We did it!  And it was amazing!  My first Peachtree Road Race as a participant, and I’m hooked!  My husband, David, and I had trained four times in the last six weeks by walking the route so that we could get acclimated to the anticipated heat.  Our best time was 1 1/2 hours; our worst just over two hours.  Yesterday, walking/running the race, we both beat our personal best…….David in at 1 hour 20 minutes, me in at 1 hour, 28 minutes, and according to my heart rate monitor, I burned 1000 calories!  Yeeeeeeehiiiiiiiii! 

The morning started out fabulous with some fresh fruit and non fat greek yogurt, and fresh bagels with reduced fat cream cheese.  The race folks tell you to eat carbs before you walk, which is always a good idea so that you don’t burn all your protein up.  We walked to the train station near our house and got off at Lenox with about 55,000 other riders, and made our way to our group (the last group to start; we’re not “elite” runners by any stretch), which was down Lenox Road, behind Publix, back up on Peachtree (all in all, about another mile from the train station), and were finally allowed to start the race.  All of the participants were so geared up, and the energy was amazing!  It was so easy to walk at a good, fast pace, and run when you wanted to because the energy from the spectators and the other participants was just crazy fun!  I found myself running at times when I normally would not be running, and running for longer periods than I have in the past, and I’ll be honest……..it felt really good!  I did not have any problems going up “cardiac hill” at Piedmont Hospital, except seeing Shepard Spinal Clinic patients cheering us on.  These folks were in wheelchairs, hopefully in recovery or therapy, but still having the wherewithall to cheer us on.  It was so inspiring that it made you want to go faster and do better, so I thank all those awesome people from the bottom of my heart.  We moved on, and I was in great shape, mentally, and feeling no pain until we got to the Amtrak Station, and then my hamstrings started burning a little, but I was  telling them “No, not now” and pressed on.  By this point, we only had a little ways to go to 10th street, then we’d be in the home stretch.  When we turned on 10th Street, I noticed my hands felt really swollen, then realized that I was probably retaining a little water, since I hadn’t been sweating too awful much (by the way, I bought this great headband at REI that really keeps the sweat off my brow), and certainly hadn’t stopped at the porta potty, but was on my third 32 ounce bottle.  No worries, I pressed on and finished at one hour, twenty eight minutes.  I nearly cried with relief.  Then on to pick up my tee shirt (photo below), meet up with the others, have a beer and a snack (not healthy, I know, but well deserved, and burned off quickly), then home to crash, and crash I did!  By the time we walked back to the train station from Piedmont Park, back home from another train station, etc., I think we walked, seriously, ten miles.  The weather was absolutely beautiful, we were so lucky to have a low humidity day, unheard of in Atlanta, especially for the fourth of July!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy fourth, and if you walked or ran the Peachtree Road Race, I hope you did well, and I hope you will walk it with me next year!

Cheers!