The 94th annual Bay to Breakers Race is this Sunday, May 21, starting at 8 am downtown.
This 7.8-mile trek begins a few blocks from San Francisco Bay near the Ferry Building, goes up Howard Street, cuts across 9th, crosses Market, then climbs up the Horrendous Hayes Street Hill (where I once saw a man die of a heart attack), down and through Golden Gate Park, and finishes amid the cool foggy breezes at Ocean Beach (the Breakers).
I’ve run it 15 times and it is tons of fun. But if you’re claustrophobic, don’t bother because it’s attracted as many as 85,000 runners, walkers and crawlers. In fact, you sometimes wait longer to get to the Starting Line through the crowd than it takes the elite runners to finish (about 37 minutes)!
Actually, it’s more like a running circus, costume party and Halloween combined, with human centipedes, bands of Elvis impersonators, lots of naked people and all kinds of other stuff you will only see here –– the world’s largest footrace.