Feeling 250 on Peachtree Road

3 hours ago

Brian Robinson,

Americans have looked forward to this July when we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the greatest nation in history – called our “semi-quincentennial,” a word we’ll all learn this year and then forget because we’ll never use it again.

We’ll party like we always do with fireworks, parades, concerts and backyard cookouts, only this time BIGGER for the most momentous number we’ve seen since 1976’s bicentennial. But that was, ahem, in the last century and most Americans alive today were born after that, a statistic that gives me pause since I’m in the category of those who lived through it, albeit in diapers.

While most other Georgians are doing things they love, spending time with family and friends and perhaps eating and drinking to excess in true holiday fashion, I’ll spend our 250th anniversary doing something I truly hate and dread: running the Peachtree Road Race, my annual July 4 commitment – I’d say “tradition” but that sounds like something you look forward to.

A race in Atlanta in July simulates as much as humanly possible a competition on the surface of the sun, but perhaps harder because I doubt the sun has hills.

Every July 3, as sane people are living it up because they can sleep in the next day, I’m hydrating and carbo-loading for a 6.2 mile “run” – I use quotation marks because my form probably falls short of the true definition of the word and because sometimes I get passed by the elderly. A race in Atlanta in July simulates as much as humanly possible a competition on the surface of the sun, but perhaps harder because I doubt the sun has hills.

Ah, yes, the hills. In my car, as I travel Atlanta the other 364 days a year, I hardly notice. On foot, they feel and look more like mountains. As I begin the steep climb up Cardiac Hill, fortuitously near Piedmont Hospital’s emergency room, I look around expecting to see Alpine bands in lederhosen blowing on one of those long wooden horns called Alphorns or perhaps yodeling.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I wake up on July 4 angry that I’ve decided to do this yet again because I’m getting up earlier than on a workday. Every day of my life begins with coffee. On this day more than any other I need a splash of energy, but on this day more than any other I really don’t want to need a toilet every 20 minutes. Like a waiter carrying a heavy tray, careful balance is required.

The race begins, of course, at Lenox Mall, beneath a gigantic American flag flying proudly over the road. I take a selfie featuring the flag to capture my least favorite moment of each year as I anticipate the unpleasantness to come. Before the gun fires for my late wave of slow people, the race champions have already finished, and we see these smiling with the flag of their nation wrapped around their shoulders.

“I never even had a chance,” I whisper to myself. They run at a pace that would be hard to beat in a car during normal Atlanta traffic. “Am I really even the same species?”

I’ve never found running enjoyable. My legs are too short, my muscles too tight, my lung capacity too limited. In my 30s, I found pride in devoting myself to improving on a skill I found so unnatural for me. I once completed a half marathon in less than two hours. But that was before marriage and children and a demanding job that wears me out. It’ll never happen again.

There’s always a good reason to not go for a training run. It’s too hot or too cold or too hilly. Then there’s the fact that it’s just miserable regardless. Some people love it. They gallop along effortlessly like gazelles. I think they’re weirdos and I hate them.

OK, maybe I’m just jealous. While I’ve accepted that I have no athletic talent, I know that, however much I’d just prefer to sit on the couch, I must get out there and get the ole heart and lungs pumping.

While a 10K (that’s European for the aforementioned 6.2 miles) is a breeze for seasoned runners, it’s a challenge for someone more associated with seasoned fries. Each spring, knowing I must soon face the heat and the hills, I begrudgingly hit the roads of my neighborhood to work up a sweat. There’s no runner’s high. No plateaus broken through. Just a slog I can’t wait to get finished.

So when I cross the finish line at Piedmont Park and grab a prized race shirt for my growing collection, I feel a great sense of pride colored only slightly by the shame of my slow pace. And for the rest of the day, like America, I’ll feel 250 years old.