Eating the Peachtree

July 4th was my fifth running of the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta. The PRR is a 10k race billed as the world's largest with over 55,000 runners. The first thousand or so are elite runners who care about their time. The rest of us are there for the fun of it. Starting at Lenox Mall in Buckhead and ending in Piedmont Park in Midtown, the run goes straight down Peachtree Street until turning towards that park on 10th. The route is lined the entire way with cheering spectators, bands, musicians and more.

My niece Jamie and I run this every year (this was her sixth year) and after this race we were comparing what we noticed on the race course. There is a surprising amount of food offered the runners along the way so we have called this "Eating the Peachtree!" Here's what we found.

Peachtree Tavern offers free beer on their front porch. Who can pass this up at 8AM?

Publix in Buckhead offers up donuts every year, trays and trays offered up by bakers from the store.

Moe's in Buckhead, I swear they were handing out burrito's….

Smoothie - Jamie found someone with great smoothies.

Watermelon - I passed someone handing out slices of watermelon.

Powerade - The race provides water stops, unfortunately they are usually getting the water from fire hydrants. I found someone giving out cups of Powerade.

Ice cream - near Mile 5 I found a Cold Slab Creamery table with cups of ice cream.

And I know there was more, these are just the ones we noticed or stopped at. Next year we plan to run even slower and carry a camera to capture a better shot of “Eating the Peachtree.”

Pictures of the 2004 race can be seen at http://www.marshallturner.com/adv/ptree2004/index.htm