A Possible Favor from San Franciscans

[nrs5000]

For camping you could look into booking a site at an East Bay regional park like Tilden in the Berkeley Hills, although you'd have to get up hella early to get to the city in time to run. Looks like Bart doesn't start early enough on Sundays so you'd need to drive and park.

[enr1co]

Looks to be some reasonable priced parking lots available really early AM for the SF marathon:

http://www.thesfmarathon.com/wp-cont...arking-Map.pdf

There's ample availability of budget chain hotels, e.g. Motel 6 in most East Bay cities with sub $100/nite rates to get some decent sleep before your run.

Check for prices around Oakland or SF Airport - hotels around there cater to weekday business travelers so they may have weekend deals.

Driving in to SF would be ~20-30 mins but very little traffic at 4:00-5:00on a SUN morning.

[fogrider]

this is the best kept secret
it looks like downtown is booked up for the 16th, but city center still has vacancies. parking is not easy, but there are public parking lots.

I think sutter stockton garage is not far, but expect to pay 34 bucks to park all day.

[texbike]

I'm not sure what time the ferrys start running on Sunday Morning, but how about parking in downtown Tiburon and taking the ferry over to the Piers and riding your bike over from there?

Texbike

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by plugkev

I am heading down to San Francisco to run the marathon on June 16th.
I was thinking I might:

Camp outside the the city on the night of the 15th
Find a good place to park my car in the city on the morning of the 16th
And ride my bike down to the start if necessary

The start-finish is under the Bay Bridge

Can you recommend a good place to park my car on a Sunday morning?
Can you recommend a place to camp Saturday night?
Should I just grab a hotel? I am on a budget.

Thanks,

Kev

Well, having run a few marathons..find a decent, quiet motel close to bus transportation..sleep well, eat a decent breakfast, go(bus) to marathon, have fun, bus back to the motel. I can't even imagine sleeping inna tent before running a marathon, they were tough enough already.

[cnighbor1]

stay here in walnut creek at my place take BART to run sunday
however BART starts running at 8:00am on sundays

[raygunner]

Try Hotel Des Arts...very cool & affordable. There's a parking garage right down the street too.