silly pirate

There's me - can you see me? 300 rows back on the left...(I borrowed this pic from SF Gate). The truth is, everything from the waist down still hurts, and everything from the neck up is crispy.

(This pirate is not very smart! Who knew the sun would make an appearance in San Francisco this weekend?)

The truth is, I'm still tired and I'm having trouble stringing coherent thoughts together. I'd do much better with a random thoughts post...but I'll make an attempt to put a story together here.

Dude! What an awesome weekend!

(ok, also not sounding too bright there)

21st Century Mom is a great hostess - she kept me happy, fed and slept at her place on Friday. We ran Friday (she did better than she thinks she did), we swam Saturday (oh yeah, she'd kick my butt in a swim), we raced Sunday (BRING IT HOME, SISTAH!!). I'm so grateful - 21CM took good care of me!

Who knew that I would actually be able to mostly run the Bay to Breakers? This was the 96th running of the BtoB. 96 years, same race. Longest consecutively running footrace in the world, and I have to wonder if it started out with the naked thing...

I went planning to cruise. To have fun. To enjoy naked spectacles (and there were many). It turns out I was too busy focusing on my pace to enjoy too much of the spectacles (and there were many). The Bay to Breakers us part running race, part performance art.

We met at the start line area-ish. I was flipping out about temperature. With regard to the weather, everybody said "Oh, it's so nice here!" and that's true if you're a local to the area. But I am a lizard. I live on hot rocks in the high desert. While there's a certain advantage to that (like when I come down to your level? Yeah, I get All. That. Oxygen), there's a certain disadvantage to being acclimated to a warm climate (like, I FROZE MY BUTT OFF).

So I wore a hat. And a couple of layers. Generally I have found that I can run almost naked (appropriately enough) so long as I'm wearing a hat. And I had packed one as a last minute whim.

By the time we got to the start line, I no longer needed the hat. Woo hoo! I'd way rather be too warm than too cold!

Start line energy at the Bay to Breakers is so weird. There's 3 start areas for this race: the seeded runners, (for which none of us qualified), Zone 1 (for those who expect to finish in the same time zone) and Zone 2 (for those who expect to finish sometime this week). We started in Zone 1, which seemed to be full of mostly people who expected to run the thing. I didn't see much of Zone 2, but I understand that's where the real party is -- runners pushing a tiki bar, a bed with a lady having a baby,weird stuff like that.

There we are, hanging out with about 30,000 of our closest friends, and yeah - there was nakedness. There were superheroes. There were pirates. There were brides. There were ballerinas. There was a guy holding a giant gloved hand and a tube of KY jelly. And there was tortilla tossing...

No, I don't know why.

To say it was a touch surreal sorta dims the perspective. Relatively speaking, I think everything that happens before 8 am is kinda surreal (though on this particular morning I did have my coffee, so I was technically awake). But on the scale of things prior to 8 am, this was pretty weird.

I went with the expectation of just seeing the sites and enjoying the beautiful course. I had no expectations other than to do a nice training run in a gorgeous venue - supported training with a t-shirt and an awesome view.

So then we started running.

Past the running Elvises.

Past the protesters.

Past the bands.

And it turns out, I was actually running. And keeping a pretty good clip!

But since I had no expectations for time, and I had to go, I took a potty stop. Why not? There are 35,000 other people out there - it's not like I'm gonna come in first!!

And then we kept running.

Past the mobs of people shouting "Yaay Runners!!"

Past the gorillas.

Past the salmon running upstream (oh yeah - I high-fived the salmon).

I hit the Hayes Street Hill. I had so much O2, and so much joy for running I think I had wings at that point.

And the rest was downhill, baby - all the way to the sea.

Past more bands (Jewish surf music is really awesome, by the way).

And more naked people.

And lots and lots of runners. I think I passed a few thousand, and I'm pretty sure a thousand passed me.

Before I knew it, there was this fantastic view of the ocean ahead of me - with actual breakers. And I was done. My first 12K - in about 1:17. I finished just behind a naked guy pushing a kid in a jogging stroller. It was about then I was really grateful for that hat. Do you know, it may be a beach, but it's FREAKIN COLD! How did I know? Because there was more nakedness at the finish line than I saw during the race. Apparently naked runners can be quite speedy.

Who knew?!

OK, so I had a PR for a 12K. And 21st Century Mom had a great time too. Considering this was my first 12K distance race, that's not hard. I had fully expected to see the better part of SF on this beautiful course, but I mostly saw the road 6 feet in front of me. I suppose that's what happens when you run with a lot of people.

There were so many people there it's just absurd. I finished 5747th overall. 1523rd in the Women. 445th in my age group. 30,000 may have officially entered the race, but they reckon there were 60,000 or so running it. We saw people still running on the course on the way back - over an hour later.

Here's me, all happy in the bus on the way back.

Ah, SF. You treat me so well...