Wednesday, July 5, 2017

2017 Peachtree Road Race Recap

Yesterday, I completed my fourth Atlanta Journal Constitution Peachtree Road Race. It's the largest 10k in the U.S. with 60,000 participants. This is one of the most exciting, cheerful, and ORGANIZED races I've done to date. It's usually the only race I do in the summer. Something about it just keeps me coming back.

I became involved with this race as a teenage volunteer just trying to clock hours. I think I volunteered about 3 or 4 times. This was before the big Macy's parade downtown was cancelled (I used to volunteer for them too). When I volunteered, I had no idea what distance these folks were running and I didn't know what a 10k was. All I knew was I got great perks for standing out at Pharr Rd making sure cars knew Peachtree St. was closed and cheering on the runners and walkers. It was exciting just volunteering.

Pictures from 2016 with my father.
He's standing in front of the hospital on "cardiac hill" that he had his surgery at.
Check out 2014's recap. Fast forward to 2016's race... I didn't blog about it, but last year my dad and I ran/walked it together. In January 2016, he had triple bypass surgery. A fairly healthy man had to have unexpected heart surgery. Of course, that was hard. Once everything was okay and therapy was over, he told me he was down to do "the Peachtree" with me. I wish I would've blogged about it, but there's so many emotions from that day, it would have to be a separate post.

Fast forward to 2017... Here's a few pictures from the expo. I was in and out this year. I wasn't trying to pay $15 to park AND I didn't want to be near the temptation for too long, lol. Last year I signed up for a half marathon in Orlando and chickened out of doing it because I would've had to travel solo. *eye roll* I should've done it, but anyway...



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My husband decided to join us again for his second PRR, so it was me, him and my dad. We were all in different corrals and decided to just start the races on our own and meet up afterwards.

We arrived on MARTA just in time, literally 5 minutes before Corral G was to start (a bump up from my past corral's J and H). I didn't get any start pictures except for the flag and what I snapped on Snapchat.

Because I didn't properly train for this race, I intended to do walk/run intervals using my Couch to 10k app on Week 7. Lol at myself, because I should've known I was going to scrap that idea. As soon as they said go and I remembered that my "plan" would be thrown off a bit by the initial crowd and the fact that EVERYBODY starts out running, so it's not like I could really run my own pace. You're running the pace of the crowd until it thins out. The first 3 miles are always my fastest because it's downhill. It's mile 4 and 5 that take me out. *insert eye roll*.


So basically, I ran the first 3 miles, mostly walked miles 4 and 5, then started back running after reaching 5. I knew I hadn't been able to train very hard this time so I was okay with stopping to walk. In the past I would've been disappointed in myself for seemingly giving up. My splits definitely accurately reflect my performance. It was HOT and it was HUMID for sure too so it was difficult for ME to regain momentum.

During my walk break as I saw my pacer, who didn't know she was my pacer 😃 pass me by and disappear into the crowd, I was thinking "WHY do I keep signing up for this race!" and "I could be on the beach or at the Essence Festival!" Sigh. This was my slowest time completing this race solo. My dad shaved off 4 minutes off his time! It's all good. I still love running and I still love/hate running this race. He says he doesn't know about doing it next year, but I'll work on that. 😊




On to the next... the Atlanta 20k Relay :-)

2 comments:

  1. Congrats to all of you, especially your dad! That's amazing that he came back from open heart surgery and has stayed active! I would love to run this race one year, it sounds like SO much fun!

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    1. It is very fun! The spectators cheer you on the entire route, there's live bands every mile, free beer, free pizza...it's the best race :-)

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