As long as I have lived in Atlanta, I have never felt the need to run the Peachtree Road Race. Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of the race. I plant myself somewhere on 10th St and have seen some great races. I think it’s pretty exciting. After a while, I can start to see the frustrations in the faces of runners who are trying to finish strong but have to dodge others. I have been critical of the Peachtree in that aspect. To read an article for a smoother flow for the Peachtree gives me hope for a spectacle of a race from beginning to end. The article is from the ajc.com.
Plans for smoother flow at AJC Peachtree
By Ken Sugiura
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The walk-run-walk-dodge that begins so many 10-kilometer journeys in the AJC Peachtree Road Race may be no longer.
In one of the more significant alterations to the format of the July 4 race, Atlanta Track Club officials have doubled the number of time groups to make the race flow more smoothly for its 55,000 entrants.
Said track club executive director Tracey Russell, "We may even have the last person cross the start line sooner than we did last year."
Participants will be broken up into 20 groups, or waves, that will average less than 3,000 runners. Most of the field was distributed randomly into the final eight groups, with runners and walkers of all stripe mixed together. The track club first began dividing the field into staggered groups in 1990, when the field was 40,000.
The volume, in addition to the varying paces of entrants in each group, led to congestion as soon as runners left the starting line. The scene of runners jogging, then walking, then going up onto the sidewalk to pass slower participants, was typical.
By reducing the size of the groups and arranging them by submitted times, Russell expects that runners will be less bottlenecked than in the past.
Read on here.
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