep late and I still had the race early in the morning.
I woke up at about 5:30 in order to catch the bus to the downtown starting area. If you are serious about running it and want to avoid the massive crowd this is a good idea. I got to start near the front. Last year I started further back and didn't cross the finish line until about 14 minutes after the race had started. Yesterday I crossed right at 8 o'clock. The other reason to get there so earlier is partaking in all the pre race events. That mostly consists of throwing tortilla's and beach balls up in the air. A couple of us turned that into "try and throw the tortilla's into the stop lights". We weren't having much luck, but alot of close calls.
The race started and I ran the first mile and a half. My goal was to beat my time from last year which was around 1 hour and 54 minutes. I was in much better shape last year so I didn't think that I could do it. I tried to finish the rest of the race running as much as I could but my legs weren't going along with the idea. So I battled them the last couple miles and finished at 1 hour and 42 minutes. I beat last years time by fifteen minutes! After the race ended and I stopped running my legs just quit on me. I could barely walk. I limped to the footstock festival to pick up my shirt and then over to the shuttle to the starting area. From there I took a cab back to my sisters.
I met up with John who is my sisters boyfriend and after a shower and drink, we went back downtown to go to the movies. I eventually saw The DaVinci Code and overall I thought the book was much better. Maybe it was the pain in my legs or knowing all the plot twists, but it just didn't have the whole great movie feel. It's still good, but I think they could have done it better. Afterwards we got some lunch and I headed back to the subway to get to my car to and head home. On the drive home I did something that I never done before. Probably due to not sleeping the night before and running the race in the morning, I started to feel myself going to sleep. I still had a long way to go. So I pulled over at a closed vegetable stand and took a quick 20 minute powernap. What a feeling! That gave me enough energy to get home, where I quickly went to bed.
posted by Ted at 11:29 AM
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