Former Atlanta lawyer is set to run his 50th Peachtree Road Race
The Peachtree Road Race has had a decorated 56-year history along the way to becoming the largest 10K race in the world, and one retired Atlanta lawyer has been there for nearly all of it.
Greg Gates, a 77-year-old former attorney and certified public accountant, says the Peachtree Road Race has been the one constant in his life, and this year’s running will be the 50th year in a row that he participates in the 10K.
“It just got to be a tradition,” said Gates, a self-described “creature of habit.”
Gates was born in Colorado but moved to Atlanta in 1974 after graduating from William & Mary Law School.
Despite participating in cross country in high school, Gates said he hadn’t run for years when friends invited him to join them on their jogs in 1975. Greg said that first run was so much fun that he and one of the friends, Jim Russell, started to do it regularly on weekends.
Two years later, Gates was running in his first of — so far — 49 Peachtree Road Races.
In the time since his first race, Gates said he met his wife, Leslie, had two children, started a business, traveled to all 50 states and about 40 different countries, retired, moved to St. Simons Island and became a grandfather.
Even though they were not around for every race, the Gates family all share fond memories of watching their patriarch run.
Leslie said that she and the kids would typically find a spot on 28th Street to cheer Gates on with signs. She called their daughter, Erin Faulstich, “the driving force” behind the signs the family would make, even as a child.
Both Faulstich and the couple’s son, Matt Gates, praised their father’s commitment to routine, both in keeping up the tradition of the Peachtree Road Race and life in general.
Faulstich said her dad was “nothing if not consistent,” and her brother said even if their father was dealing with pain and would likely finish with a slower time than he would like, “there was still no chance he was going to miss” the race.
Lately, Gates has been dealing with more of those setbacks. He said that for two years up until January, he had been running with a torn meniscus that his doctors treated with a series of knee injections. In January, Gates finally decided to get surgery to repair his torn meniscus and had to miss 14 weeks of training, he said.
Still, he has been preparing for the event since late April, he said, and his goal for this year’s race is simply to finish.
“It’s really like starting all over,” Gates said.
Speed was an important factor to Gates in his younger days, he said. He and his family made commemorative shirts that feature his best time, best ranking and 49-year average to celebrate his landmark race this year.
According to the shirt, Gates never managed to finish inside the top 1,000, but he is proud of his personal best of 44 minutes and 32 seconds in 1982 and his average, over the past five decades, of 55 minutes. Gates noted that his average time has been skewed by his recent health issues.
Even though 1982 was the fastest Gates has ever run the Peachtree, he remembers his first race in 1977 as his best.
Gates said the course that day was more difficult than what it is today because it featured more hills. He also said they started later, at 9:00 in the morning, on a day both he and Russell, with whom he ran his first eight races, remember as particularly hot.
Gates also said that the runners were not seeded like they are now.
“It was basically, ‘Everybody get in the road. Ready, get set, go,” Russell said. “It was just a herd running down Peachtree.”
Gates said he finished that first race in exactly 45 minutes and that afterward, Russell told him, “That was about the craziest thing I’ve ever done.”
Gates said outside of seeing his family cheer him on or his personal stats, his favorite memory of his nearly five decades of Peachtree Road Races is the people.
“Running with other runners who are the same as me. They’re trying to get to the finish line,” he said. “And also what I remember are the crowds. They really do cheer you on and pump you up.”
Gates’ advice for anybody who is about to run in their first Peachtree Road Race, or any new runners, is to “just start out slow” and run as far as they can. He said runners should try to get 10% better on each run.
Gates said running in 50 Peachtree Road Races was “never a goal.” Even after retiring from his healthcare consulting and accounting firm in 2020 and moving to southeast Georgia, he stuck with his tradition by creating his own 6.2-mile course and running it virtually for the last five years.
This year, Gates plans to return to in-person participation as a runner in wave C. When he does, and is cheered on by his family once again, it will be a testament to a life of dedication and consistency.