New Rules

What the hell? This was my first thought as I read the top headline in the SFist on Wednesday morning. It read, "New Rules for Bay to Breakers". The "new rules" apparently will include a "zero tolerance policy on alcohol" and "no wheeled objects and floats". What will this perennially fabulous event on May 17th be like without these three crucial elements? Will it now become like all of the other cookie-cutter, corporatized marathons around the country? Will it only involve the countless numbers of ultra-fit ladies and gents of San Francisco and no the multitudes of others? What will become of the delightful costume-wearing, heavy-drinking, mardi-grass-esque crowd that makes this event so unique?

Last year, I ran in the race. Mind you, I didn't run the whole thing, but I started at Fell and Oak and ran through the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach. I wasn't in costume, but I certainly wasn't registered. I wouldn't be caught dead running in the name of ING! On our way back out of the park, I became immersed in the countless floats, push carts beer kegs, and sequins. It was simply awesome! There was even a beautiful shirtless man with a massive snake around his neck. My what a marvelous spectacle it all was! Please, don't destroy it in the name of NIMBY-ism and seamless online banking.

Running is meant to be fun. That is how I have always approached it. Endless competition drowns people and makes them more and more mechanized. This obsession of countless twenty- and thirty-somethings with training for a marathon seems bizarre and unhealthy to me. I feel like so many of them do this as a form of name-dropping. They can now say, "I finished in the top 100 at the Boston Marathon" and "Did you see me running through Central Park in (yes) the ING New York City Marathon?"

Perhaps these new regulations are ING's way of saying, we just don't stand for idleness or revelry. We want you all timing yourselves with those preposterous little timers on your feet, we want you pinning a number on your chest, we want more hamsters spinning around in their wheels.