The Bay To Breakers 1998

I woke up several times during the night, thinking that I had to get up and get ready to go. Finally I thought, They'll wake you up, Diane. Go back to sleep.

Rob woke up at 4:45 and started the oatmeal and coffee. I got up at 5. Laura got up early too (though we forgot to get photographic evidence of this) and had breakfast with us before driving us to the train station at 6.

The times I've run the Bay to Breakers in the past I've taken the Samtrans bus from Palo Alto, but this time we took the Caltrain. On the positive side, we didn't have to pay our train fare--clearly the conductors were overwhelmed by the number of people who were on the train--but on the negative side we got to the City at 7:20, which is cutting it pretty close for the race.

As soon as we got to the City, Rob needed to find a bathroom, and all the portapotties at the train station had huge lines.

I said, "Why don't we go by my sister's place?"

Rob demurred, said that waiting there was fine.

I said, "It's a few blocks away."

He said, "Ask me again and I'll agree."

I said, "Why don't we go to my sister's apartment?"

We sprinted down the street to Deirdre's apartment. Greg answered the intercom--he said he was up, but I'm not sure I believe him--and he let us in.

Afterward we jogged through the streets of downtown San Francisco, looking for the starting line. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to find--Step 1: look for the gathering of 80,000+ people; Step 2: stop when you find them--but we couldn't manage that.

We did, however, find one street where the flag rope that barred entry had come down, so we went down that street and found ourselves at a point two blocks into the race. We asked the nice man with the bullhorn standing there how to get to the starting line.

"Just wait here," he said. "After the seeded and subseeded runners go by, we open this barricade and you can join the race."

Cool.

Because of this little fluke, we started running roughly when the race started, instead of 20 or 25 minutes into it the way you do if you're way behind the start line (the way I have been every other year). The downside is that all the speedy people pass you left and right, instead of you finding anyone to pass. But I got over it after a while, when I realized that we were near the front--only a few thousand people were ahead of us.

We milled about with the few others who had discovered this special starting place and congratulated ourselves on inadvertent craftiness.

Across the street, similarly waiting for the barricade to be opened, were a group of men milling about, all of whom were wearing neon yellow caps. It took me a few moments to realize that they weren't wearing small running clothes...they were wearing no running clothes at all.

"I wouldn't want the family jewels out swinging like that," Rob said.

"Wouldn't it be uncomfortable to run naked?" I asked. I can't imagine running without a sports bra--talk about uncomfortable.

"Uncomfortable, and aesthetically unpleasing," said Rob. "Some men should not be seen naked, and all of those men qualify."

I kept wondering where they kept their running numbers--and how they kept them attached.

Finally the race started and our attention was diverted from naked men to seeded runners. The eventual winner, Simon Rono of (where else?) Kenya, sped by. I wonder what being a running machine like that must be like. Rob said, "Just like us, only twice as fast," but I think there's more to it than that. To have your body moving so perfectly, so quickly--that must feel wonderful.

We started off at a good pace and pretty much kept it up the whole way. We ran the entire thing--no walk breaks--and ended with an 11 minute mile average. Because we were near the front of the pack, people kept passing us left and right, and many times we'd get an elbow in our sides just because we were between some runner and an open space.

But overall it was fun. There weren't too many costumes--we saw a bee and ran behind a naked man for a while. (Happily, the naked man ran faster than we did, so we saw the end of him.)

The biggest problem, for me at any rate, came after the water break in Golden Gate Park. I drank 3 cups of water quickly and found it difficult to get back into the rhythm of running. Shortly thereafter I started burping up water, which was singularly unpleasant.

We also both got stitches on our right sides--"That's your liver bouncing around!" I told Rob. I managed to take deep enough breaths to overcome mine. I assume Rob overcame his or managed to ignore them for 4 to 6 miles.

Of course, by the end I'd overcome everything, including sensations in my legs. We turned the corner at the bottom of Golden Gate Park and had perhaps a quarter of a mile to go to the finish chutes.

"Got any speed left in you?" Rob asked.

"Sure!" I said, completely uncertain as to whether I did or not.

Rob had more speed left than I did, but we hightailed it down the finish chutes. I realized that my legs were numb and I could probably have gone faster than I did for that reason. But I was happy to be there.

The single most important factoid of the entire race:

I ran the entire Hayes Street Hill.

Rob was singularly underwhelmed by the Hayes Street Hill--when he runs at work, there's a hill he goes up that's even steeper (which is probably why he did better on the HSH than I did).

I, however, have built the Hayes Street Hill into something of a monster in my mind and kept thinking, There's no way, there's no way, I'm never going to make it...

"Keep going!" Rob would say. "You're going to do it! You're doing great!"

Rob, in fact, made for a great coach this day. Both of us were thrilled to discover we'd done the course at roughly 11 minutes a mile, which we thought was great. (Considering we went nowhere near 11 minutes a mile going up the Hayes Street Hill.)

I decided that Rob and I are good together for running, because he makes me run faster than I normally would, and I make him run.

I suffered a couple of hallucinations during the way: at one point, in the midst of a few thousands of our closest friends, Rob said, "Listen to the feet." I focused my attention on the sounds of all those footsteps hitting the pavement--it sounded like a rainstorm. For a while, I could only hear the feet.

In Golden Gate Park, we ran over one of the PED XING signs painted on the roads, only we were running against traffic, so the XING sign was upside down when I looked at it. I read it as UNIX. When I told Laura about this later, Rob said, "How come you didn't mention that to me?" I said, "At the time, there was no way to explain it without sounding totally incoherent."

I asked Rob why this run, while shorter than my 8 mile run, hurt so much more.

"Because you ran it faster," he said. "And there was a big hill in the middle."

Right.

After you finish the Bay to Breakers, you pass a giant table set up by Crystal Geyser, on which there are bottles of water for the taking. I took three and drank one quickly. I went back for another. A water minder said, "Two bottles per person!" I wish they'd put these rules up in the first place.

Any Sport sport drink had a table set up too. I took a lemon-lime flavored drink; Rob took one of the fruit punch flavored ones. We swapped halfway through. They were both nonoffensive, but I wouldn't go out of my way to drink one if I didn't have to. I don't think I exercise hard enough to require sport drinks. But several hours had passed since breakfast, so I was grateful for the sugars and salts.

From the finish chutes and drink tables you walk to Footstock, the end-of-the-race party place at the Polo Grounds in Golden Gate Park. What they don't tell you is that Footstock is about 20 miles worth of walking, or at least it just feels that way.

The Polo Grounds is a football arena that I think high schools use. It's big, with low stands (perhaps 20 rows of bleachers.) Lots of food vendors had booths set up, and Nordstrom had its BtoB regalia booth there. Most important was the Bay to Breakers t-shirt table--pay for the race, get a t-shirt.

We put our t-shirts on and decided to buy a Ben and Jerry's Peace Pop (vanilla toffee crunch flavor), which we split. It was more of a Peace Melt, and our hands got melting ice cream and chocolate all over them.

My sister arrived at stadium area "P" precisely at 10:30, just like she'd said. Having someone pick us up was the biggest luxury of this Bay to Breakers. Previously, I'd walk through the Polo Grounds (with my sister, who always ran with me before), get the t-shirt, and continue walking to the 38 Geary bus stop. Continuing to move at all times was a very important part of the end of those races, because I was so completely unprepared for the Bay to Breakers that if I stopped, I wasn't starting again.

Greg drove us to Stonestown, so I could buy a box of chocolates for my mother for her birthday (today). I don't think Deirdre was happy about this detour, but I appreciated their making the time for me to do that, since I couldn't exactly bring anything with me on the race.

We then drove to my parents' house, to wish Mom a happy birthday. Deirdre had gone to the Flower Mart in the morning to buy her some roses. (I guess Deirdre is a big fan of the Flower Mart, ever since doing her own flowers for her wedding.)

We gave Mom her roses and chocolates and Rob talked to Dad for a bit. (Rob was nervous about meeting my parents after we had just ran a race--I said, "Hey, we put on clean shirts for the occasion.") Then Deirdre, Greg, and Dad headed out to Candlestick--oops, I mean 3Com--Park for the Giants game.

Mom told Rob and me about some letters the Irish relatives had sent after Deirdre's wedding as we waited for Laura to arrive from Cupertino.

Laura arrived later than we expected--not that we had had an iron-clad schedule or anything. I showed Rob and Laura my parents' house (a Victorian) and then the three of us headed out to lunch at the Hungarian Sausage Factory, 419 Cortland Street in the Bernal Heights district, because there's nothing better than some authentic Hungarian food, at least as far as Rob's concerned and, dammit, he knows.

I have to get the downside of lunch out of the way--they have authentic Hungarian everything there, including service. Which, as anyone who's been to Europe knows, can be slow. I wouldn't have minded except I was parched and the waitress never came to refill our glasses. And lunch took an hour and 20 minutes, which was a mite longer than I'd expected.

Given that we'd gotten there at 1...and my flight out of San Jose Airport was at 4.

Lunch was fabu, however. We shared a plate of mushroom and cream palacsintas, which are Hungarian crepes. I managed not to humiliate myself by licking the plate, although I did elbow Rob and Laura more than once while trying to mop up mushroom bits with the brown Hungarian bread.

For lunch, I had the lamb stew, which was more like a lamb meal with spaetzle on the side. I'd been expecting something akin to Irish stew, so I was pleasantly surprised. Rob said this was more of a porkolt, if that means anything to you.

Laura had a wonderful chicken paprikash (spelling?) and Rob had Hungarian sausage with potato salad and some of the sourest sauerkraut he'd had in a while. Authentic stuff, evidently.

For dessert we all chose the torte, which was some kind of jam/walnut/chocolate chip concoction. And we had three slices, so there was little knifeplay over who got how much.

We finally managed to get the bill and get out of there by 2:30. I figured that if we didn't get to San Jose in time--I was taking Southwest back to Burbank, which means the dreaded cattle call check-in procedures--then I'd just take the next flight. So I refused to be uptight about it. I have no idea how Rob and Laura felt about getting me to the airport on time, but Laura was remarkably calm as she drove down 101 and Rob did not engage in gunfire with other drivers, so it seemed we all did pretty well. Actually, I think Rob fell asleep during the drive down there.

At the airport, Rob walked me in to make sure I got a boarding pass (#58--the second boarding group! whee ha!). I gave him a hug goodbye, which was not gross because we were both wearing fresh, clean shirts, and then I sat down to read my book for the 20 minutes or so before we boarded.

I got on the plane--an exceptionally full flight, every seat taken--pulled down the windowshade, leaned my head against the headrest, and closed my eyes. The next time I opened them, the stewardi were removing the drink service. I guess I slept.

I slept when I got home too, for an hour or two. (What is it with my sleepiness quotient this weekend?) Then we watched our usual Sunday night lineup: The Simpsons, King of the Hill, The X-Files, and The Larry Sanders Show. I bemoaned the one remaining Larry Sanders episode.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

7.46 miles. Non-stop.