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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > July > 04
Friday, July 4, 2008
Venerable Peachtree Road Race renews tradition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For Vickie Glassman, the 39th Peachtree Road Race was an excuse to hand out red, white and blue cupcakes to sweaty runners. “It’s a ritual,” she said, and then she laughed. “Actually, it’s the first year I’ve done this.”
Stayed up half the night baking, had she? Yes, Glassman said. Then: “I’m teasing. I bought these at Publix. Four dozen.”
The Peachtree was still in its first hour, and already she was on her third dozen. Glassman sat not far from her front door and scanned the passing masses for friends and relations and the guests who’d come from “two or three different states” to stay at her place and run the race. She has been watching the Peachtree since 1977, and she has her routine. “I take off work July 3,” she said, “to get ready for the Fourth.”
Outsiders sometimes wonder just what the Peachtree is — race or ritual, competition or celebration — and the real answer is that’s all of that and more. For Brian Ragen, who was sitting outside his church — the Cathedral of St. Philip — with two of his sons, “it’s the way to kick off the Fourth of July,” but it’s also one of things that sets Atlanta apart.
“Very few cities could close down a major artery,” said Ragen, who ran the race when the starting line was at the corner of Peachtree and Roswell Road, “and nobody get all torqued out of shape because they can’t get from Point A to Point B.”
Fifty-five thousand people get up early on a holiday to run/walk 6.2 miles so they can be handed a T-shirt, and more folks than that rise just as early and plant their folding chairs along the route to wave a flag or snap a picture or just to feel like an Atlantan. And an American.
“It’s not just the top runners anymore,” said Glassman, thinking of how the race was 30 years ago. “There’s a much wider diversity of people now.”
Somehow, though, diversity isn’t what strikes you about the Peachtree. Instead it’s the gleeful convergence of young and old, of participant and watcher, and how often in this fractious 21st Century do we actually converge for anything?
“This is a celebration of what John Adams would have called ‘our revolution,’” said Max Cleland, the former U.S. Senator. As is his custom, Cleland sat alongside Peachtree and displayed a placard from his wheelchair: “Run, Run To The Max.”
“I think John Adams would be proud of this,” Cleland said. “This is maybe the last vestige of citizen participation. People look at this and say, ‘I can do that.’ It’s just a high — the runners are on a runners’ high, and we’re on a high from watching them.”
At a time when it seems everything has changed for the worse — a gas station along the course advertised a gallon of regular for $4.19 Friday — the Peachtree serves to remind us that not all has been lost. Every Fourth of July, we Atlantans bear witness to a gentle reaffirmation. Ken and Dyanne Louko have been watching the race for 23 years. They, too, have their routine. They catch the start on TV, and then they proceed from their home in Garden Hills to their spot by the fence outside the Peachtree Battle shopping center. Why not watch the whole thing via television?
Said Dyanne: “There’s nothing like seeing for yourself just how many people there are.”
No matter how often you’ve seen it before, there’s something warm and fuzzy about seeing it again. And there’s your answer: What is the Peachtree Road Race? It’s the tradition that always feels brand new.
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