Publix Georgia Marathon

My Atlanta marathon post is a little late...

I did upload pictures the other night, but for some reason I haven't had time to write the re-cap until now.

We headed down to Atlanta late on Saturday. Dave had to work, so Dylan and I met him at the club. Since Dylan didn't nap Saturday afternoon he fell asleep in the car, which was great, we had an uneventful drive to Atlanta! We were lucky to be able to stay with Nina's mom just outside of Atlanta and not have to get a hotel room.We were going to stop at Outback once we got to Atlanta, but there was a 45 minute wait and we decided that would not work for our starving stomachs. So we headed to Subway. I don't know if that was Dave's best pre-race meal, but it could have been worse!

Andrew had picked up Dave's race packet earlier that day and had a terrible time getting to the packet pick up and back. Why is getting around Atlanta such a pain?! It was nice for us to not have to deal with picking up the packet though! We were able to watch the Iowa State vs. UK game Saturday night. Even though ISU didn't win, they still did alright considering they were playing the #1 team in the country.

Sunday morning came early for Dave at 4:30am. The race started at 7am, but Dave and Andrew had to pick up another runner, drive downtown and park and be ready to go ontime. Nina, the kids and I had it a little better. We had decided to just go to the finish line and not try and see Dave and Andrew at another spot along the course. With Atlanta's traffic and 4 kids with us it was definately the right decision. We left for the finish about 9am and were ready and watching by 10:30am. We would have been there earlier if the directions we'd gotten from the race website were correct...so annoying.

Andrew finished first and told us that the hills were terrible in the race. Considering they train in Knoxville, where it is very hilly this was a surprise. Andrew said it best later when describing the hills, "You know when your parents talked about walking up hill to school both ways? That's how the course felt, you would get to the top of a hill and instead of going back down a hill, you would go up another one!"

Dave finished about 30 minutes after Andrew. The heat was the hardest part of the race for him. When they started the race it was in the upper 50's and when they finished it was in the upper 70's. They tell runners to dress for 20 degrees warmer than what the temperature is, because that is what it will feel like to you. I can't imagine finishing a marathon feeling like it's 90 degrees outside!