Atlanta Half Marathon Report

I'm sure all three readers of our blog have been waiting with baited breath to find out how I did in the half marathon last Thursday. We took a break from everything over the Thanksgiving holiday, so I didn't get a chance to put up my report, so here goes:

Overall, it was a great experience, and I was really pleased with my results. My goal was to finish in under two hours. My official race time, which is measured from the time the starter's gun goes off, was 1:51:58. My "chip" time, which is the actual time it took me to get from the start line to the finish line was 1:50:04. Beat my goal by ten minutes! The only slight disappointment was that I had to walk through two water stations to grab a cub of water because of the traffic. If I hadn't had to do that, I could have had a 1:40-something time.

I thought we were going to miss the rain that was forecast, but as soon as the starter's gun went off it started drizzling. The good thing was that it wasn't cold. The bad thing was that about ten minutes later, the bottom fell out so by mile 2 I was soaked from head to toe. Because of the crowd, it took my until about mile 3 to get to good open space where I could run without dodging slower runners and walkers.

Just after the 4-mile mark is the normal start for the Peachtree Road Race, and the next 5 miles is the Peachtree course right down Peachtree Street. There weren't quite as many spectators out for the half marathon as there usually are on the 4th of July, but running this familiar stretch made the miles seem to go by quickly. From "Cardiac Hill" to the end of the Peachtree Road Race is mostly uphill, but it didn't seem to be as bad as I had anticipated. At about mile 12.5, we made the turn from Mitchell Street, next to the capitol builidng, onto Capitol Avenue and down the final stretch to Turner Field. I knew I was going to get in under 2 hours at this point and was just trying to finish as strong as I could.

I actually finished before I thought I did, because the big finish line banner was hung across the full marathon finish line which was about 30-40 yards past the half marathon finish line. As I crossed the line, my name was announced, I collected my finishers medal and picked up some watered down Gatorade and a couple of bananas.

All-in-all, it was a great event, and I enjoyed the running. I'm not sure I could have imagined turning around and running back to the start line, but I've still got a few weeks before I have to run that distance.