Bare to Breakers

It is that time of year again, time for San Francisco and indeed the entire bay area to bring out the craziest people out there and put them on a 7.2 mile race course. There are always in desperate need for medics to help oversee the race so I volunteered (of course) to help out. Now this day starts out at 3am when I wake up, pick up the guy who I am driving to the race and drive all the way to the city. This in and of itself is a challenge at 3am. Orientation, gearing up and all the usual volunteer work goes on before they finally bus us out to our locations. I was part of a three man mobile team that was to patrol between the last med station and the finish line.

Now this race is divided into two categories. The first category is the serious and semi-serious runners who actually want to run the race. The only medicals we get from them are dehydration and maybe the occasional chest pain for the more out of shape runners. This was no different than a normal race and was both routine and enjoyable especially with the large crowds. We had a couple of relatively simple calls, an extreme dehydration which actually caused a gentleman to get violent to caregivers. Strap that man on a gurney and put an IV in him. This race is a bit more special than most as it is tradition to wear costumes while running. These costumes many times are both original and many times quite sexy. Definitely a wonderful event to watch.

Then we get to the other category of the race. After the real runners we have the crashers. These are the people who did not register to run, but crashed the race somewhere in the middle. You can recognize them from either the lack of race number of the ample beer and other alcohol on their breath and in their hands. Virtually every runner has a keg within 20 ft that they use to constantly refill their cups with. These kegs are pulled in shopping carts, intricate floats, or sometimes the old fashion wheelbarrow. These drunks get into all sorts of fights, trauma (run into a tree or fall down) to everything else you can imagine. We approached one young lady with blood pouring from both knees and asked if she would like a band aid. She of course asks why, to which we point to her knees. Her response is then, ‘ whoa dude, I am bleeding’. Welcome to the next 4 hours of drunk folks. There is one more thing that we add to this picture. Bay to breakers is also known as Bare to Breakers, which is a reasonable size group of people (co-ed) that enjoy running this race naked. Personally I do not know what inspires someone to run 7.2 miles with their member hanging out for both all to see and of course to pick up everything that is going around, but they do. So lets think about this, public nudity, public intoxication, and a whole lot of people thinking as a mob not as individuals. Suffice to say we were both busy and amused at the same time.

As for my ACLS class, yes watch out, I somehow passed this class and am legally certified to dispense a couple dozen types of medication (not that I would ever carry them), and actually intubate a patient (how scary is that). But yes I passed and another milestone or hurdle accomplished. I will post pictures from the race very soon.

One last thing, men if your waist size is more than 40 inches we really don’t want to see you run naked (actually I don’t want to see it anytime), both men and women if you are over the age of 50, congrats for running, again we don’t want to see you naked.