Contributed by: Melinda Bailey (aka Babypusher )

I’m a tough girl…not Cha Cha DiGregorio tough, but at least Betty Rizzo tough (sorry, but I find Grease to be the most appropriate movie to compare myself to). That’s why I was so surprised when pregnancy kicked my ass! Kicked it hard. I shouldn’t have been so surprised…I wasn’t exactly ready for it. I was just hanging around, wondering what I wanted to be when I finally grew up and thinking I should really start getting back into some kind of shape when BANG! I got knocked-up at the tender age of 36.

Nuns and other religious types will tell you that pregnancy is designed by God, or at least by an angel appointed specifically by God, but my pregnancy was designed either by the Marquis DeSade or by one of his supervisors (I assume Hell is run much like a Wal-Mart in that everyone has supervisors and the night shift gets locked in at night). And oh yes, the tiny, adorable screaming little poop machine really did make it all worth it, but I found myself, nearly two years later, finally (oh finally!) recovered from the whole ordeal, wondering when the heck all this baby weight was going to magically fall off.

Some of the other gals in my moms group were starting to think the same thing because the topic suddenly turned from teething to running. RUNNING. Eek. Now I don’t have anything against runners, but I think they over-do things a bit, kind of like people who cook pancakes with the burner turned all the way up. Why? The outside just burns and the inside stays goopy and gross. That’s what would happen to me. I’d get burnt out and damaged and give up while my middle was still soft. No. Running was out, but walking? Hmm. The last time I was in a decent shape, (a shape that I would desperately love to be in today but of course thought was way to fat while I was in it) I was going for 45 minute power walks everyday. I remember, one day, passing my reflection in a car window, seeing myself in my track pants, over-sized Nautica jacket and walk-man (complete with Cat Stevens Greatest Hits on tape) and thought that I looked like an ATHLETE.

That’s why, on February 1st of 2008, I decided that I was going to walk, not run, Bay to Breakers . Why not? If drunk naked dudes could run it, I, who once looked like an athlete in the reflective window of a Ford Festiva, could certainly do it. Still, I was feeling a little intimidated, walking in a runner’s race. So I decided I couldn’t do it alone, so I sent out an email to the three other members of my comedy group, 2Good4u (we billed ourselves as the Worlds First All-Girl BoyBand and wrote what I am sure is the World first Karaoke musical, even though I’ve done no research and thus have nothing to back that statement up).

“Y’all,” I wrote, “I say we do Bay to Breakers! How fun could this be? (I just realized that I am so out of shape, I need to train even to stroll for twelve miles, so if anyone wants to train with me…Lake Merced is 5 miles. Sunday Mornings work best for me.) In conclusion, yee haw!”

Yee haw was right, because my girls, Pepper and Corvette were on board for the whole shebang and even Butterscotch, who couldn’t do Bay to Breakers, would be training with us. Giddy on the promise of a big chunk of weekly girl-time, we started walking Lake Merced. The first week, my feet hurt. I felt disappointed when old women with tiny dogs passed us. Maybe I wasn’t the former athlete-appearing person I thought I was. The second week my feet hurt. The third and fourth weeks my feet hurt, but around the fifth week, my feet still hurt, but I started to get mad every time an old woman with a tiny dog passed us. I joined the Y, I started going once a week, then twice a week and then every day. My feet were hurting less and less, and then, one day, I started passing those old ladies (in your face, old lady with tiny dog! In your freaking face!).

The week before the Big Race, the unthinkable happened. A heat wave hit San Francisco! Which just means that it got a bit hot, but for people living in a fog bank, a bit hot is a catastrophe. Also catastrophic, the toddler got the flu, which meant she and her non-stop flow of puke and mucuus was banned from the Y. In my blind, unthinking, borderline retarded drive to train everyday, I decided a 45 minute stroller walk would be a good idea. Bad idea. It was so hot, a 45 minute stroller walk took us 2 hours, we had to stop for ice cream twice, I got a sunburn and worst of all the toddler developed a taste for orange push-pops.

Around this time, sunburnt and faced with doom-and-gloom “meteorologists” talking about the blazing heat, fear started to set in. Big fear. We were all feeling exactly like Bilbo Baggins and his weird dwarf pals felt the night before they embarked on their treacherous, dragon-laden quest to Lonely Mountain. No, of course we didn’t expect to face a fire-breathing dragon on Hayes Street hill , but we did expect similar tragedies. We were most afraid of not making it to Spreckels Lake by the 11:30 cut-off time and thus enduring the horrific, searing hot shame of not being able to finish. We were also a little afraid of accidentally touching a naked guy, but the not-crossing-the-finish-line fear was more real. Without saying anything to each other, we were all doing the math: our five-mile walks around Lake Merced took more than an hour. Bay to Breakers was twelve miles, and in order to finish we would need to do it in 4 hours…in the big awful heat wave…after possibly touching a random naked dude. It seemed impossible.

Then, two days before the race, Corvette sent us an email that changed EVERYTHING. Bay to Breakers was 12 Kilometers not 12 miles. Oh yeah. That’s what 12K means. We could do that! Heat or no heat. Naked dudes or clothed dudes. Feeling better about our chances, but still a bit nervous and hormonal, we decided to dress as cute as possible with Pepper wearing a powder-blue short set, me with my orange money-goes-to-fat-kids laces tied in my hair and Corvette rocking a red cocktail dress. Oh, and I made a kick ass playlist for my Ipod so we could still torture the other racers with our dorktacular taste in music (someone really needs to make a “my favorite band sucks” t-shirt so I can buy it and wear it everyday like a cartoon character).

At 6:45 on Sunday morning, a slightly hung-over Corvette and I waited for MUNI to come whisk us from the Sunset to the Embarcadero. The fifty-ish runner next to us picked on some college girls for eating BBQ chips for breakfast. “We’re walking it, dude.” They told him. He shot a judgmental look at their flip-flops and asked them what this “420” thing he saw on the Mtv news is all about. I shot a judgmental look at the weird ankle stretches he was doing. It occurred to us that in this little microcosm on Judah Street, Corvette and I, with our well-padded walking shoes, a Hello Kitty backpack full of organic trail mix and a modest bottle of Jack for Start and Finish Line shots, fell smack dab in the middle.

The train that stopped was a Bay to Breakers shuttle, and, energized with the confidence that median-ness will give a gal, we counted our buck-fifties and hopped aboard.

“What? Seven bucks?” “For MUNI?” “Seven?” “Really?” “Are you sure?” “Are you high?” “Are you sure you’re not high?”

We decided wait for the N. It was going to the same place and cost 5.50 less than the shuttle. We weren’t the only ones to figure that out, and I was forced to ride the entire way with my right nostril pressed up against the windshield. At one point, a gentleman tried to hop on the back and asked us if those in the front could move up. I calmly told him that if he would just wait a moment, I would pry my nostril off the windshield, crowd surf to the back door and punch him in the nads so hard, he would naturally curl up into a ball small enough to fit even on this, the most crowded MUNI bus that has ever been.

Finally, I declared that I didn’t care who peed on it, I was going to get off this damn bus, and kiss the sidewalk. Luckily, the fact that we’d made our escape within convenient walking distance from the Start Line distracted me from actually kissing Market Street (surely a death sentence). Speaking of death, just a block away, we ran into Pepper, who was in a homicidal rage over the three bucks MUNI was charging everyone (even those with fast passes, like our girl Pep) to get on the underground. I broke out the Jack. Ah. Bourbon at 7:30 and the fact that we were all together, about to walk our very first Bay to Breakers made our MUNI troubles fade, and we trotted towards the Start Line.

Our happy little trot soon turned to a grumpy little shuffle as more and more people shuffled along with us. By the time the jackasses started whipping tortillas and beach balls at us, Pepper’s murderous rage, Corvette’s semi-hangover and my self-doubt started subtly killing our B2B buzz. Could we possibly get through this without giving up…or, in Pepper’s case, killing someone? Soon, though, the timing chips in our shoes beeped as we crossed the Start Line, and our mood started to lift. We started to notice the elaborate floats: Bowser’s Castle, a Viking Ship and a Yellow Submarine pushed by a group in Sergeant Pepper outfits. “I have all your albums!” I yelled.

The slow pace of this first stretch of the race, mostly caused by keg-standing frat floats and ever encroaching spectators, allowed us to relax a little and have fun. We oohed and aahed over all the cute dogs and adorable babies we met. There were quite a few dogs and even more babies…but almost no toddlers. On a race like this, toddlers will either fly into a full-blown tantrum at the nerve of all the tortilla-throwing jackasses invading their space or need to stop every ten seconds to smell flowers and look at stuff that resembles the moon or cats. Mine would do both. She’s a Gemini.

I took advantage of the lackadaisical start by taking lots of photos of crazy/funny/stupid costumes. I got a good shot of the Salmon (running against the stream and slowing stuff down even more).

I took a picture of the Dharma initiative folks to show to my Lost-obsesses hubby. There was one group costume that I just had to capture! I ran in front of them and yelled over the noisy throng “Ladies! Pose for a picture please!”

“Pictures!” They all yelled back. (Just a few blocks from the Start Line and they were already used to the routine.)

“Thank you, girls. You look great!” I was happy, yes, to get a good shot of The Sexy Ghostbusters, but I was thrilled to capture the girl who had dressed up as Sexy Stay-Puft Man. Oh yeah! Once you get to Sexy Stay-Puft Man, you can be sure that The Sexy Costume had reached the absolute apex of ridonkulousness.

While Sexy Stay-Puft Man was the most hilarious costume, there were much other more ingenious costumes. Rows and rows of Juno-inspired track teams and pregnant Sunny-D-chugging teens, someone who dressed up like “irony” and…hmm…I didn’t really get this one. It was a large, organized group of security guards yelling at us to move on. They seemed to be protecting some runners. One of the faux security guards must have looked at Pepper the wrong way because, murderous rage flooding back, she was off, her hands out-stretched in anticipation of a strangling. Corvette and I looked at each other in alarm. This was it. Someone was going to die if we didn’t intervene…quick! We turned and ran after our 5’2 little homicidal maniac. It was too late. The security guard had her around the waist. Then we noticed that her hands were not straining to reach the soft part of some poor sap’s neck, but a fairly decent facsimile of the Olympic Torch. “Free Tibet!” And just like that, the fun part of Bay to Breakers had begun.

Just as the fun began, the flow went from slow to crawl to dead stop. The combination of drunken racers, drunken spectators and Hayes Street Hill had seriously impeded our forward momentum. Undaunted, we craned our necks, looking for a short cut. Ah yes! The park! We should cut through the park. Great idea! After a few dead-ends, high ledges and steep climbs we started to doubt the greatness of the idea. But at the crest of the hill, we looked behind us and realized that we’d just left hundreds of drunks (the keg stands at the top of Hayes Street hill were the most impressive), a half-dozen floats and one obnoxious TV crew in our dust. I turned our Ipod speakers up and sang along to Ronnie Milsap (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIshesWDDKw ) as we sped-up towards Fell Street.

We took a quick banana and trail mix break on a median strip near Golden Gate park. At the time I felt a little guilty, like we should push on, but then later, two runner friends of mine admitted that they’d stopped at Popeye’s on Divisadero for fried chicken. Besides, once we got into the park, we realized that the promise of median-ness made at that N stop on Judah and finally delivered. We were surrounded by walkers. We’d left the keg-stands behind us and most of the runners had passed us by now (except our friend Joe who was experimentally running the race as drunk as possible, he caught up with us later at the Buffalo paddock, offering us a shot of tequila before moving on towards his goal of a three hour finish). Truly relaxed, I found Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger on the playlist and cranked it.

Just then, I looked ahead and spotted a familiar sight. No, not a naked runner (although it was quite surprising how many of them had made it this far). Spreckels Lake. We’d made it! Whenever it happened, we were going to be allowed to cross the finish line. I seemed to be the only one celebrating this milestone, but still, the last leg of the race went by quickly. Fueled by our impending success, potassium and Salt ‘N’ Pepa’s Push It , we half-danced, half-jogged, half-walked to the Breakers portion of the Bay to Breakers Foot Race.

By the time we did cross the finish line, the half-dance had turned into a full-blown semi-choreographed dance to Lionel Ritchie’s Running with the Night . We could barely hear it above the noise of the finish line, but we didn’t care. We did it! And in just 3 hours and 49 seconds. Sure. Yes. We already knew for a fact that at least one drunk person had beaten our time (and we suspected many, many more had left us in their boozy, naked, sweaty dust). Still, Corvette said she was sure we could shave off at least 49 seconds next year if we didn’t stop to dig the Purel out of the backpack every time we brushed against a naked guy’s ass. Yeah. That was NOT going to happen, but I must say, it felt really good to already be talking about next year.