Christian Oliver's digital thoughts

Since I didn’t register on time, I ran with a bib that my wife found me 2 days before the race. It turned out to be a female bib so I ran as a 27 year old “Nancy”. I apologize for distorting the female group’s statistics, had I known it was a female bib maybe I wouldn’t have run with it. On the other hand, 1 distortion among 50,009 runners should not affect much

These were my results:

Here are some Male comparables:

Benchmark if I had run with a Male Bib:

Thus my gender adjusted results would be: Overall Place: 1763 / 50009 (Actual) 96.47 PercentileGender Place: 1495 / 26172 (Estimated) 94.29 PercentileDivision Place: 917 / 12061 (Estimated) 92.40 PercentileAge Grade: 60.1%
I’m very happy about these results, particularly since it was my first 10K and I started at the 80′s group.

I’m getting ready for the Atlanta ING Marathon which will be run on Sunday the 29th of March (this coming Sunday).

If you want to show up and cheer me up along the way, here are some tips on how to follow my progress and when I may be in the different cheering locations along the track.

The Marathon starts at 7 am sharp at the Centennial Olympic Park in Downtown Atlanta.

This is the course of the Marathon (2009 Route Map and Street List ):

There is some official Race Day Information here

“The Cheering Zone will supply plenty of inflatable noisemakers and “Go Runners!” signs. All you do is provide the enthusiasm and NOISE!

ING Cheering Zone- Marietta Street – the exciting final mile of the race!

Following the Runners Along the Course

Friends and family members of ING Georgia Marathon & Half Marathon participants are encouraged to use MARTA, Atlanta’s rapid transit system, to follow and support along the course. Several key MARTA stations fall along the route of the ING Georgia Marathon to include Five Points, MLK Memorial, Inman Park/Reynoldstown, East Lake, Decatur, Midtown, North Avenue, and Peachtree Center stations. MARTA Breeze cards will be available for purchase at the ING Georgia Marathon Health & Fitness Expo. For more information on MARTA, visit www.itsmarta.com.”

This is a close up of the Start/Finish area:

I’m hoping to finish the marathon around 11 am if all goes well. My expected average pace should be 8:22 minutes per mile, which should help you calculate where I may be along the course.

If things go according to plan, I may be around these times at these key locations (Download PDF):

If I’m not there at these times, things are either turning out too good to be true or not as good as planned…

You can find out where I’m at by tracking me live through this website.

Any positive energy is always welcome.