This year's race shirt for the Publix Georgia Half Marathon!
After two very light 1-mile days, I finally got myself back on the half-marathon schedule, which doesn't ease up even though the race is only two days away.
Today was another 6-mile run and for the first time in a long time I found myself procrastinating heavily to do this run. It probably didn't help that I have some kind of hay fever/allergy thing going on right now.
But when I finally made it out the door, things gradually fell into place. Running to Atlantic Station was a little bit of a struggle, but I felt light on my feet at the turnaround point near IKEA. My Garmin Forerunner 610 was working well again.
Later on in the afternoon I went with the wife downtown to the expo for Sunday's Publix Georgia Half Marathon. I've run in this race four years -- 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012 and the full marathon in 2010. Last year I paid my money for the race but we went to Jekyll Island instead since I didn't feel like I was properly trained for the half. I didn't even bother to pick up my T-shirt. (Although now doing a Google search for the shirts, I am bummed I did not run in the race and get a Shamrock-styled finisher's medal).
We parked by my old workplace on street parking ($2.50 for an hour and eight minutes, cheaper than two MARTA tickets) and walked over to the Georgia World Congress Center. (I actually almost walked on autopilot to the Georgia Dome instead!)
It's hard to tell what you'll get in an expo -- they seem hit or miss to me. This one was average. I miss the earlier days of this race when the expo was held on the field of the Georgia Dome -- it was cool to look up into the stands and see the place from the same vantage as Roddy White.
We passed through Publix's main display -- they had a variety of juices available and one kind of food sample -- "Quinoa, it's good, man," the guy told me as I walked away from it, possibly thinking I was suspicious of the stuff. They also had a chef's demo, which was kind of interesting.
You make your way to the back of the expo and pick up your T-shirt and bib. Then we wandered back around to all of the vendors. Greek yogurt was a big thing this year -- Chobani and Dannon's Oikos gave out samples. I spun a wheel at a table promoting Jeff Galloway's half marathon (on the same day as the Honolulu Marathon) and won the wife a technical training shirt. (She spun the wheel and won me a "high five" from the lady at the booth).
With 16,000 expected runners, this expo wasn't nearly as crowded as the one for last year's Peachtree 10K. So we didn't have any trouble getting out of the cavernous convention center. Once back outside, we wandered by the finish line, which looked the same as it did in 2010 when Publix announced it was going to sponsor the race.
More than any other race, this event has created so many significant moments in my life. The 2 hours I ran in the inaugural race in 2007 helped motivate me to continue the streak in its earliest days. I'd never had to fight through a race like I did during the full marathon in 2010 when my calf muscles started to cramp at Mile 15. And the 2012 race will always be special since three days later my son was born.
This time around, it's just another race, a case where the end justified the means, to play test a training program I will adopt this summer for the full marathon. With more than 360 miles under my belt during the last two months of training, I have never trained so much for a race of this distance.
But when the gun goes off in the dark early Sunday, I'll be thinking of the 217-day road to the finish line of the Marine Corps Marathon. The person I will be on that day, standing before a uniformed Marine presenting a finisher's medal, will be crafted from all of my experiences from this personally epic half-marathon course.
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