The year that Bay to Breakers was the world's largest footrace
May 15-Bay to Breakers, San Francisco's anything-goes road race, returns to San Francisco on Sunday. Some participants will don salmon costumes and run the race in the opposite direction; a small but reliable contingent will run Bay to Breakers in the nude, save for their running shoes.
Forty years ago, in 1986, the race became remarkable for another reason: It was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's largest footrace. It was Bay to Breakers' 75th year, and an estimated 110,000 runners took to the streets. In typical Bay to Breakers fashion, only around 79,000 were actually registered.
In the years prior, Bay to Breakers participation had skyrocketed, climbing from 27,000 runners in 1981. Still, 1986's turnout exceeded expectations. The day prior, the Chronicle estimated that 85,000 would run. The race was so crowded that it took some runners half an hour to cross the starting line after the gun fired, recalls Peter Hartlaub, the San Francisco Chronicle's culture critic.
The morning of May 18, 1986, was foggy and blustery. Newspaper photos show Fell Street swarmed with participants, with a large, homemade whale's tail poking up above the throng. (Six months earlier, Humphrey the whale had gotten stuck in San Francisco Bay.)
To survey the action, local news media deployed three helicopters. KPIX-TV dedicated a reporter to chase down centipedes, teams of runners who wear attached costumes.
That year's race broke other records, too. Grete Waitz, the 1984 Olympic marathon medalist, set the women's record when she finished in 38 minutes and 46 seconds. Ed Eyestone, a former BYU track star, set the men's record with a time of 34 minutes and 32.5 seconds.
"This is the first race I've ever seen him run that he's won," Eyestone's girlfriend, Lynn Lambert, told the Examiner.
For those less athletically gifted, though, the highlight of 1986's Bay to Breakers was the parade of oddball costumes. As always, runners' outfits riffed on current events. One centipede dressed as Halley's Comet, which was visible in the night sky a few months prior. Also fresh in memory was the Chernobyl disaster, which took place the month before. One runner, Karam Tahir, dressed up in a hazmat-style jumpsuit, with "Chernobyl" inscribed on the chest.
"I'm a member of the Chernobyl softball team," he told an Examiner reporter waiting at the finish line. "That's the way their teams are going to have to dress after the nuke accident over there."
Reporters from both the Chronicle and the Examiner spotted parents pushing strollers.
"She wasn't difficult to push," Mike Stevens told the Examiner of his 1-year-old daughter, Holly, who was the first baby to finish. "We told people along the way that she was really pulling us."
When Bay to Breakers started out in 1912, it was called the Cross City Race, and it was rather ordinary. It was also small: In 1963, only 15 runners finished.
The San Francisco Examiner became the race's sponsor in the 1960s, and the event was given its current name, Bay to Breakers. Over the 1970s, it grew popular, attracting thousands of racers. Among the ordinary joggers, costumed runners began to appear. By the '80s, today's wacky version of Bay to Breakers was in full swing.
Things have cooled since the event's peak in 1986. This year, an estimated 30,000 runners are expected to participate. Bay to Breakers no longer holds the world record, either. In 2010, a race in Manila, Philippines, took that honor when it drew more than 116,000 participants.
Still, there's no Guinness record for goofy costumes. When Bay to Breakers returns on Sunday, it will keep its monopoly on San Francisco strangeness. For most of the tens of thousands of participants, that's the record that counts.
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