Monday, May 21, 2007

Heart "Breaker"? Not a chance!

Whew! Bay To Breakers was quite the race this year!

I got up at 5 and was at the start line a little before 7. The race started promptly at 8 and I was across the finish line before 9:30! :) The timing chip worked quite well and was within 1 second of the time I clocked on my watch. I finished in 1:24:30 - besting last year's time by just over 5 minutes! My overall placement was 8564. Last year's placement was 7553, even though it took me longer to finish (1:29:44). At the 5 mile marker last year my time was 1:02; this year's it was only 0:58. (results)

I ran the whole race! I only slowed down to a walk on the Hayes Street Hill. I ran the whole rest of the race. When I ran the numbers, even counting the hill, I was doing 11.2 minutes per mile - a little faster than 5 mph which is a 12 minute mile.

The timing chips have one major drawback - data entry error. When I got my chip read at the end of the race I discovered they had me listed as "Gordon Gill," a 54 year old man from San Jose. When I input my name I get his time. His bib number was 928 and mine was 931 and somebody typed something in wrong somewhere so that we ended up transposed. He was sure faster than me at 59:20. Here's a screenshot of my race results. Notice how Mr. Gill's name got substituted for mine.

The top finisher was a woman, Edna Kiplagat, who of course is from Kenya (Kenyans always win this race). Her time was 38:55. They gave the elite women a 4:40 head start - the difference between the fastest male time and the fastest female time. The top male finisher, coming in third, was John Korir at 34:44.

A man died at the race this year. It happens occasionally. The story about it is here. I also found a video about Bay To Breakers (no longer available); it shows the EMTs working on the man.

The number of runners this year was 35,000 registered and an estimated 25,000 unregistered.

I'm detoxing from carbs today with an all meat day. The only solid food I'm allowing myself is meat. I'm using chicken breasts and some shrimp to keep the calories and fat down. I found my fat jeans and am wearing them until I can lose some of this bloat. I've put on about 10 pounds over the last two days.

I have the photos I took of the race up. There's too many to put them here, so here's the Flickr photo set.

[Later edit: I found my split time for reaching the top of the Hayes Street Hill. It was 32:01.] :)

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