Supermarket Street Sweep

Today I did the Supermarket Street Sweep, a combination bike race with prizes (in the general Alleycat style) and mission to collect food for the SF Food Bank. 170 cyclists participated and collected about 7000 lbs of food. [you can skip past this text to the map and photos, if you want]

Here’s how the race aspect works (I’d never done one before):

A group of cyclists gather without knowing the route, and then a manifest sheet is handed out with a list of supermarkets around the city you have to visit and things you have to purchase for the food bank at each one (you have to bring back receipts as proof). The first stop was prescribed (in Daly City, the farthest-out location), but after that you were free to visit the supermarkets in any order and by any route, making the race a combination of raw speed and navigation (well, and teamwork if you have a team, allowing some members to run in at each stop and shop, while others hydrate, watch bikes, plan the route for the next leg, and so on).

This race had a few categories, with people competing on the basis of speed (over a longer route) or “cargo” (the most pounds of food collected, over a shorter route). I entered the speed division, not because I’m fast or had any chance of winning, but because I thought it would be a more interesting route.

Oh, and just to be ridiculous, I decided to do the race in a felt santa suit. Small children yelled “Santa!”, parents looked at me suspiciously, and cashiers smirked. I came in close to last, but finished the full route before the SF Food Bank closed, won a raffle prize at the after-party (as “Late Santa”, since I hadn’t put my name on my manifest), and overall had a great day. I also exercised my simple backpack-to-pannier retrofit and it held up well.

Here’s the navigation challenge: If you were given this list of supermarkets to visit (starting on the Embarcadero, and ending in Dogpatch, and with a requirement to visit the Daly City location first), and had to make a snap decision on what order and what routes to take, what would you do?

Based on a mix of the SF Bike Coalition map (which color-codes streets by how steep they are) and the “Google Maps Bike Directions” on my phone (thanks, E!), I decided on an approximate route, and here’s what I ended up doing:

There were places I took wrong turns, and my pace was not that fast, but I think the general route was pretty good. I think the Outer Mission -> Outer Richmond route I took was faster (though steeper) than just heading out to the ocean and going up Great Highway. And I followed a maze of non-road paths in the Presidio in a way that probably saved some distance.

Okay, here are some photos:

The crowd, getting ready: