Local Man Starts His Own Race to Compete with Bay To Breakers

May 20, 2007 | by Fritz | No Comments

by Fritz

Zack Billingsby, age 35, from Diamond Heights has spent the last couple days leading up to today promoting his own race to compete against the very popular Bay to Breakers. He calls it the “Billingsby 1.5 Mile Spectacular.” The race starts from the beginning of Caesar Chavez Blvd and 3rd Street and runs up Clipper Street and Church Street to the base of the hill of Twin Peaks. When asked why his race doesn’t continue up the hill on Clipper Street Zack responded, “Shoot, I’m not running up that hill! I’ll kill myself.”

The Billingsby 1.5 Mile Spectacular kicked off its annual race competeing with the Bay to Breakers which started at 8 am this morning. The Bay to Breakers is a 7.46 mile run where people of all ages and costumes put on their running shoes and run from the Embarcadero to Ocean Beach. Close to 60,000 people showed up the popular race most of which where there to drink beer, dress up, and goof off.

“There is a lot of money to be made in running a race like this.” Billingsby said. “I can’t let Bay to Breakers have a monopoly on this.”

Billingsby thought of this idea on Thursday, May 17th, while he was reportedly eating a double bacon cheese burger from the Tower Burger restaurant, a frequent eating troff for Zack near his Diamond Heights apartment. He was reading an article in the paper about how popular the Bay to Breakers race was and The Billingsby 1.5 Mile Spectacular was born. He quickly went home and looked up clip art in his Microsoft Word database for his flyer that he would distribute.

“I found a stickman running.” Billingsby chuckled. “Since my ribbon printer only prints one color I had to go to the store and get a flashy color paper so it grab attention.” The color he picked was a neon yellow 20 lbs paper. The flyer read “Run in the 1st Annual Billingsby 1.5 Mile Spectacular! It went on with the place and time and offered the winner of the race a free taxi ride to the top of the Clipper Street hill to have a burger at the Tower Burger joint.

After distributing about 50 flyers at the Diamond Heights Safeway Zack stopped his campaign. “I figure all those fifty people would tell a hundred people and then it would snow ball from there. Ya know…a straight up grass roots campaign.”

This morning five people showed up. Two of them as it turns out were out for their morning walk and had never heard of the Billingsby 1.5 Mile Spectacular. They were quoted as saying, “Leave us alone.”

The other three runners was Josh Spinner, age 33, from Zack’s building and Skip Tinkerton, age 87, who had a walker and was dragging a oxygen tank. Billingsby himself filled out the third spot. Zack gave a brief speech to the runners and then announced that the race would start. He pulled out his 9 mm pistol from his Wilson Gym shorts and fired a shot in the air. It was reported by witnesses that after the shot Skip had a massive heart attack and fell to the ground. Josh Spinner started to run, but not up Caesar Chavez as the map of the race indicated. Josh was later found hiding in the Restroom of Moshi Moshi a Sushi Restaurant on 3rd Street 7 blocks away. Police arrested Zack Billingsby on firing a gun into the air and failure to get a marathon permit from the City of San Francisco. Skip is in stable condition at St. Luke’s Hospital.