at least I was faster than the gigantic 5-man silver burrito

[moominmolly]

I'm in San Francisco, sort of on a whim. It's my 30th birthday, and the Bay to Breakers 12k was today, so I thought it would be fun to run it. Mind you, I'm too lazy to actually train, so my longest run to date was 2.8 miles last Thursday. Given that, I'm pretty pleased that I managed to run well over half of the race (2/3, maybe?) without dying. Yay!

Running a crazy race in San Francisco with 45,000 entrants is very much like taking a nice leisurely jog with all of Burning Man. Seriously, this race is bigger than my hometown. It took me 15 minutes to clear the start line. Everyone was fabulous, and the people on the sidelines were as great as the runners themselves.

While waiting for me around the finish line, dilletante ran into vito_excalibur, who I had totally forgotten lived in San Francisco. Accidentally running into someone you know in a big city is wonderful; doing it in someone ELSE'S big city is even better. Especially when you just did a footrace along with an entire small town's worth of people.

One nice thing about traveling west: free mornings! We had a lazy laid-back time in the hotel yesterday after getting up, and I was mystified that by the time we left, housekeeping had not yet pounded angrily on our door telling us to wake up already. That was when I realized that it was only 9 AM. Woo!

One crappy thing about traveling west: if you plan to see a bunch of people in the evening, don't forget that you will turn into a pumpkin before you even show up. Oops. But in the end, I had fun anyway, and was delighted to see the people I did. :)

I feel terribly special and celebrated. I don't remember the last time I went this far out of my way to ensure that I properly celebrated my own birthday, but with 30 it felt mandatory. And it worked! I feel great, and not at all old.

A last note: I feel as if I am missing a year. I have to remind myself that I haven't seen a lot of people in TWO years, not just one. I know what happened to that year -- she's taking a nap right now, actually -- but all the same, I'm happy to be back in my own timestream again.

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

By the way, thanks for saying that 2/3s is a lot. Everyone else I knew ran the whole thing, so it's good to hear. :) And I just did the math, knowing my running pace and walking pace, and 2/3 is just about exactly right. Yarrr! Even if it wasn't the whole course, it's still a personal record.

[amber-phoenix.livejournal.com]

I'm betting everyone else you knew a) trained a bunch or b) is more on the natural/lifelong athlete sides of things or c) both.

2/3's is FIVE MILES.