The Peachtree Road Race 2024 Didn't Happen For Me

By Bill Craig

 I'll keep this short and sweet, I have only myself to blame about not making the run (a 10K)

I always had misgivings about it, even while training on "The Carrollton (GA) Greenbelt". It was a fun time for me (as mentioned previously), but I was forgetting, that I'd be going alone and Dondra would be staying home, and even though neighbors would be going to stay with her, I wondered if I was maybe being selfish, and decided I was. So we talked about it, she and I.

To refresh your memory if you haven't read me in a while, Dondra is in end stage renal disease and the only thing which helps is the dialysis she gets three times a week. She didn't qualify for a transplanted kidney (too many other health-related problems stood in our way).

So even though I was enjoying the training runs (up until then I was home getting fatter), and doing those all-important intervals, I wondered to myself if I'd make that run.

And in the end, I didn't.

The race got "Black-Flagged" anyway, because it was too hot that day, and I guess my decision was a wise one, as it turned out, because at 74 (even a "trained-up" 74), I might have taken my last breath that day.

I've been told pretty much all my life that I could not do anything right, so when I ran the Atlanta Marathon in 1991, I thought to myself, "OK, that's done. What's next?" And many things followed (included in this journal if you care to find them). I found that if left alone, I can usually manage to successfully complete a thing or two.

So I stayed home and took care of my wife instead of going to that run, and while I'm sorry to have missed it, I am glad I took the time to train for it, And I am glad that Dondra and I got to spend the Fourth of July together.

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