36/50 - Snickers Marathon

Albany, GA - Birthplace of Ray Charles under scandalous pretenses

First of all, the Snickers Marathon and Half Marathon in Albany, GA is very well done. I'm a race director and though I sometimes take for granted the effort that goes into staging races, I do notice the little touches that make a great event. Albany is not a city you would immediately think to visit when you think of Georgia. However, the routing of this course showcased the diversity and beauty of a city steeped in civil war and civil rights history. Translation: a lot of turns! And though I ran 24 of these miles completely alone, I was never confused. That's pretty remarkable.

After a solid run of 12 marathons in as many months, I finally succumbed to a strained hamstring in October and took some time off to rehabilitate. I wasn't sure I would be healed in time to run this race so in true fashion, I waited until 2 weeks prior to book anything. Of course, no plans are the best plans.

Arriving in Atlanta Friday afternoon, I made the 3-hour drive to Albany via highway roads dotted with pecan farms (a beautiful site to see), small cotton mill towns, giant mossy oak tree-lined streets, and the occasional plantation mansion. Most hotels were booked but I found one yesterday and it worked out just fine: takeout from a great little Italian place nearby, the ID Network's murder mystery shows, asleep before 8pm. This is what escaping the chaos of my everyday life looks like.

Pecan orchard - the uniformity alone is beautiful

With 8+ hours of sleep the night before a race, 45 degrees and sunny at the start, and a leftover cannoli in the fridge, I really had no excuse to not meet my sub-3-hour goal. These trips are not cheap to have to revisit and with 29 completed going into this one, I'm feeling the pressure to fund my kids' 529 plans. I had a goal of starting with 7-minute-miles then running comfortable to a 2:55 finish time. I'll spare you the suspense: I nailed it - 2:55:30 for state #30. Well, except for the "comfortable" part. I felt the hamstring sing from mile 16 on and dealt with an unexpected calf pain for 24 miles. Still, I wasn't about to redo Georgia, as beautiful as this state is.

Taking it in stride

With Snickers and Miller Coors as sponsors, this race has some impressive prize money and as such, draws a fast field for 500+ marathoners. My time, which would normally put me in the top 5 for a race this size, landed me in 20th place! Prize money be damned, I was more interested in the free post-race massage and let me tell you, I am going to be chasing the dragon here - best damn massage I've ever had! Unreal. He worked the hell out of those issues I mentioned above. I miss him already.

What now? It's a beautiful day and a 3-hour drive to Savannah, I'd be stupid not to! So off I went. Now if you've stayed in Savannah on a weekend, you know the hotels in the Historic District are $250+ and mostly booked. Hell, it's hard to just find parking. See my comment above about "no plans are the best plans". Let's see how this unfolds, shall we?

There are so many nooks and crannies in this city that the best way to experience it is to walk, so for the next 8 hours, that's what I did. I walked to the south end of Forsyth Park then zig zagged my way back through all of the Historic District neighborhood through its 21 squares, stopping to take in the sites and shops at will. Did I mention you can walk the streets with alcohol? Well, you can. And of course I Strava'd it, 9 miles. HERE.

Forsyth Park - 30 acres of serene park space and open alcohol

I've been missing playing in a band lately so I set out for some live music. Damon and the Shitkickers ripped it up with some outlaw country at The Jinx, a cover band on the street went from Prince to Rage Against the Machine seamlessly, and In Business closed my night with some solid booty-shakin' funk at Congress Street Social Club. Parked 2 blocks away in front of the post office, I passed out in the car for 5 hours until sunrise, pleased with the extra $250 in my pocket.

"This shit ain't gonna kick itself!"

A room with a view

As part of my adventures that evening, I mingled with a mother and daughter at Moon River Brewing and regaled them with stories of how an alligator becomes a designer handbag (the daughter works for a NYC designer and I worked for a family that farms alligator skins for those bags). THEY bought ME a drink and told me to visit Tybee Island. So when I woke up, I drove to that sleepy old school beach town for a stroll on the beach. I then headed back to Savannah for breakfast at Clary's Cafe before the 3.5-hour drive to explore Atlanta until my 9pm flight.

The view from under Tybee Island pier at sunrise

Atlanta is a great city with too much to see in one day. With that said, there are two things I love: history and hipsters. The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site is emotional and given America's current state of affairs, the history within is frighteningly foretelling. Follow this up with a visit to Margaret Mitchell's gravesite at Oakland Cemetery and it would drive any Gone With the Wind lovin', equal rights advocate to the brink of a stiff drink. And so I headed to The Porter Beer Bar in the Little 5 Points neighborhood - an eclectic mix of restaurants, resale shops, and bars. Before splitting for the airport, I stumbled upon The Vortex for a great burger with a side of shut-the-hell-up-this-is-the-way-we-do-things. Seriously, it's on the menu - peruse their Policies tab on the website to see what I'm talking about.

Yep, that's apt