Excuses not to fulfill an AJC Peachtree Road Race pledge range from mundane to medical to just plain made up. Some are real, others are as hollow as a mannequin’s head. You know who you are and into which category you fit.
Peggy Kohlmeyer and Julie Buckley were sorority sisters and fast friends at Georgia back in 1985 when they first decided to tackle the 10K through the heart of Atlanta together. That never happened, not in tandem, not the way they intended. Their excuse was real enough, and Kohlmeyer has the X-rays to prove it.
As college seniors will, the two of them fairly quickly went their separate ways after school. Getting around to fulfilling a college whim became just another flitting butterfly of a idea on the way to adulthood. Kohlmeyer is now a sixth-grade language-arts teacher living outside of Charlotte, N.C. Buckley is a South Florida-based flight attendant. There were plenty of stops and a couple of marriages, too, in between. Their lives have long since orbited different suns.
And there was one devastating car wreck. That’s where their story began to diverge.
But here we are all this time later — the sorority girls now 52 with a whole lot of catching up to do — and Kohlmeyer and Buckley once more have their numbers for the July 4th Peachtree. Theirs is further testimony that a simple road race can be more than a morning sweat, elevating it to the level of a personal cause and a joyful reunion.
“It’s about time,” Kohlmeyer said. “I’m sorry that it took so many years for us to reconnect. But it’s fortunate it’s an event like this. And I can’t help but think if it’s me and my friend coming back together because of this event, how many other people does (the Peachtree) make such a great impression on?”
When they do start together Tuesday morning, well back in the massive pack, they will come full circle, returning to a friendship that has gone untended for the better part of two decades.
It was the accident in the spring of ’85 — in which Kohlmeyer was plowed into by a drunk driver with such force that she suffered broken bones from her jaw to her feet and lapsed into a two-week coma — that first sidetracked the two friends’ Peachtree plan.
And in a way it was the accident that brought them back together at the start line. As much therapy as it was story-telling, Kohlmeyer wrote a novel based on her life — using the wreck as the central event — titled “Lifelines.” In getting out the word about the book, attempting to notify those old friends who were part of it, one of her social-media flares caught Buckley’s eye in January.
“We started having sorority reunions a couple years ago on Jekyll Island, and I started asking if anyone had heard from Peggy. I had tried online and couldn’t find her. Lo and behold she popped up right after her book was published,” Buckley said.
They didn’t drift apart overnight. The two had maintained some contact after school, after the crash — Buckley was a bridesmaid in Kohlmeyer’s first wedding. But Kohlmeyer moved around, landing at one point as far away as Hawaii. The lines of communication gradually frayed until they were severed.
But once they found each other, it took no time before the messages ping-ponged between them. Then came this one: “I had just gotten the notification on Facebook that the lottery was coming up for the Peachtree (entries). I forwarded it to her and said let’s do it. It’s time,” Buckley said.
Running the Peachtree was such a goofy idea at the beginning. Neither young woman was exactly a track star. Kohlmeyer, in fact, had put off all her physical education requirements to the absolute end of her college career. “We had not sweated the entire time there,” she said.
The first time the friends tried to train on the Georgia track, neither made it a lap before falling out.
The crash happened soon afterward, before they could get serious about stretching out their legs. As Kohlmeyer began the long healing process — both her body and her memory were shattered — Buckley found herself taking jogs in a quiet Athens cemetery to clear her head. She ended up running that ’85 Peachtree with a group of her summer-job co-workers.
Three years later, Kohlmeyer was finally fit enough to enter a Peachtree herself. At first, living had been in doubt. Then, because of the effects of her coma, simply functioning. “I didn’t know what a fork was for because my recall wasn’t there,” she said. Then walking — she had a broken hip, a compound break in her right leg and a shattered left foot. Running was an act of proof, she had overcome it all. She announced her comeback from the crash by finishing the 1988 Peachtree.
“I said that would be it, just one race. It was one race I had to do,” she said. “But that started a fire.”
Turns out, the two friends still have much in common. Both have dealt with physical calamities — Buckley developed diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. As a result of the accident, one of Kohlmeyer’s legs is nearly two inches shorter than the other. And both answer those challenges through the defiance of regularly running. Although the pace they’ll set Tuesday will keep them to the rear.
“For me, every run I get a feeling of success,” Kohlmeyer said. “This one’s going to be even more so because this is something we were supposed to do over 30 years ago.”
Finally a Peachtree pledge will be fulfilled, three decades after it was so casually born.
They’ll both arrive in Atlanta a day early, check into their hotel rooms and begin acting like sorority sisters (Alpha Delta Pi) again.
“It’s a two-day event,” Kohlmeyer said. “For a lot of the races I’ve done, you go, do the race and come home. This is going to be a celebration of friendship.”
“I’m looking forward to catching up with Peggy — the race is just a conduit to that,” Buckley said. “This is one of those friendships that time doesn’t make a difference. You know each other well enough you pick right up where you left off.
“You get to this point where you realize how important your long-term friendships are, and that those are the connections that keep you going.”
They’ve even mentioned the possibility of meeting to run in another race next spring in Charleston.
But just get through this Peachtree first.
There exist, blessedly, no good excuses not to do it this time.
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