I love the Bay to Breakers run, it's incredibly unique and absolutely captures the spirit of San Francisco. My first run was in 1997 (in fact, I still have the tshirt from that run, as I'm showing below), and then I did it again on Bay Area Quicktrip 2006.

So we were up at the crack of dawn to catch the BART into San Francisco for the 2008 Bay to Breakers.


The tradition continued in the start area, where we emerged from the train station into an absolute chaos of bodies and flying beachballs and tortillas sailing through the air. We saw guys with armfulls of these tortillas, huge sacks from Costco. So, of course, we had to partake in the flicking of the tortillas.

Out of nowhere, we were suddenly counting down and the surge of people started to move. We crossed the start line and slowly started running. The first mile was more of a walk-run, and it was incredible to see the tens of thousands of people in front of us and behind us.

There were tons of cool costumes, like stormtroopers.

Crayola crayons.

Vikings, complete with a ship (carrying beer, of course).

Some guy in a tall corn thing to promote corn. And the most prevalent costume was Juno's boyfriend in his tracksuit. TONS of people dressed this way.

And many cases of men wearing NO costume at all.

At one point, everyone started cheering and people were coming through the crowd in the opposite direction - - it was the salmon! They had started the race at the finish line and were making their way upstream.

We were having a blast, lots of good bands, lots of neat things to see.

The Hayes hill is the killer part, the "Heartbreak Hill" of the Bay to Breakers.

But then from there, it's an easy run along Fell Street and into Golden Gate Park. The weather quickly changes as the microclimate of the park approaches, and fog and misty ocean breezes roll in to cool things off.

So we crossed the finish line, got our waters and walked the mile to the Footstock festival to grab our tshirts.


Then we got in line for the bus. Again, HUGE improvement to not fly out that afternoon, since it took forever to get on the bus and then the bus took forever to get downtown. We were back in Millbrae at 1pm.

Totally fun run!
