1. Chris Baker

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There were about 13,000 participants. One thing that makes this race interesting is the variety of events. There’s a cycling, skating and wheelchair participants in addition to the runners. The course is great in that’s it’s a straight wide road, so there’s none of the bottlenecking that can be a problem in large races. It’s also kind of novelty to run up the middle of a highway that I drive all the time. It is very hilly.

Some of the highlights of the day include the Special Forces parachuters at the start of the race and watching of the finish of the pro cycling 100k.

I met up with a few TNT friends at the start and ran with them for the start of the race. We soon got separated though, and I ran the majority on my own. /p>

Here are the splits from my Garmin.

Also here’s a link to the garmin connect page with all the details.

Garmin Connect Website

I got my hands on a small refurbished Thinkpad laptop to take with me on trips for basic web use on overnights. It was a great computer until it got a virus that rendered Windows XP almost completely unusable. There was no CD drive and thus to easy way to reinstall Windows. Sure I could’ve gone out and bought an external CD drive, and bought a copy of Windows, but both of those purchases would cost more then the value of the computer. A bit of looking around for solutions lead me to www.ubuntu.com. It took a bit of tinkering for sure, but I managed to download Ubuntu, create a bootable usb drive and install the brand new operating system on the computer all for free. It worked like a charm for my needs. Everything you need for web browsing, basic office stuff, picture and music is all there. I’ve since become a fan of Linux and use it for 99% of what I do on the computer.

Ubuntu isn’t quite ready for everybody, but if you are the type of person that likes to tinker you should definitely check it out.

He started by asking, “What’s the most complicated control up here.” I told him it was probably the cabin temperature controller. There’s actually a lot of truth to that, as there is quite an art to keeping the passengers happy with the temperature. I’m convinced that thing’s only setting are “too hot” and “too cold”.

He then asked what control does the most work. I thought about that for a moment and then replied, “These are the thrust levers, they do a lot of work controlling how much power the engines produce.” Apparently he’d just learned a little physics in school because he then said, “Did you know that a lever is a type of simple machine and that Work equal Force times Distance?”

Okay buddy you’ve picked the wrong geek to play this game with! “That’s true, and Power equals Force times Distance divided by Time.” To which he said, “I haven’t learned division yet!”

After two days of rain and thunderstorms, the weather was ideal on marathon day. I met up with my friends Andy, Bill and Michael at the Team in Training tent around 6:30am. It was quite chilly in the morning, but I knew that I wouldn’t want to wear more than shorts and a T-shirt during the run, so I wore a trash bag that I could throw away after the start.

We made our way to the start corral. A few minutes before the 7:04am start. The start was on Marietta street right next to CNN center and the Omni hotel at Centennial Olympic Park. While 15,000 runners is certainly a lot, this race was smaller than my previous two marathons, Marine Corps and Chicago. Thus, I could at least see the start line and crossed it within a minute or two of the gun time.

The sky was just beginning to brighten over the Atlanta skyline as the marathon began. The first few miles of a marathon are fun. The running is easy, and you just take in the excitement of the crowd and the event. It is easy to make the mistake of running too fast early on. I knew I wanted to hold about a 9min/mile pace, so I concentrated on hitting the first few mile markers on that schedule. Twenty-six point two miles is way too far to be pushing the pace early on!

The early portion of the course passed Georgia State – the first of four colleges along the way – and headed toward Midtown past the Martin Luther King historic site and on to the Little five points neighborhood and Freedom Park. I started the race running with Michael and Bill. Cruger and Sallie caught up with us as well. It was great to have a group of friends to get me through the first part of the race. We parted ways around mile 7 as the half marathon course and the full marathon course separated.

After the split, the race became much more spread out. There were also few spectators along the way. No one seems to talk much while running a marathon. I think everyone tends toward introspection and avoids expending any unnecessary energy.

The 3:50 pace team caught up with me at about mile ten. I mostly stayed with this group the rest of the way.

The city of Decatur put a series of rhyming signs by the side of the road along the marathon route. That were funny and a nice distraction. I saw my friend Kelsey at the Agnes Scott water station around mile 12. I remember reading signs about the “Scotties” and wishing they could beam me to the finish line! It seemed hilarious at the time. . .

From around mile twelve to mile twenty has been called the no man’s land of the marathon. It’s already been a long run, but there’s still a long way to go. Leaving Decatur it was on toward Emory at mile 16 and North Druid Hills. I got a bit of a mental boost passing 17. It’s nice when the miles to go number is down to single digits! This was, I think the hilliest part of the course. While a flat course is undeniably faster, hills do at least provide a little variety in the direction the muscles are working.

We passed the magic mile 20 number on Briarcliff road approaching Virginia Highlands. The marathon and half marathon courses rejoined after miles 20. I crossed mile 20 with 2:53 on my watch. I knew if I could hang on just enough to run an hour 10K I would at least equal my Chicago Marathon time of 3:54.

I had distinct memories of crashing just past mile 20 in Chicago. I didn’t want to repeat that pattern. Most marathoners are familar with the 20 mile “bonk.” Though I felt relatively good, I knew that fatigue can come on suddenly. This is when I was most glad that I had run beyond 20 miles in training. While it’s probably unnecessary physiologically, to me at least, there’s a big psychological benefit in knowing that the way my body reacts to running more than 20 miles is not entirely uncharted territory.

Reaching Piedmont Park at mile 22 I was on very familiar ground – a place I’ve run many times. From Piedmont Park, it was on to the final campus stop on this grand tour of Atlanta. That would be the Georgia Institute of Technology! In my life, I’ve run in some memorable places. I’ve run past the monuments of Washington, around Red Square in Moscow, and across the Mississippi and Danube rivers, but grinding out those last few miles down Techwood drive past Glenn Hall where I lived as a freshman and by Bobby Dodd stadium is among the best!

The last couple miles were hard. My legs felt like cement blocks and I was fighting for air. I seriously considered walking a few times. I knew I’d still make it in at a respectable time under four hours. Still, I’d started the day intending to RUN a marathon. How is it that even after running for almost four hours, five more minutes can feel like the hardest thing in the world?

Leaving Georgia Tech, it was just one more mile up Marietta street back to Centennial Park. I saw my Mom and Dad right at the last turn to the finish, and managed a grin for the picture. Then there was nothing to do but cross the line!

Offical time splits: