Peachtree Road Race Expo & Race Recap

I had been looking forward to this race for so long!!  Finally…the time had come.

First stop…the expo!

Packet pick up was a breeze.  The expo wasn’t as crowded as I thought it might be (thankfully) on Tuesday night.  After picking up mine and my brother’s numbers, I headed for the runDisney booth…you know I had to check out the Disneyland medals in person!

I then headed over to Jeff Galloway’s booth to meet a fellow #TeamrunDisney member, Marcia.  We chatted a bit about the 26.2 with Donna races and then Patrick came over.  Marcia was working so Patrick and I walked around the expo.  We stopped by to check out the finalists for the finishers shirt

We did a little shopping and then met back up with Marcia to head to Gladys Knight and Ron’s Chicken and Waffles for dinner with Jill and her family!

                                                           (Photo courtesy of Jill) 

I was so excited to get my number!!

Wednesday night I did my typical race tradition and laid out my clothes for the next morning.  I also wrote a cheesy poem about the race since we had rain in the forecast (You can check out that post here)

My brother came and spent the night with us so we could go to the race together.  After a 5:30 wake up call we were on our way to MARTA.

 
I must say that this was one of the most pleasant large event MARTA experiences that I have ever had.  No one was pushing or shoving and everyone was so patient.  The police were letting us go in waves as to not congest the turnstiles up.  As we were walking to the start we saw the first wave of runners run by.

Sorry it’s blurry…they were fast!

Chris and I walked to our waves…he was in P and I was in M =

We wished each other luck and went our separate ways.  Brandi decided to run with me since I had a goofy idea the night before and she wanted to join in on the fun -

 
           (Photo courtesy of Brandi)

TEAM DUCK!!  Since rain was in the forecast we wanted to be prepared to float to the finish if we needed to.  :)

As we were standing in our wave, Brandi spotted Julie, a fellow ATLrunsDisney member!

                             (Photo courtesy of Julie)

 
The Peachtree Road Race is the world’s largest 10k with over 60,000 participants!  There were 21 waves of runners, and it took 1 hour, 40 minutes for everyone to cross the start line.  So you can imagine we had a nice little wait.  Finally we made our way to the start line and were off!  We had an absolute blast along the course.  We spent a lot of time dancing, chatting, and high fiving the spectators.  The miles went by so fast!

 

As we were running lots of people had microphones and loudspeakers and were pointing out some of the runners along the course.  We stood out with the ducks so we got called out a lot.  At one point we heard our names – it was Jill, Katie, and Jason!

 
                           (Photo courtesy of Jill)

Best.Race photo.EVER!

These guys were giving out leis and we scored one for us and one for our ducks! (I apologize for the fuzziness of some of the pictures…my phone was in a waterproof bag just in case of rain)

I snagged a piece of watermelon.  I normally don’t like it, but it tasted good after running!

These girls had some great signs, so we stopped and took pictures with them :)

 

About a mile or so from the finish, we saw a guy with an awesome sign showing that Atlanta supports Boston.  We took a picture of him and then had our picture made with him.

We passed the “fake finish” line (photographers were overhead in cherry pickers taking our pictures) and the real finish like wasn’t too far after.  I did it!  I completed my first Peachtree Road Race!

We were directed into Piedmont Park where we received the coveted finishers shirt.  We searched for one of my friends but didn’t see them, then headed up to the Atlanta Track Club’s tent where we got an aluminum water bottle, magnet, and some food and water.  We met up with Brandi’s parents (her mom PR’ed!) then went back down to search for Ramona.  By now it had started to rain a bit, but we were thankful it didn’t rain while we were running!

We got our finisher picture taken -

And Brandi brought her medal with her so we took more pictures :)

 

We parted ways and Ramona and I headed to the MARTA station.  They did a great job of directing people onto trains and not jamming us in!  When I got back to my car I opted to change shoes…go figure…they didn’t get wet until AFTER the race in the mud hole that Piedmont Park had turned into!  Glad I wore my old shoes

 
That evening some of us got together at Jill’s house for a cookout and to visit with each other.  It was a nice #TeamrunDisney meet up!  We all met Christine, who came down from Virginia to run the race.  Looking forward to seeing her and Katie again at Disneyland for the Dumbo Double Dare!

I had an amazing 4th of July and absolutely cannot wait to run this race again next year!  I highly recommend it to anyone!

And I leave you with the finishers shirt and commemorative medal (this was the first year they offered a medal – you had to purchase it and received it at the expo – it is not a finishers medal…that’s what the shirt is)

Did you do a run on the 4th?  Have you ever run the Peachtree Road Race?

Until next time,

LiveJournal Tags: Peachtree Road Race,4th of July,10k,Atlanta Track Club,cookout,race photo,Piedmont Park,Team Duck