Happy Independence Day, everyone!
The Peachtree is one of the largest 10K races in the world with over 55,000 entrants. It takes place every year on July 4th in hot Atlanta and is a classic event to run. Today, Meb Keflezighi, the 2014 Boston Marathon winner, started at the back of the pack in the Peachtree Road Race.
Meb Keflezighi joined forces with Kilometer Kids in an effort to raise $75,000 for charity. The goal was to start as the last person to cross the starting line and see how many people he could pass. Even though he is a very fast 10K runner, there was no way he could pass everyone in the race because of the wave start at Peachtree. He had his own wave, starting 10 minutes after the last wave to allow for the way to clear a little.
His goal was to pass 22,500 runners over the course of the 10K. In the heavily crowded course, he managed to run an impressive 38 minutes and 58 seconds. That time took him pass his goal and 22,780 runners! That is incredible! According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this stat may help to put things in perspective – “That’s the equivalent of passing all of the passengers in a full-capacity Boeing 747-400 (524 people) every 54 seconds.” .That is quite an amazing number!
Here is one more interesting tidbit – the differential between his chip time and the gun time was over one hour and 45 minutes.
