Monday, July 25, 2016

And the Winner of the Inaugural Assisted Division of the Peachtree Road Race is...INCLUSION!

Ricardo and Matt win the Inaugural Assisted Division Peachtree Road Race.
PHOTO BY JORDAN D. HILL/JORDAN.HILL@AJC.COM
Hello K Peasey Nation...If you think the weather has been hot during the month of July, the Foundation schedule has been scalding. 

KPF started off the month on America's birthday with Atlanta's iconic race, The Peachtree Road Race, the largest 10k in the entire country with over 60,000 participants. That's a lot of athletes!

Peachtree even has a wheel chair division which was made up of 62 athletes this year. Brent and I have been working very hard along with the Atlanta Track Club and The Shepherd Center to create the first assisted division in the race's long and historic history. 

The inaugural assisted division was made up of five teams with the winners being Ricardo Aranda and Matt Shechtman who finished in a blistering time of just over 38 minutes. 

In an article published by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Matt thanked Ricardo for his reassurance as "Schectman’s endurance weakened over time".
“Ricardo is an amazing lead and he keeps pushing me the whole way. He talked me off the ledge and kept me going. He’s an awesome puller.”
He continued, “The Peachtree is all about inclusion,” Schectman said. “Sixty thousand different people out here with 60,000 stories.”
It was a very historic Fourth of July with fire works all through the day and a perfect day to celebrate both independence and inclusion. What a perfect pair as in many ways the two travel hand in hand. 

Two days after Peachtree, Brent and I packed our suitcases and hit the road in the KPF RV with a final destination of Muncie, IN for the Muncie 70.3 1/2 Ironman.

It was great to see some familiar faces on the course each of which inspired us to a personal best of 33 minutes for the 1.2 mile swim. We followed that up with a great bike portion of 3:56 for the 56 miles ride and followed that up with a very solid 1/2 marathon for a personal record of 6:28:00.  

We can't thank KPF athletes Tina and Naomi Hicks enough as they made their way to IN to support us. 

Brent is participating in his own full Ironman race this weekend in Sonoma Valley, CA at Vineman. We will be rooting him on and encourage him to spend more time on the course than in the vineyards. 

We are getting ready for a very busy schedule with the Lekotek Fun Run on August 13, a local triathlon on August 27 and then the People's Marathon aka the Marine Corp Marathon on October 30th in the Nation's capitol just a few days before the presidential election.  

Don't forget to check out our site for information about Bowling with Kpeasey, The Jake Vinson Family Grant and of course, Camp Wheel a Way!

As always, Together We Wheel!