ING Georgia Half-Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

As usual, the ING course changed again. And let's find some even narrower streets around the town to cram everyone into from both races. I do like running past the soon-to-be 2nd worst president ever's library. I'm pretty sure that is about where my slowest mile was. I had a funny moment when I was tagging along with the 4 hr pace group. We logged the sixth mile at 8:53 as announced by one of the pace team leaders and this Asian guy screams out "YES, I RUN UNDER FOUR HOUR!" He was so excited I didn't have the heart to tell him that he only had six in his pocket and a lot of race left. He did make me chuckle. I hope he made it though. He was a very determined fellow.

I was really pleased with the fact that I was faster primarily in the 2nd half. It is a little weird to see my slow times in the middle but I'm thinking that was more about terrain and the crowded conditions than anything else. As far as things to do differently, shed about 10 more pounds.

Medal, blanket, car, towel, clean clothes, Embassy Suites, beer, beer, sandwich, beer, pizza, beer, oh you get the idea...


My training was probably the big difference. For this race last year I was just coming off a very successful February marathon and was lighter. Issues this year with injury set me back some so I'm very happy with these results. About 8 minutes slower this year so I'm figuring about a pound per minute is my formula for success.


Frankly, I do this race because its local and I have many friends and training pals that do it. But, I wouldn't travel to this one. I like the challenge of this course. It's hard. I refuse to rate it 'too hard'. Also, its Year #3 and there still seem to be organizational issues. Boarding into the corrals was tough and it would've been nice if the CNN Center was open to the public. They sure had those doors open for the Hawks game later that afternoon. The cool thing is that when I entered the garage I grabbed a ticket but no one was parking in there. When I returned to go home the garage was filling up with NBA fans. I cruised out because they were not manning the ticket booth! The wand was up and they were waving me through! It made up for that B.S. about $10 parking at that crappy expo. Which, btw, was another well organized event. I didn't know that the other 427 doors in the Georgia Dome don't work when it's raining. Just that one door as far away from your car as is physically possible. I think that most of my friends all had good races (yeah baby!) and so Atlanta is still a great place to train for any race. The hills that kills.