The Greater Atlanta Elwell-Morehouse Fourth of July Sweat Fest — also known as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race — is a tradition that has come to wrap its salty arms around multiple generations.
Certainly, the Elwell-Morehouse clan has made the 10K race through the nexus of the city its own very-personal celebration.
For them these are givens: On Christmas they exchange gifts. On Thanksgiving they extreme eat. And on Independence Day Rich and Brenda Elwell come in from Canton, join with their daughter and son-in-law, and now their grandchildren, too, and faithfully observe the running of the masses.
These are the habits that bind a family. This is history of its own making, a trait it has chosen, but has become just as defining as the shared DNA.
They eat spaghetti the night before the race. They share the MARTA ride to the start, plotting their strategies. They joke about how granddad avoids all the water-spray areas because he is so fastidious. They clean up afterward and eat a big breakfast, like starving lumberjacks. And every time count themselves lucky to have had such a day. It’s a routine that has become an important plot line to their lives.
At the beginning, running certainly didn’t seem like it was going to be a family trademark.
He’s 76 now, more walker than runner, but in 1970 Rich Elwell wasn’t much of either while taking his graduate classes at Georgia State. When a fellow student stood up in class one day and announced he was looking for people to join him on a summer run through Atlanta, Elwell thought: “Run down Peachtree? Six miles? That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard yet.”
That classmate was Tim Singleton, founder of the AJC Peachtree Road Race.
It required years to break down his resistance to running — and no small amount of subtle peer pressure from his health-conscious workmates at the Centers for Disease Control — before Elwell finally, in 1978, dared to run his first Peachtree.
Part of his training for that race included post-work jogs with his oldest of two daughters, Kelly. She was only 8 years old, having been trained on these fun loops with dad, when she slid into her first Peachtree. She wore a number her grandmother acquired (Brenda Elwell’s more in charge of the off-course logistics).
This Fourth will be Elwell’s 37th trip down Peachtree. And Kelly’s 28th. They are the seasoned veterans of the bunch — and his daughter would have had even more Peachtrees pelts had it not been for such inconveniences as childbearing and the need to relocate here and there with her husband. Her father has missed but one race since ’78, that because it fell on a Sunday and he had a church class to teach.
Their memories seem to center on the mishaps. Like the time they arrived inexplicably late and actually started behind the clean-up crew at the tail end of this circus. Or the year, way back when they used to run shuttle buses from the finish, when they were crowded out and ran five miles back to the car.
Yeah, this race can pose a sizable mound of trouble and inconvenience, but never enough that Elwell ever felt the urge to not bother. In fact, just a year ago, when he went to the hospital in January with complications from atrial fibrillation, it was the Peachtree that contributed to his recovery. “For several months I was pretty down. I had the Peachtree in the back of my mind, thinking that I needed to really work on my body a little bit more than I would have normally because I didn’t want to miss a year,” he said.
Elwell figures he’ll never make a better memory than that of his first race with his daughter in 1979.
“That was kind of special,” he said. “She was so young and so willing to do it. I remember getting on the bus coming back at the end of the race and they were all adults, standing-room only. Here’s she is standing in the midst of all these large, sweaty bodies. I wasn’t even sure she could breathe.”
The life changes in this family can be chronicled at the start line of every Peachtree. First there was Elwell, alone. Then his daughter. Then a second daughter, Kristy, who has since developed foot problems that keep her from running. Doug Morehouse married into the tradition when he married Kelly, and now their 12-year-old twins, Hayden and Ansley, are part of the pack. Another young son is impatiently awaiting his time to run.
The best part, no whining, such a rarity for a pre-teen. “We enjoy running races. I like how it’s kind of tradition, like how it’s not very competitive,” Ansley said.
And, imagine, ingraining an activity that doesn’t involve an Internet connection and long periods of sitting and staring. “It’s really important to me to have an active lifestyle for the family,” Kelly said.
“Every year that we can do it all together is a gift,” she said.
The dynamics have changed as the years have passed. Where Elwell once worried about his daughter being swallowed by the crowd, now it’s her staying back to look after him, no matter how he protests. The grandkids run on ahead with dad, high-fiving onlookers and trying to beat each other in a sprint to the finish.
Once more this year, they’ll wait in Piedmont Park, in the meeting area marked off by initials. “We’re still meeting at the E (for Elwell); they have to wait a considerable time for me,” Elwell said.
They’ll gladly wait. For this day has become very much a part of the fabric of a family — to such an extent that Elwell has had two large quilts made of all the Peachtree T-shirts he has gathered through the years. A humble T-shirt has been elevated to the status of heirloom, a generational treasure.
“I think (the tradition) is very important,” said the fellow who started it. “The Fourth of July is kind of a time when lots of other things are going on. Yet they all plan to be here for the Peachtree Road Race. I think Kelly will carry it on when I’m long gone. Her children, they could run it 60 or more times. Who knows?”
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