Ichi, ni, so-re!: 13,413 Baby!

That's right! I came in 13,413th place! Not bad considering there were something like 63,000 people and also because it took us 16 minutes to even cross the starting line. My official time was 1:58:51, but by my watch, it actually took 1:42.

Boy oh boy, what can I say? Where do I start? Well firstly, this is a really fun race, and if you're in the Bay Area the third Sunday in May, sign yourself up for the Bay to Breakers race. 12k sounds like a lot, but it didn't feel like it at all. I ran it with my friend Mary and her little sister.

We got there just before the starting time, and were greeted by a huge crowd in different stages of dress (and undress--I saw way too many bare butts by the end of the day, but none of them particularly picture-worthy):

There was some strange tradition of people throwing tortillas. I tried to get a pic of the hundreds of flying tortillas, but couldn't quite catch them while any of them were airborne.

It got pretty nasty closer to the starting line because the whole pavement was covered in trampled tortilla paste. It had been raining the night before and that morning, so it was gross and slippery.

With so many people starting the race at the same time, it took us a while to move forward past the starting line, and I was beginning to wonder if we would even know where the starting line would be once we passed it, but alas, the start:

It was really crowded, and the jog was a nice slow and steady pace. It was actually the perfect pace--it let you have enough breath to talk and point at the naked people and laugh at people's costumes and just take it all in. I was soo prepared for this. I mean, I could have run faster, but was totally enjoying it all.

And the Hayes Street hill. Did you know I was stressing a little over this? When I saw it on tv in years past, the hill looked so steep and daunting, but you know what they say, the camera adds 15 degrees to the steepness of a hill, so it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and I had been training on steeper grades than that. A lot of people were walking, so we had to come to a walk too, but that was fine. A perfect photo opp:

Come on, look at those smiles! Was I really stressing over this race? I mean, I think it was great that I put so much training into this, but I'm even more glad that this was a fun event and not some grueling and hellish test of my will. What also made it easy was Mary's cool, laid-back, and downright optimistic attitude. For her, the race had only one hill at the beginning and the rest was all downhill from there. It's really good to bring along an optimist for these kinds of things. The mile markers flew by, we rose from out of the busy commercial districts into the residential neighborhoods and into the cool, green embrace of Golden Gate Park and finally into the wide open arms of the Pacific Ocean: