It also was special because I would be running wingman for my wife, who is 28 weeks pregnant. Both of us were unsure what that would mean for the race, whether we would be walking it, whether we would be running it, just that we would both be participating in one of Atlanta's most famous traditions.
After reading my account of last year's race in which leaving home at 6:20 a.m. meant we got to the starting corral just a minute before the race started, we left a little earlier, just after 6 a.m. We were lucky to catch a train at Midtown station without much waiting and also that it wasn't crowded at all.
This train led us to Buckhead station and while it is a little bit of a walk to get to the corral it wasn't bad. The staging area at Phipps Plaza is great because they have a ton of portapotties and not many people. You can even get a cup of water if you want it.
We started out at a pretty easy pace, there were lots of people sprinting by us. The weather was fortunately pretty cool and not too hot. I would say that we took it easy, but at one point I looked down at my watch and we were running at an 8:19/mile pace, just nine seconds above what our regular training pace was 5 years ago!
Going at an easy pace in a race has huge advantages. The huge Heartbreak hill and then the gradual rise from Spring to 14th Street seemed like nothing. I felt pretty good in my pace and mainly wanted to make sure that the wife was doing ok. It seemed like she was.
We finished the race just under 56 minutes, which is funny to me because I'm sure that there have been at least two times that I've run this race slower than that when I actually was trying to run fast. And I don't think the wife has run that distance since last year's race, when we ran it in 54 minutes.
After the race, we spent a little bit of time in the Atlanta Track Club member hospitality tent, which had almost anything you needed -- water, peaches just like out in the general area. Waffle House offered grits bowls that had cheese and sausage crumbles.
In the general area, they had the tried and true hits, Mellow Mushroom cheese pizza, bagels, bananas, packages of cereal bars and cookies. It seemed like there was a run on Diet Coke -- I had to walk all the way to the first bin and then had to scrounge around. A volunteer put a pink lemonade Powerade in my hands and I picked up a few other flavors for those hotter, longer runs later on this summer.
All in all, a great run and a confidence builder for my main goal this year -- the Oct. 26 Marine Corps Marathon.
Time: 7:34 a.m.
Temp: 66 degrees
Gear: Technical T-shirt, short (Publix Half Marathon in Training 2014), shorts, Nike Air Pegasus+ 30/A.
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