Peachtree Road Race - Race Report

I have been asked for years if I have ever run the Peachtree, and when I told people 'no' they would always respond by saying that I had to run it one year.  I haven't really given it much thought to running the Peachtree because I have been focusing on longer races, trail running, and it just didn't seem to be something that interested me.  However, after finishing my first 50 miler this past January I was trying to find some races that I could focus on that wouldn't require as much training time, or running time.  So, this past March I signed up for the Peachtree lottery hoping that I would be one of the 60,000 that would be selected to run the world's largest 10k.  I found out that I got selected, and really just forgot about the race up until the week of the race.  In fact I did a 6 mile trail run the day before the race (not the best idea).

My dad and I got up early on July 4th to head to Doraville to catch the MARTA to ride down to the start line.  It had been raining off and on as we were heading to Atlanta, and once we got off the MARTA near the start line a big rain storm came through.  We were able to find some shelter, and wait out the storm.

Around 7 we headed up to the start line to get lined up in our corals.  I had a good qualifying race time which placed me in coral A.  This meant that I would be running with some really fast people.  Dad was placed in coral E, so we each went to our corals to get ready to run.  While we waited in the coral there was no rain, but you could see that the rain was heading our way.

View of start line from Coral A

At 7:30 the elites, and sub seeded corals both had taken off, and my coral was right behind them.  Almost right as we started there was a light rain that began to fall on us.  This didn't stop the people that lined the streets to cheer us on as we raced.  I was told that there weren't as many people as there usually are, but there were still a lot of people that braved the rain and lined the street pretty much the whole way.

Going into the race I hadn't really done a lot of training.  I have been running, and I have been running long distances, but I haven't been doing any speed work.  This was the shortest race that I have run in the last four months, and really only the second road race that I have run this year.  I forgot how much the road and running fast for a long period of time can HURT!  I have to admit that I was not ready for the race like I should have been, and definitely struggled the last 1.5 miles to the finish line.  I ran across the finish line and stopped my watch at 50:59 for the 6.2 miles.  This was a 8:13 pace.

I was a little disappointed with having to run in the rain and not being able to enjoy the stuff they had going on at the finish line in Piedmont Park.  I guess it could have been worse though having to deal with the July heat.  I also, learned that I need to start putting in some regular speed work if I'm going to run shorter distances.  Overall I enjoyed my Peachtree experience, and may want to redeem myself in the future.