Atlanta’s Peachtree Road Race was humid, inspiring and emotional

So, I did it, drinking plenty of water and making it to the finish line without injury. I was hooked. Soon after, I signed up for the following year’s race, sponsored by Northside Hospital with the AJC as the official media partner.

This is a special year. It’s the United States of America’s semiquincentennial, and as a Bicentennial Baby, I’ll be celebrating a milestone birthday soon. My goal was to improve on my time from last year — 57 minutes, 51 seconds, or a 9-minute-9-second mile. Could I do it in 50 minutes or less, in anticipation of my 50th birthday?

My early morning training runs showed that I could, but then there’s the heat. The 2026 race started with a red flag alert because the weather was expected to feel like more than 100 degrees. Officials were ready to end the race early if it got too hot, they encouraged runners to slow down and urged participants prone to heat-related illnesses to drop out.

This is a great tradition, but it’s time to face the facts that the Fourth of July is too hot and humid to hold a race like this. Better to move it to the fall. That’s my personal view, but I don’t run the Atlanta Track Club.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

From disliking to falling in love with running

I did not run my first race until my 30s. Frankly, I found running to be a chore when I was younger.

When I did it, it was because I had to, in soccer or ROTC.

I admired my father, who ran 6 miles a day, and I never imagined I could come close to that feat when I was a boy.

Fast forward several decades , and I have run a marathon, three half-marathons, and multiple 10Ks and 5Ks. These days, I prefer the latter. The marathon, which I ran just before turning 40, wrecked my body and I did not want to fall out of love with running, because today it’s a space where I reflect, solve problems and de-stress.

But I admire people who push their limits, such as Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic who at 49 years old in 2024 broke the world record in his age group in a 50-mile race.

He wrote about his running journey and his relationship with his father in his 2025 memoir, “The Running Ground.”

Thompson learned to love running because of his very complicated and difficult father whose approval he constantly sought.

He also offers lessons for non-elite runners like me on improving ourselves.

Thompson writes about the four states of running: meditation, flow, catharsis and oneness, and this quote really spoke to me: “Discipline isn’t enough, though. You need to cultivate something else in these miles: Awareness.”

Throughout reading the book, I reflected on my relationship with my father, the good and the complicated.

He came from Colombia to the United States in the 1960s and met my mother, who was from Cuba. He was a clergyman, a psychologist and an educator who founded a college in Chicago. He was well-known and respected in the community.

My father was also a model of discipline, waking up at 3 a.m. daily to read the Bible and then go for his runs, often while it was pitch dark.

My mother, who lives in Cumming, told me he started to run outdoors in his 50s when they lived in Chicago. He loved jogging in parks near where he lived. I inherited that attribute, as I enjoy running in Piedmont Park and on the Atlanta Beltline. I also inherited his occasional habit of falling. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, there’s usually blood involved.

I remember the first time I was able to run past 6 miles and how I felt a sense of pride and some embarrassment that I exceeded his regular routine.

Credit: David Plazas

Credit: David Plazas

The last time we ran together was in 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee, when my mother and he stayed with my husband and me. He was 84 years old, and he wasn’t running as long as he used to, but we managed to get more than 3 miles in together. We did not say much, but we bonded in the company of each other.

He died last August, and it dawned on me in June that it was my first Father’s Day without him.

That made the 2026 Peachtree Road Race even more special, so I could think about him and dedicate this run to his memory.

Hitting a wall before the race

In the weeks leading up to the race, I regularly ran 6 miles or more and achieved the run in slightly less than 50 minutes, or an 8-minute, 18-second mile.

Last Monday, though, I felt like I hit a wall. I went running in the afternoon in 96-degree weather with a heat index up to 110 degrees.

I just barely completed 5.27 miles at an 8-minute, 51-second speed. I felt pain, nausea and discomfort — the very things I feared about running races in the South in the summer.

Discouragement hit me, but I thought about discipline and awareness, and two days later I ran again, this time in the early morning, completing 6.09 miles at an 8-minute, 14-second clip.

The chances of repeating that on race day under a red flag alert were iffy.

On Saturday, I took MARTA from the Midtown to Lenox stations on the gold line and walked with a big group of runners to the race start in my red, white and blue outfit and my black AJC cap. When the race started, I went for it, tricking my brain into letting my body run as hard as it could under these conditions.

I high-fived my colleagues at the AJC on 15th and Peachtree NE streets, and I went into gear to the finish line often thinking of my father, especially when I felt my legs might fail me. My husband greeted me near the finish line.

This Peachtree Road Race, I finished at 48 minutes and 53 seconds — or a 7-minute, 52-second mile.

The most important thing for me, though, was finishing and avoiding injury.

As I head toward my 50th birthday, I want to continue to be in love with running, growing as a person and honoring people like my father who made me who I am.

David Plazas is the AJC’s opinion editor. Email him at david.plazas@ajc.com.