Bay to Breakers 12K - RunOther

Starting up front behind the seeded corrals vs. five minutes back in the pack paid big dividends...exactly as I'd hoped, I took a minute off my first mile from last year just by not having to fight my way through a huge crowd and run on the sidewalk dodging spectators.

I decided to pace off one of the guys I was talking with before the start who was costumed as the Roman god Mercury. I could tell from what he said that he would be running about my pace...and he was real easy to spot in the crowd. Great decision: He went out just ahead of me for the first couple miles, then I caught him at mile 2 and never saw him again. Took me to a 7:07 2nd mile, which was about 8 sec. faster than planned, but felt great...so...bonus.

This was my first race with my new Forerunner 205...I made good use of the device as a simple speedometer...nothing fancy...just tried to keep pace faster than 7:15 on the flats and as far below 7:00 as felt reasonable on the many downhills in the latter part of the race.

Mile 3 is mostly the "Hayes St. Hill": about 0.7 miles of climb, all of it 10% to 11.5% grade (with the steepest grade at the top). I hammered the Hill...last year's experience of the course told me that there would only be one short uphill stretch right after Hayes St. and then mostly downhill, so tons of opportunity to recover from attacking the big climb. The last two blocks were a tough effort, but I kept my pace in the neighborhood of 8:00/mi at the worst of it.

After the rollers--incl. the last real uphill--in mile 4, the remainder of the course is mostly downhill and I tried to maintain on the flats and let loose on the downhills. I yelled out "Just a 5K now...a downhill 5K" at the 4.5 mile mark (and also called out "One mile to go!" and "Half mile to go!" when I hit those points)...got an interesting mix of encouraged smiles and curious looks from my fellow competitors.

Fell in with four HS cross country runners at the 7 mile mark and hung with them most of the rest of the way (though they pulled away at the final 200m). For a brief spell, I thought I might go sub-54, but at about the half-mile mark, I knew I wasn't going to get there...but with a strong finishing kick, I got under 54:30 by a second. Three full minutes faster than last year!

High point of the race came after the finish: I came out of the chute and volunteers were handing out embroidered "Bay to Breakers" baseball caps. Someone handed me one and I thought, "Cool...way better than finisher's medals"...forgetting 'til later that B-to-B doesn't give out finisher's medals...you get to keep your commemorative timing chip rather than a medal. So I go to unhook the adjustable strap on the back of the cap to hang it from my race number belt (I already had a racing cap on), when I notice that embroidered on the back is "Top 500 Finisher"! Way cool...top 500 out of what I know is going to be about 23,000 official finishers.

Finished: Top 2.11% overall / 3.67% men / 2.76% AG

Can't think of much. Possibly conserve a little more energy in the first two miles, but I don't think my early pace had a lot of impact...and maybe made my race, given that my last 2 1/2 miles were about 15-20 sec./mi. faster than last year.

Walked around and had my finisher photo taken. Waited at the finish line for Liz to finish, but never saw her (she improved even more than I did--almost 5 min. better than last year, even with about 90 sec. of stopping to stretch during the race)...she called my cell and I went to meet her and get her photo--and one of the two of us--taken. Walked the seemingly-endless trek to the "Footstock" post-race fair...had a hot link and stretched a bit. Walked to the Muni bus back to downtown. Very excited about the "Top 500" cap...sure, it's mostly a fun run, but--still--it's top 500 in a fun run with 23,000 runners.


Nothing really...this was pretty much what I envisioned...might have shaved 30 sec. off , but I didn't have a lot left at the end.


This is as much a moving block party/carnival as a road race. There aren't a ton of serious entrants, but the course is a nice cross section of SF, the spectator support is great, and this is a distance that isn't contested much.