Thanksgiving marathon changes rile runners

For Atlanta runners, Thanksgiving morning will offer half the usual distance on a new route and served to a whole lot more folks.

As with changing any holiday traditions, some people are upset.

The Atlanta Track Club announced Tuesday the Atlanta Marathon will move to Oct. 30, 2011 and the course time limit will increase from 5 to 6 1/2 hours.

“We are excited to open up the field to runners of all abilities,” track club executive director Tracey Russell said.

That news did not assuage the disappointment of longtime marathoners who for years have planned their Thanksgiving around the Atlanta Marathon.

A city fixture since 1963 -- its been held on Thanksgiving since 1981 -- the race was the longest running marathon in the Southeast. In May, the track club quietly announced the marathon would not be run on Thanksgiving, but many runners have only found out much later.

“Imagine canceling Christmas,” said Pat Binienda, who has run every Atlanta Marathon since 1980. “Wake up on December 25th and treat it like any other day. Pretty difficult to do.”

To keep his streak alive, Binienda plans to run two laps of the Atlanta Half Marathon, which starts at 7:30 a.m. Thursday at Turner Field.

The half marathon course is new. Runners will loop from the ballpark, passing landmarks such as Centennial Olympic Park, Atlantic Station, Oakland Cemetery and Ebenezer Baptist Church.

The race day menu also includes new shorter races. The 5K run/walk begins at 7:45 a.m. and its field of 1,500 runners closed out a week ago.

The Mashed Potato Mile at 9:45 a.m. is for kids aged 7 to 12 and the Drumstick Dash for those 6 and under at 9:50 a.m.

The changes fit the track club’s mission to “inspire and engage the community to achieve health and fitness through running,” Russell said. “We feel that this showcase of events will reach a lot of people.”

The Atlanta Marathon hovered around 900 runners. Promotional efforts, including a 2008 race sponsorship by Weather Channel, fell short in expanding the event. Faster runners wouldn't travel on a holiday. Slower runners avoided a race where volunteers went home to their holiday meals after five hours.

“For women, the national average median time is 4 hours, 41 minutes, so having a four-hour course [limit] limits us to be able to get more people into the marathon distance,” Russell said. “It’s not fair to try to get volunteers to stay out longer when everybody [who volunteers] wants to get on to their Thanksgiving activity.

"Some runners love the marathon, but it’s a tough date to create an endurance event where you’re trying to get more people engaged.”

Veteran distance runners like Binienda, 56, and others feel that their beloved marathon was unfairly sacrificed for the masses of casual runners.

“They are dumbing down the race schedule,” said Phil Ozell, 60, of Atlanta, who has run the half marathon for 12 years, entered the 5K this year and will aid Binienda's marathon effort. “For the people we try to recruit and turn into long distance runners, there are fewer and fewer races to choose from. I think it’s bad ... the track club has the size and capability to put on longer races that others won’t put on.”

Sam Benedict ran in the first Atlanta Marathon in 1963, finishing 18 miles on a course around Chastain Park. In later years, he completed several Atlanta Marathons.

A competitive runner supported by the track club, Benedict said, “I don’t wish to bite the hand that feeds. I do grieve for the indelicate way the South's oldest marathon was unceremoniously dropped and, of course, the loss of same.”

For Binienda, the race is inseparable from Thanksgiving and his adopted hometown.

“It was perfect to run and then eat all the turkey you want,” he said. “It was like heaven.”

The Detroit native didn’t aim to complete 786 consecutive miles of the Atlanta Marathon. But from his first and only trophy (in 1981, replaced by medals the next year) and his best time (2:48 in 1981, qualifying him for Boston), Binienda fell in love with the technical challenge of the city’s hills.

In 1987, a knee injury threatened to ground him, but after finishing that race, the notion of a streak settled in.

“Atlanta was my hometown now,” Binienda recalled thinking at the time. “I needed something that says I belong here and this race was the perfect fit.”

That attachment made losing the 2010 race so difficult.

“I don’t think the track club understands the impact they have when they do something like this to their own kind,” he said. “It may be only 900 people in this race, but I think those 900 people deserve a better explanation.”

On Thursday, Binienda expects to finish two loops of the half marathon course by the 3 1/2-hour course limit. Next year, he will have to adjust his streak again.