Peachtree Recap

As you probably saw from the photos, we had a great time in Atlanta over the weekend. Here is what went down.

Friday:

We left about 10:30 AM and made it to Atlanta in great time. We checked in to the hotel and made right for the expo. It was held at the Hotel Intercontinental in Buckhead...it was a pretty nice setup although it was very tight...tons of people, lots of vendors.



A lot of vendors we have seen before, One More Mile was there, we love their stuff. There were a bunch of other local races trying to get people to sign up...then I heard an announcement, Jeff Galloway was only going to be there until 6:00 PM. Now, I had no idea that Jeff was going to be there. Now, for anyone who has read the blog for a bit, you know that I quote Galloway, his Run-Walk-Run method is one of the main reasons I was able to complete the half marathon and his methods are a major motivation to me. He pretty much is my running "hero"...Now, we had to find him. They had the expo split into 3 rooms...we hit all of the rooms until we found him. I waited patiently, then I had the opportunity to talk to him. I honestly started to well up as I told him how much his books and blog meant to me and by following his methods, I felt like I could complete any race. He was very nice and told me to keep him posted on what we were doing...very good man. I think I only embarrassed Karen a little...



After that, we finished up the rest of the expo, got our picture taken in front of a fake finish line. At this point, it was time for dinner. We had some issues finding the Vortex, so we just found the first place that we could get right into. Mellow Mushroom, it was. They had $7.00 beer flights of Dogfish Head...the beers and a calzone were a great end to the day.



When we got back to the hotel, it was time to get our gear ready for the morning. Karen and I took our shirts out and attached our race bibs, put our DTags on our shoes and turned in.



We woke up around 5:30, got dressed, and by 6:00 AM, we were heading over to the MARTA station. After a small SNAFU with the Karen almost getting stuck in the door of the MARTA train, we made it to the starting line to see the wheelchair race start. That was pretty amazing. Those guys and girls are really fast. From there, we decided that we needed to find some potties...luckily, there were plenty because we had a good amount of time before our corral was supposed to start. The elites were slated to start at 7:30, our corral started at 8:56...now, I think we were put so far back because I listed us as "casual" runners. I put Karen's esitmated finish time as 1 hour 10 minutes, which is pretty darn respectable...but for some reason, we were put back with the walkers. While we were waiting, we were gifted these cool headbands, check out this guy.



Anyhow, from here on out, I will NOT mark casual because the beginning of the race was pretty brutal. Dodging walkers and hopping the median so that we can keep our pace was tough...after the initial bottleneck, the course was great. Water and sprinklers were plentiful. "Cardiac" hill was a pretty easy incline...nothing like what we ran in the Country Music Marathon. Here is a self pic, I took about 4 miles in...



...still with the head band. Mom and I had a great run. We only skipped 1 interval and then about 4.7 miles in, we decided to run the rest of it, skipping our walking intervals. We ran the last 1.5 miles straight to finish. Here is a pic of Mom that I took during the run...



The finish line in sight!



We finished at 1:22:35, which is a little slow, but we really could not really do anything about it with the bottleneck in several places on the course. I am really happy with our performance. It really was a great warmup for Chicago.