April 23, 2022: Northside Beltline 3K

The Atlanta Track Club recently partnered with the Atlanta Beltline to re-launch the popular Beltline series of races, after a hiatus of a couple of years due to the pandemic. The first event of 2022 was today's Northside Beltline 5K / 3K. There were Northside Beltline 5K races in the past, however these were not held as regularly as the Eastside 10K or Southwest 5K races. The Northside section of the Beltline has developed a little more slowly and as far as I know, is still not directly connected to the Eastside or Southwest sections, but during the pandemic, the Northwest Beltline Connector was paved around the Bobby Jones golf course, including a pedestrian bridge over Peachtree Creek and a protected walkway for about one mile, parallel to busy Northside Drive. 

The 5K route was a loop around the Bobby Jones golf course, whereas
the 3K route was mostly out-and-back, parallel to Peachtree Creek for the middle section.

Although I typically register for the longer distances, I decided to try the 3K distance, in line with my current focus on short races. I don't have an official 3K race time on Athlinks, therefore I was guaranteed to run a new personal best today! I also thought it would be a good time trial, given that I ran the first 3K of my most recent 5K fairly quickly, before slowing down in the 4th kilometer and walking at the beginning of the 5th kilometer. 

The 3K race route turned around before the 1-mile marker.
Look at this very gently rolling course - someone at the
Atlanta Track Club forgot to add the hills to our race route! 
(The 5K route had a big hill on Northside Drive, climbing south from Peachtree Creek.)

Runners gathering before the race - what a great sight after 2 years of pandemic! 

Bonnie and I arrived about an hour before the start of the 5K race, which was scheduled for 8:00 am. After saying hello to several friends and picking up my race bib, I went out for an easy warmup on the new section of the Northside Beltline, where Nicholas Varvel joined me. Nicholas is a fellow Emory professor, in the School of Medicine. Nicholas is training for the Chicago Marathon, and is raising funds for Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE). We ran out-and-back along the first part of the 5K route, where the connection to Northside Drive was partially blocked by a construction zone. An arrow was painted on the street for the 5K route. I mentioned to Nicholas, "Hopefully the runners will be spaced out well enough to get through this narrow spot." As we returned to the start-finish area, I carefully noted where the turnaround mark for the 3K race was clearly marked. Shortly afterwards, a cart with Atlanta Track Club personnel heading out along the course passed us. At the time, I didn't think anything significant about the cart, figured that they were just checking out the route or perhaps dropping off a volunteer as a course monitor for one of the turns. Before we parted, Nicholas asked me what my goal was, and I predicted around 15 minutes, maybe 14-something if I was running well. So that meant that I was aiming an average of just under 5 minutes per kilometer - and I had already set my watch to metric measurements for today. 

I retraced my steps on the race route in the post-race warm-down jog.
These photos were taken about an hour after the 3K race.  
The "ROAD CLOSED" sign was to the left side before the race,
and the trailer wasn't there, so the obstacles weren't this bad during the race. 

There were four waves for the 5K runners, then at the end was a single wave for the 3K group. Tiffany Haney, who occasionally runs with Tucker Running Club and also works at one of the hospitals near the Emory campus, was holding the ribbon separating the 3K wave from 5K wave D. I hadn't seen Tiffany in awhile, and we had a nice chat while we waited to start. Tiffany said "You have 98 friends running with you today!" I turned around, and noticed a relatively small group. Hmm, not only a guaranteed personal best, but a real opportunity for an age group win! Anyway wave A for the 5K runners started promptly at 8:00 am, followed by the remaining waves at ca. 2 minute intervals. The 3K race was scheduled to start at 8:10 am, but the organizers added 90 seconds to allow a larger gap between the 3K speedsters and the walkers in wave D for the 5K, which I greatly appreciated. As we waited to begin, my favorite master of ceremonies Ronnel Blackmon gave us instructions about a sharp right turn that we would make to get onto the Beltline. Hmm, I thought we were going to run a loop through the neighborhood before going onto the Beltline? I then heard one of the organizers standing to the side say that "We had to change the route ... this morning." Wow, that was unexpected! Oh well, I was pretty sure that there would be people in front of me that I could follow, along with course monitors to ensure that we wouldn't miss any turns.

A couple of minutes before the 3K race start. 
Bonnie is standing behind the white pickup truck at the intersection.

This is Bonnie's view of our group 30 seconds before we started, 
with Ronnel getting us fired up to run our personal bests! 

Ronnel counted down, with a second to go I started my watch, and the airhorn blew. I was on the "second" row of runners, however a bunch of children took off and were 50 feet ahead of me within mere seconds. I had seen Bonnie waiting for me up ahead, and managed to flash a smile as I approached and then passed. We did make that sharp turn onto the Beltline: Rich Kenah was warning us to watch the curb, so I took an exaggerated step to ensure that I didn't drag a foot over the curb as I cut the corner very tightly. 

"Hi Bonnie!"

"Watch out for the curb!"

Once we were on the Beltline, I felt that I was running unsustainably quickly. I glanced at my watch, which was reading only 4:55 min / kilometer pace. I certainly felt that I was moving faster than that, and more importantly, that my exertion level was pretty high. I gradually managed to dial back my speed just a bit. Within a few minutes, we reached the end of the wave D walkers. Fortunately they had already moved to the right as the first 3K runners had raced by, so my path was mostly clear. However, a young boy in the 3K race group was running just ahead of me. He was keeping ahead of me, then started to weave around. In the moment, I was thinking "Is this kid trying to block me?" but now I think that he was trying to stay out of my way in case I was trying to pass, and was simply unsure of whether he should move to the center amongst the 5K walkers, or to the left away from everyone. I'm thinking of him equally as a fellow competitor, but I should have remembered that to him, I must look huge, as I'm twice his height and probably more than double his weight. Sorry, I didn't mean to intimidate! I ended up passing him but did so safely. My watch sounded 4:43 for the first kilometer. Wow, that's close to a 14 minute race pace if I can keep up that blistering speed. 

What a beautiful morning for running! After the race,
I returned to take a few photos of some of the sights that
I failed to appreciate while I was running like a bat outta hell. 

I then saw some arrows directing us onto the street. I stepped carefully across the short grassy median and over the curb onto the asphalt street, and resumed a decent pace. I wasn't really thinking about the route, was just going to follow directions. But within a couple of minutes, we were at the construction area. There were no course monitors to be seen! I noticed that some of the fast runners had made a left U-turn, so surely the 3K turnaround mark was there, but I couldn't see it! The only directional indicator was the arrow for the 5K route. My watch showed that I was at 7 minutes elapsed, so it seemed reasonable that this was the halfway point. I didn't realize it, but when I looked at my Garmin pace afterwards, I had nearly stopped at this point. A young man passed me as we made the U-turn together, and he took off ahead of me. 

"Where do we turn around?!" I asked out loud. 
No answer. 
(The truck wasn't there during the race.)

I decided to follow him as he seemed to effortlessly and confidently glide over the landscape. I wasn't 100% certain that I was in the right place, but I knew that I was heading back toward the start-finish area and felt like I had covered about 1.5 kilometers before turning around, although in the midst of running quickly, I wasn't going to fool around with my watch to cycle through to find the distance elapsed. I was tiring a little. Coach Carl had warned me to expect feeling increasing effort as I grew tired, but I wasn't worried about finishing. Kilometer 2 sounded, 9:37 elapsed which meant 4:54 for the second kilometer! 

Mid-race, thanks to Tiffany Haney for this photo! 

Peachtree Creek, which I had barely noticed while running

This was the 3K turnaround, which I had noticed at 7:30 am.
I think that people in the cart must have sprayed over this,
shortly after I had passed this point during the warm-up run. 

Beautiful view to the south, on the new Northwest Beltline Connector

While I was still moving pretty well, I wasn't keeping up the sub-5 min / kilometer pace, in fact my watch was showing 5:15 per kilometer. Carl had advised me to "see what you have left" for the third kilometer. By deliberately focusing on that advice, and paying attention to my form, I managed to maintain a decent speed. The gap had gradually grown between me and the young man ahead of me, although I never lost sight of him while we were on the Beltline. With perhaps less than 500 meters to go, I found a second wind and started to move a little faster. The intersection to turn toward the finish quickly approached, I accelerated through the turn to join up with the 5K finishers, dashing toward the finish line, just around a gentle right curve. I heard a couple of women shouting "Go Frank!" Thanks friends, whoever you are! I wasn't looking around, just focused on keeping my head up and looking straight ahead as I used my arms to propel myself forward, as if I was running a stride. And there was the finish line, across, and done!

This was the route that I actually ran. Almost a full 3K.

I immediately slowed to a walk and stopped my watch. "Arghh!!" The watch distance showed only 2.93 kilometers, although it had taken only 14:18, so I had finished well under my 15-minute goal. I sort of wished that I had checked distance before stopping the watch, but was more relieved to stop running and trying to catch my breath. Bonnie called out, I turned around to greet her, and we walked together to pick up a bottle of water. I chatted with friends for a few minutes, but reminded myself that I really needed to run 3 miles or so as an easy warm-down before heading to the car. 

Bonnie didn't expect to see me so soon, so missed the finish line photo, 
but caught me from the back just as I'm realizing that I only ran 2.93 kilometers.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that I finished in 7th place! 8th place was only 3 seconds behind me, so it's a good thing that I continued to run quickly through the finish line. It turns out that the 5K route was also a little short, based on the results that I saw on Strava. Given that the track club had to make changes in the last hour before the start of the race, and this was probably a new race course, I won't hold a grudge regarding the short distance. The pandemic has taught me never to take for granted the value of friends joining together to run in-person races. The most important thing is that I don't think that anyone was injured. I'm confident that the track club will work out the bugs in time for next year's race. 

I had nearly stopped at the turnaround, unsure of what I should do! 

I'm pleasantly surprised to see myself in 7th place! 
It was a photo-finish with an 8-year old boy.
I didn't think to lean as I sprinted over the finish line,
otherwise I might have placed 6th!