A run across the Golden Gate Bridge

I often travel to the Bay Area of San Francisco – visiting my company’s headquarters in Redwood City.  I’ve been to the downtown area of San Francisco many times for both business and pleasure.  During that time I’ve made a few trips over the Golden Gate bridge to visit places like Sausalito & the redwood forest, but never on foot.

During my last trip, I had a few hours to kill between finishing up work at 6pm on Friday afternoon and my 11pm red-eye flight back to the D.C area.

I wanted to get a run in before I flew home, so I decided to run across the Golden Gate bridge.

I drove over towards Crissy Field, and here’s the view only a few feet away from my car.
By the time I got changed and ready to run, it was about 7:15 – enough time to run up/over/back and still have time to stretch and get some food before the long flight home.

Here’s the route that I took

I started along the flat section toward the bridge along the bay, to get warmed up before climbing up the stairs to the bridge itself. 

Since it was getting close to sunset, I took the path under the bridge to the western side, hoping to get a nice picture, but I couldn’t really get wide enough for a good view.  This is the best I could get.  It came out pretty well, especially from a phone.

 

 

 

From here I re-traced my steps to the eastern side of the bridge.
and then over to the other side.  The view was amazing.This the view towards Alcatraz above, some day I’ll do the escape from Alcatraz triathlon and swim from there to the city.
this was taken from the visitor’s center on the northern side of the bridge.

It was so nice to have a scenic place to run, the time just flew by.  On the way back the sun was setting.
the trail, heading back down towards the car

In the end I ran close to 7 miles in just over an hour – it was a really great experience, one that I would do again in a heartbeat.