Doug Wade's Staging Area

Obviously the coastline is amazing in that area and the race takes good advantage of it. There’s also a weird little loop you do at the start before heading down Cannery Row, and there’s a weird little jog into Pacific Grove to get the distance to come out, so don’t expect to be on the water the whole time. I got to see the elite runners coming back but if you’re in the wrong place it’s not guaranteed since you could be up in Pacific Grove.

I basically have two complaints about the race, neither one of which is a deal breaker but things I think it’s worth knowing about.
1. They advertise it as a mostly flat PR course and it’s…. sort of true? I’ve run hillier halves for sure but if I were trying to PR I’d be pretty frustrated by the altitude gain to run into Pacific Grove for no obvious reason (if you head inland you gain altitude, nothing for it). I see it more as a take pictures on the course race. Which is fine, just something to be aware of.
2. There aren’t enough port a potties. 25 minute wait to go before the start. There are lots of aid stations and as far as I could tell they all had a couple of potties but literally a couple. With 7,000 people on course. Many of whom saw the big lines at the start and figured they’d go on the course somewhere.

I’ve done the 5k and the 10k. 5k you stay pretty close to “home” and you run this one mile loop out into a peninsula in the bay that’s very pretty, then down the coast far enough to make the distance work out and then flip it around and back to the start. The 10k is more of a normal out and back. The half you make it almost to the Hayward Shoreline interpretive center.

Brazen is always awesome, usual great food and shirts and medals. No surprises there.

I like the 5k at this event, you get a very scenic route. With the longer runs less so, since you get diverted out of the immediate lake area. There are technically some small hills but the trail runners are all thinking “what’s he talking about?”, it’s only a factor if you’re used to running around a really flat neighborhood or track most of the time.

Brazen is always on point for all the practical stuff, super organized, best food ever, shirts actually meant to be run in.

Let’s start with the actual running. I like the 2nd half course – the first six miles are nice rolling hills through Golden Gate Park which is always fun. Then some mostly downhill miles through Haight-Ashbury and the Mission District which is fun and quirky and decent crowd support. Then some really dull miles, it’s maybe two miles to get to the water, then another couple of pretty miles up the coast. So 11/13 miles are cool.

Plenty of water… although they’re not evenly distributed, they’re mostly towards the end, not sure what the deal is with that. Volunteers were wonderful. San Francisco PD was wonderful directing traffic through the streets where they were letting cards bleed through during gaps (mostly in the Mission district).

And I gotta say finishing at the main finish line alongside the marathoners was very cool.

My big issue is with the bus system. 4am pickup for a 6:45 race, we took the bus from east bay BART stations to the Embarcadero and our driver has NO idea what a second half is or anything just she’s supposed to stop at certain corners according to a sheet she has. Our email said to wait on the bus but she’s way back in this huge line of busses. So we stick our heads out and ask the other official looking people walking around and they recommend going to the front bus so we can get going. We do that and we’re at the 2nd half start by 5:25 or so.

In the dark. With no signs, nobody to meet us, no idea how to get to the start. And there’s only like ten of us at this point. Eventually we walk through the rose garden basically by moonlight, find a park ranger who has some roads blocked off and he directs us to the start. Luckily we had over an hour before the start so we weren’t too freaked out but it was definitely some stress we didn’t need.

Keep in mind it’s like 53 degrees and foggy/wet and sunrise isn’t for a while yet so you definitely need to think through some extra layers to check or discard.

On the plus side there were tons of port a potties at the start… on the minus there weren’t that many on the actual course.

My one other concern was that they dumped three thousand runners or so into the course in about 10 minutes as best I can tell. I was tagging along in the back and congestion wasn’t really an issue but there were places that doubled back on the course and the mid-packers were just packed in there like sardines. If anybody was doing Galloway type run-walk-run they would have been screwed – no way to pass back on the run portions and pissing everybody off on the walks.

Given the much earlier start this year than prior years I don’t understand why they didn’t dribble people in much more gradually, especially since the 2nd half course and the full course actually cross each other early on and all the marathoners were being directed to run THROUGH us. How… why…

All in all it was fun but it feels very “one and done” to me, unless I can figure out some other method to get to the 2nd half start. I can see doing the first half which would be a little more straightforward logistically if they can get the bridge thing straightened out, but there’s just so many good races that time of year…