2006-05-24

### Bay to Breakers [![Icon-Permalink.png](/Icon-Permalink.png)](#)

[![/space/gilbert.jpg](/space/gilbert.jpg)](http://www.ingbaytobreakers.com/)[![/space/start.jpg](/space/start.jpg)](http://www.ingbaytobreakers.com/)[![/space/smurfs.jpg](/space/smurfs.jpg)](http://www.ingbaytobreakers.com/)

Like around 100,000 other people, I ran in [Bay to
Breakers](http://www.ingbaytobreakers.com/) last Sunday. OK, only around 35k
actually ran. The rest were more like a party on wheels...er, legs. Highlights
included tortillas, elephants, naked people, fake naked people, a 12 foot trojan
horse, a portable earthquake shelter, and the [world record for number of smurfs
in one place](http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/5/prweb389195.htm). Oh, and
_lots_ of beer.

Back to the running, though. I've [been running for a
while](/space/2006-02-01), but this was the first organized run I'd ever
done. It was 12km (7.5 miles), which was pretty intimidating, but I actually did
better than I expected. Not quite as good as [some
people](http://cs.stanford.edu/~nstoll/), who finished _80th_...but some people
are semi-pro. I was just happy that I ran the whole thing, and at a halfway
decent pace.

If you want more, [Google
News](http://news.google.com/news?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&tab=in&ie=UTF-8&q=%22bay+to+breakers%22),
the [Merc's
wrapup](http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/14635999.htm),
and the [Chronicle's
wrapup](http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/22/BREAKERS.TMP)
are good starting points.