Photograph by the Growl Bros.
There’s a steep hill on Peachtree Road by Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, where last year I spotted Senator Raphael Warnock, among thousands of other runners, struggling. He’d reached the famous “Cardiac Hill,” a grueling climb during the Atlanta-Journal Constitution Peachtree Road Race that marks the halfway point on the 10-kilometer course. Watching from the sidewalk, I pointed him out to my friend and laughed a bit at the thought that our senator was really running the race rather than just cruising it for waves and a photo op.
Flanked by a bodyguard, Warnock slowed as he hit the hill. Like the other runners around him, I could see him dig against the gravity working against him; then he crested the hill and found his stride again on the downhill. I started running when I moved to Kirkwood after college two years ago. I fell in love with the simplicity: A little left foot, right foot led me to new sights and sounds. These days, I find myself wanting to prove something by running longer and faster. Hefting myself up a hard uphill recently, I remembered Senator Warnock on Cardiac Hill and wondered what he was trying to prove.
“Come on, hurry up,” Warnock said to me on a recent May afternoon, in his booming preacher’s voice. Bodyguard in tow, he met me on the Eastside Beltline Trail near Muchacho on Memorial Drive. He had on last year’s Peachtree Road Race shirt. Shoe of the day: white On Cloudrunners. “I love the Beltline, but you have to pay attention out here,” he said, as a bike passed us. (Back in Washington, Warnock has helped secure federal grants for its construction.) I watched as families and other joggers recognized and then gaped at Warnock—double take. “Hey, Senator!” said a mother with her kids. “How are you all doing today?” he called back
As we moseyed along, he explained the origins of his active life. “See, I was typecast by my family as bookish,” he said, with a bit of a smile. “So, my brothers played football, and I played the trumpet and baritone horn. It wasn’t until I was preaching at 28 that I found the gym.” For decades, he kept to a consistent workout routine and found cycling in his 40s. “I have loved to ride my bike on the Silver Comet Trail, and now I run on the treadmill at the Senate.” He went on, “It’s about taking the tightness from your mind and muscles and turning that into energy to keep you going.”
His talk of release and momentum made me wonder if he listens to music when he runs. “I knew you were going to ask me that,” he said. “Yeah, I listen to OutKast and Ludacris, although those can be a little too edgy for me.”
We passed Breaker Breaker and took a left down toward Krog Street Tunnel for a beat before turning back. Warnock stretched and touched his toes before we started off the way we came.
As a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Warnock often “threatened” to his parishioners that he would run the Peachtree Road Race. And then, in 2021, he found himself at the very front of the start line. “I thought it would be fun to be by my constituents during the race and thank folks for the support,” he said. “My plan was to run a mile and then walk a mile, but they put me near the front right after the Ethiopians.”
Warnock felt the adrenaline of the race. “I had just run and won a Senate race, so I was not about to be smoked by these total strangers. I took off, and I guess I was in a little bit better shape than I thought.”
It took his bodyguards and deputy chief of staff a couple of miles to catch up to him. He did stop and shake a few hands, greeting spectators outside of the Shepherd Center and his friend the Reverend Sam Candler at the Cathedral of St. Philip, who threw holy water on runners. Warnock finished in 1 hour and 14 minutes.
We finished our run back at Muchacho. “I’ve got more training to do,” he said. Warnock now runs the Peachtree every year, duking it out with Mayor Andre Dickens, who started running it in 2022. Warnock tries to set a personal record every year: Last year, where I saw him trudging up Cardiac Hill, he earned a new personal best by six minutes.
“That’s the hardest part of the race, but I love it,” he said. “It’s exhilarating getting to the top knowing you did it. Now, you can coast on your momentum all the way down Peachtree.”
This article appears in our July 2025 issue.
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