Sara Hall Talks About The Difficult Bay To Breakers Course, Her Busy 2014 Racing Season and A Fall Marathon Debut
by Steve Soprano
May 21, 2014
I caught up with Sara Hall after her second place finish at Sunday’s 2014 Bay To Breakers in San Francisco.
Talking about her race, Hall said that the course is tough and she “underestimated the hill”. It was her first time racing here and feels there is a “learning curve” with this course and is looking forward to coming back in the future. Hall said Nukuri-Johnson always had a bit of a lead on her and while she was able to make up some ground, she wasn’t able to catch her in the end.
Hall has been a prolific racer this year, running the US Half Champs in January, a 15K in March, the Cherry Blossom 10-Mile in April as well as a couple of road miles and a steeple at Payton Jordan. I asked her what the thought process has been racing so often at such varied distances and she said, “It’s definitely not ideal to be all over the map, but I’m definitely having fun this spring with it being an off-year from track I’m trying some new stuff and wanting to challenge myself in the longer distances too.”
Looking forward she may run some more track this spring, but really wants to get in a fast half-marathon as she felt there was “more there” after her 4th place finish at Cherry Blossom. Ultimately she’s looking toward her marathon debut probably this fall, although plans haven’t been finalized yet and her next race will be the Bolder Boulder 10K this weekend where Ryan Hall will also run.
There were reports that he was going to race Bay to Breakers, but Sara said that he was “thinking of doing it”, but it was never definite and he decided against it because it’d be a bit too much with his current schedule. He won the Flying Pig 10K on May 3rd and now he’ll do Bolder Boulder and then the San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Half-Marathon the weekend after.
More: Full Race Results
*LRC 2014 Bay To Breakers 12K: Kenya’s Geoffrey Kenisi And Iowa’s Diane Nukuri-Johnson (Burundi) Get The Wins As Sara Hall (2nd) And Ben Bruce (7th) Are Top Americans
*LRC Nick Arciniaga Enjoying New Sponsor Under Armour; Says Yuki Kawauchi Is One Of His Heroes, Talks About Racing In A Spider-Man Singlet
*San Francisco Examiner: Diane Johnson wins second Bay to Breakers race in a row Johnson says that after training for marathons this race “feels like a sprint”.
*SFGate: Bay to Breakers hits its stride after slow start Includes a run down of some of the police crackdowns on drinking and arrest reports.
*SFGate: Bay to Breakers tamer this year, Panhandle residents say
*Nukuri-Johnson’s win at Bay To Breakers was just one of many great performances across the US for Iowa based runners Shelby Houlihan, Katy Moen, Edward Kemboi, Rob McCann all thrived as well.
*MB: Bay to Breakers results
*MB: Ryan Hall has pulled out of tmw’s Bay To Breakers