Getting In · Iconic road race
Bay to Breakers
It has been run since 1912. It crosses San Francisco from the bay to the Pacific. It has at various times held the record for the largest footrace on earth, and it involves a significant number of people in salmon costumes running the wrong way on purpose.
- Distance
- 12K7.46 miles, bay to ocean
- Field
- ~30,000 registered
- First run
- 1912
- Hayes Street Hill
- ~11% grade, mile 2
- Registration
- Opens the winter before
- Best door
- Just sign up
Bay to Breakers is two events sharing a course. At the front, a legitimate elite 12K with a serious history. Behind it, one of the great American spectacles: costumes, floats, tortilla throwing at the start, a group of runners dressed as salmon who run upstream against the field, and a party that has genuinely required city intervention over the years.
The course runs from near the Embarcadero, up the punishing Hayes Street Hill in the second mile, through the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park, and finishes at Ocean Beach with the Pacific right there. Hayes Street is the only hard part and it is extremely hard.
How to get in
- Open entryJust register
Bay to Breakers is a normal open-registration race. Prices rise as the date approaches and it eventually closes, so register early, but there is no lottery to survive.
- Time qualifierSeeded and elite corrals
Submit a verified time for a seeded corral. Worth doing: with 30,000 people and a costume contingent, corral placement is the difference between racing and weaving.
Questions runners actually ask
Is Bay to Breakers a real race?
Very much so at the front, with a serious elite 12K field and a long competitive history. Behind that, it is a costume party that happens to be moving west.
How hard is Hayes Street Hill?
Roughly 11 percent grade for several blocks in the second mile. It is short and it is genuinely steep. Everything after it is comparatively kind.
Go to the source
Entry rules, dates, standards, fees, and odds change every single year, and the interesting races change them the most. Use this guide to build the plan; use the official site to confirm the details before you book anything.
If this is your kind of thing
Need the races in between? The hard part of a bucket list year is everything else on the calendar: the qualifier, the tune-up, the long run with a bib on.