And a great Peachtree Roadrace it was!

The first year Marc ran the Peachtree Road Race was 1980.  I was two days away from giving birth to our second son, Tom and my dad drove Marc down the start of the race - stopping first to get a box of donuts and a cup of coffee.  My dad then drove to Piedmont Park, walked over to the finish line with his chair, read the AJC, drinking his coffee and eating a couple donuts until Marc finished the race.  Marc's picture shows him as a young man in a heavy cotton t-shirt with the faded letters COACH on the front (from our first son's Lamaze birth experience).  Every year, including this year, as Marc and I now walk the Peachtree and Tom waits at the finish line (having run the race himself), we tell that story.  We talk about my dad - gone now for over 25 years- we talk about my years at Grady when I "worked" the race, we talk about the great leadership that has made the Road Race what it is, we talk about the wheelchair racers (and the year I stood by a woman who was sobbing as her friend wheeled by - the first time in three years that he wasn't picked up by the wheelchair bus for being "too slow.")  We talk about the first year the boys ran, the friends who joined us, the great bands.  We talk about donuts and the AJC and finishing in the park.  Like many, the Peachtree Road Race is a 4th of July tradition for us - a wonderful time for remembering how fortunate we are to be in the great city of Atlanta, to be blessed with a loving family, and even in challenging times, to know we are living a grand and wonderful life here in Atlanta.