Texas man wins Bay to Breakers in 35 minutes, 23 seconds

The costumed participants in the race, so-called, were heavy this year on all things scary, such as political candidates.

“I have an unusual sense of humor,” said John Seumptewa, who was wearing an orange-blond Trump wig and waiting for the starting gun.

The early arrivals for the race, which has attracted 1.8 million runners since it began in 1912, negotiated a maze of steel barricades, outhouses, homeless folks in doorways, cops, guards and more outhouses.

Runners were bound by race rule 142 (“Competitors must wear clothing that is clean, designed and worn so as not to be objectionable”) although it was not clear how that applied to a zombie with spikes coming out of his head.

[...] that was the case because Isaac Mukundi of Grand Prairie, Texas, crossed the finish line with a time of 35 minutes and 23 seconds, exactly one second ahead of second-place finisher Tsegay Tuemay Weldlibanos of Tampa, Fla.

At the finish line, the winners and the tens of thousands of runners behind them were fully entitled to receive shiny finisher’s medals, energy bars, freebies, loud music and all the bananas they could consume on the premises.

While fleet of foot, the 2016 winners were well off the course record set in 2009 by the legendary Sammy Kitwara of Kenya who crossed the finish line in 33 minutes and 31 seconds without benefit of an outhouse.

In the side streets of the South of Market area were waiting hordes of unregistered runners who traditionally slip into the passing throng and run for free, dodging course marshals along the way who are empowered to kick them out.

Other course marshals were watching for folks relieving themselves without the benefit of an outhouse, another iconic element of the race despite the “no public urination” signs.

Cops tucked away in strategic spots monitored the passing runners to make sure that the stuff they were hydrating with was the stuff they were supposed to be hydrating with.

Jim Guida and his brother, Ralph, were running as movie icons the Blues Brothers.

Dennis Bott was Hulk Hogan (“he gets people excited”), and John Hearney ran with a basketball hoop on his head that strangers kept trying to dunk various items into, to his growing annoyance.

[...] in the mix were T-shirted members of something called “Team F— It Up,” a Rubik’s Cube, an ersatz Golden State Warriors starting five, a woman wearing a T-shirt that said “Sometimes I Open My Mouth and My Mother Comes Out,” along with any number of Batmen, Supermen and Spider-men.

Halfway through the course, on the fabled, fearsome Hayes Street Hill, the extra weight from all the heavy costumes was making their owners work twice as hard as their fellow runners in Lycra.

A dozen people carried a 20-foot-long Star Destoyer spaceship from the “Star Wars” film franchise.

Instead of blasting out laser weapons, it blasted out dance music, attracting hordes of other runners who danced beside the space ship as they ran.