July 4 - Peachtree Road Race

AM: Peachtree Road Race 10k, 33:48, 62nd place, 12 miles

OK, where to begin...

This race is always brutal for me. I seem to mess it up in a different place every year, and with the heat and stifling humidity, I invariably end up hanging on for dear life up the hills in the second half. This year was no different.

My stomach wasn't cooperating this morning. Both before and after the race, I was making frequent trips to the Porta Johns. That, coupled with a poor night's sleep, and I just wanted to avoid embarrassing myself.

This was the first year I managed to secure a bib with the elites. The Peachtree is so large (55,000 people) that they release runners in a series of waves, and they only bother timing the first 6,000 or so, who are chip-timed. For the first time ever, I got to start right at the front.

Lining up, I saw a few people I recognized (Pacers' Robbie Wade, Samia Akbar), a few more that I recognized but didn't know personally (Nate Jenkins, Macharius Yuot, some Hanson's guys), and a horde of Africans. I swallowed hard at this sight. Nevermind the 54,950 people behind me, today I lined up both with Olympians and your run-of-the-mill guys (and gals!) who can kick my butt on a regular basis.

After the flag waved the start (there isn't a gun), I tucked in behind some guys in college singlets and held on for dear life. I knew that with a tough second half in the race, I wanted to log some time in the bank. So, I went for it. My first three miles were under my 10k PR pace, which can be somewhat attributed to the fast first half. I hit my first three miles in 5:07, 5:08, 5:02, putting me at 15:18 for 3 miles, which is faster than all but one 3 mile/5k I've ever run outright. Little did I know that I would pay for this aggressive pace dearly in just a few miles...

Right before the third mile, the course begins to climb. I hit the fourth mile in 5:32, but I was still passing people up the hill and down the other side. I knew this would be a slow split with the hill, so I was ready to rally.

And then, as they say, the wheels came off. I could tell that I was hurting, but I wasn't getting passed by more than a couple of guys, and I also passed a couple of Africans at this point. Thus, you can imagine when I surprise when I saw, holy s***, a 6:06 mile (not just a full minute slower than my previous mile, but slower than any mile I ran in Boston this year!) at mile 5, unraveling what could have been a solid day into a potential disaster. In retrospect, pounding up the steeper, half-mile hill in the fourth mile cooked me for the gradual, mile-long climb at mile 5. The course profile shows the two-mile-plus climb to the finish.

In the last 2k, I tried to hold it together and just race. I had been battling back and forth with some people the entire time, and I won and lost some of those in the closing mile.

The real kicker today was the course alteration for 2008. Because of the drought in Georgia, the finish line changed from Piedmont Park to the intersection of Ponce de Leon and Juniper. Normally, runners make the turn from Peachtree onto 10th street, when you're home free: flat and downhill for the final kilometer. But this year, the extra surprise was yet two more hills, making an uphill finish. This damn-near killed me. I pumped my arms, kicked, but my efforts were futile. I had no kick whatsoever, coming through my last mile in 5:31, though I had rallied, relatively speaking, after my minor blow-up at mile 5.

There is a silver lining on every cloud, however. For one, Valerie seemed happy with her race, running a PR despite pretty minimal training.

I finished 62nd, which is higher than any other year (last year was 75th). My time, 10 seconds slower than last year, may actually be an improvement. Supposedly, the change in the finish adds 25 seconds. I'm assuming I'd have secured a course PR if the last mile wasn't changed. I'm slightly disappointed because I've run faster here and placed higher every year I've run, but with the new finish I'm not beating myself up too much about it.

So, all in all I'll take it for what it's worth. I had one bad mile, but so was everyone around me at the time. I raced OK, but better than I have in the last few months. The goal now is to take what I did today and run the same overall pace at the Annapolis 10-mile, which is several weeks away and a similar course with similar conditions.


Anyway, happy 4th of July, everyone...!