Betty Lindberg completed her 26th Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race on Monday, but that past experience didn’t make things any easier.
She joked at a news conference Friday that every year she tells herself this will be her last. It turned out this edition was no different for the Parkers Prairie, Minn., native.
“(I said this was it) a number of times, I think,” Lindberg said. “I hit that third mile and started going up the hill. I started saying, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore.’”
Lindberg ran alongside her son Craig, 60, as well as her daughter-in-law Cindy and grandson Kyle. Craig has been racing in the event since the late 1980s and said his involvement led his mother to enter for the first time.
“She dropped my sister (Kerry McBrayer) and her husband off at the race one day, and she thought it looked like a pretty good idea,” Craig said. “She heard I’d been doing it and decided to give it a shot.”
There was some confusion as to when the group started racing together. Was it 1988? The answer wasn’t clear.
“It gets to be a blur,” Lindberg said.
Lindberg said she finished the race in about the same time she did last year. She said this race was remarkably difficult because of the weather and humidity that caused the track officials to send out a high alert for dangerous conditions during the race.
While the weather was treacherously hot, the family stuck together through the course. And that’s something that Craig understands is extraordinary.
“It’s one of those things that’s hard to put into words,” Craig said. “How many families get to come and celebrate Independence Day at the Peachtree Road Race with their mom? It just makes it that much more special.”
Lindberg said she enjoyed getting out to the track again. Whether she’s back again in 2017, however, has yet to be decided.
“It may be a last, you never know,” Lindberg said. “I’ll just see if I can do it again next year.
“At this point, I think this was it.”
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