I ran the world's largest 10k, the Peachtree Road Race, on Friday morning with 60,000 other runners. I've lived in Atlanta my entire life, but never participated in the tradition until this year.
My SIL were both running it so we stayed in a hotel near the finish line the night before. We ended up walking at least a mile before the race between walking to the MARTA station (our public transportation) and walking from the train to our corrals then another mile after the race from the finishing area back to our hotel. I was in corral D while SIL was in M, there were about 40 minutes between our start times.
It was a good course. I've never run a race where there were spectators along the entire route, it was pretty cool. The first half the the course was pretty much all down hill, there was a big climb known as Cardiac Hill around mile 3 - 4, then the course was flat to slightly uphill until the last quarter of a mile which was downhill again. It was weird to constantly see a sea of humanity on the course in front of me, it never thinned out, it wasn't too overcrowded, but there were several times where I had to slow down for a bit in order to wait for a space to get around slower runners. I finished in 57:24 according to my Garmin which I am very happy with. The weather was perfect, it was in the high 60s when I started and the course was pretty shaded.
It was a very well organized race and I enjoyed the experience. I don't know that I'll ever want to run it again just because, but if someone wanted me to run it with them I probably would. It was weird that you finished 6 miles from where you started and it wasn't a loop like most races. I did manage to find footage online this morning of when I crossed the finish line.
Meb was at the race. He started the race 10 minutes after the last runner trying to pass 22,500 other runners in order to raise $75,000 for Kilometer Kids charity. He had at least three members of the Atlanta Track Club running with him to help clear a path. I read last night that he did meet his goal, passing over 22,700 runners. The article said that he ran it at 6:17 pace which is over a minute slower than his Boston Marathon pace. Here is a link to
the article.
I would love to run an 11:00 marathon. I think that will be my goal. Beat 5 hours.
