The Louisiana Marathon:
“jambalaya crawfish pie file gumbo”
The sub-title of this article is most appropriate, because,
aside from running the Louisiana Marathon in Baton Rouge, the main theme of
this week vacation for Carolyn and myself was eating. Being in Louisiana, the foods mentioned above
were all things we had to try, in addition of others.
Our vacation was divided into two parts. We flew from BWI on Thursday to New Orleans
Airport, rented a car and drove to Baton Rouge to spend four days, including
the Sunday marathon day. Our motel was
about ten miles outside the center of town.
Baton Rouge, which is the state capitol of Louisiana and is home to LSU,
is a nice enough place, if not exactly jumping with things to see. We managed to find enough in the three days
before the race to keep us occupied. We
got out to two natural areas. The first
was a parish (county) park. It was a bit
unsettling being there because there was an active firing range for police and
walking around we saw animal figures that were targets. The other area was a preserved swamp area,
which was nice to see. We met the
photographer who spent most of his spare time hanging out there getting shots
of wildlife. We also met another couple,
who were going to run the marathon. They
were delighted with the weather in the 50s, having traveled with sub-zero
weather in Wisconsin.
We spent time downtown, walked the Mississippi River level,
strolled through a riverboat casino, which seemed to have mostly older black
people for clientele, and found the starting and finishing areas near the state
capital. We also scouted out a highway
into town, which had numerous fast food places and picked one at which to stop
the morning of the race for a 5:00 A.M. breakfast and use of the bathroom
facilities so we could avoid the portajohn lines. On Friday we went to the expo as soon as it
opened and got my number and shirt. The
expo had nothing to offer to me as an out-of-towner.
On the morning of the race, we were up at 4:00. After breakfast, we headed into town and
found a spot on the street about three blocks from the finish (and two more
from the start). On a nearby corner were
several portajohns and, sure enough, I had to use one despite already having
been in the restroom of Mickey D’s. Around 6:20 we made our way toward the
start. At 6:45 I stripped off my
warm-ups, which Carolyn would carry around for hours until I got done. Because the temperature was in the 40s
(rising to about 60 when I finished), I wore shorts and a long-sleeved tech
shirt with light gloves – much less than I had been wearing at home in the
cold. Then I entered the corrals and placed myself near the four-hour
pacer. I did not intend to run the
marathon in four hours, but hoped to hold the pacing group for half of the race
and possibly finish under the 4:04 I ran at Erie in September.
Having received a GPS for Christmas, this was the first
marathon in which I would wear it. I
also had my usual watch to record the official “mile” splits. This made the start a bit complicated as I wanted to start both
instruments as I crossed the start line.
I hit the stopwatch and then the GPS.
Of course, several dozen more people had piled in near the 4:00 pacer
and I found myself separated by 20 or more yards as I started. I had to work for over a mile to make contact
with the group.
I quickly discovered the following things: 1. The pacer was going a little too fast as
he was clicking off about 9:05 on the
official miles (instead of 9:10s). 2. My
GPS was showing that each mile was consistently one or two hundreds of a mile
long.
The course went down near the river, then across town and
over a bridge (the only hill, but we would cross it again in the 25th
mile), down a residential street with many live oaks, whose roots pushed under
the asphalt, raising bumps to trip over.
Then we went through the LSU campus, past the back of Tiger Stadium, and
continued running for five more miles around a lake. In mile ten I got into a brief conversation
with another guy who had been trying to keep up with the pacer. He said the guy was “crazy”. Our next mile was 8:56, which confirmed his
diagnosis. I slowed up to recover in the
next mile, but kept seeing this runner ahead in the distance, which made for a
convenient carrot to chase. I eventually
passed him in the latter stages when he walked through a water stop and he
finished eight minutes behind me.
I passed the half marathon rug in 2:00:23, not far off my
early goal. But the pacer was long
gone. The fourteenth mile was the worst
measured one on the course. It took me
51 seconds longer to cover it than mile 13 and the next several miles were also
faster than 14. It’s almost like they
measured a mile from the half marathon mat.
After about mile 18, I began to slow a bit more with each passing
mile. No 4:04 was in the cards for me. I plugged on.
The area with the live oak roots, now at 22, 23, 24 on the return, was a
bit scary as I frequently scuffed the bulging asphalt because my tired legs
were not lifting very much. I was glad
to get out of there intact. The bridge
wasn’t that bad as I used my race-walking technique to get up it. From there it was about another mile to the
finish. Done in 4:10:06.
Carolyn was right there and we walked to the festival
area. Each runner had a strip of numbers
running down the side of the race bib. I
pulled it off and we proceeded to get some food and drink. The ten numbers allowed us to get ten items
of either and it did not matter who was using it, so Carolyn had plenty as
well. In fact, one of the guys at the
beer truck was only checking one number for two beers the first time and did
not check any at all the next time. I
guess there was enough extra to give out.
A band was playing and it did a long set. I guess the style was jazz fusion. I would have preferred Dixieland jazz,
zydeco, blues or rock and roll. Eventually the directors got around to the
awards. I had won second in my age
group. In fact the printout of my
results showed I was second in the group all the way through the race, quite a
bit behind the guy in first, but far ahead of the third-place runner. The award on a piece of slate roof, recovered
in New Orleans after Katrina. Obviously each
award was on its own unique piece of slate.
After the awards we made our way back to our car and went
back to our motel for some much needed salt and sweat removal. Later we went
out to a popular brew pub in the Louisiana Mall, a huge shopping area.
The next morning we began the second half of our
vacation. We took the rental car back to
the New Orleans airport and took an airport shuttle into New Orleans. Although the trip out and back cost us $38
apiece, the price of four more days of rental and four days of parking in New
Orleans was more expensive. Plus,
anytime one moved a car in New Orleans, the question of where to park would
come up. From our hotel, the French
quarter as an easy walk. The bus and
trolley cost seniors 40 cents and we used them for our trips out to the parks.
To summarize our time in New Orleans, we walked through the
French quarter on several different streets, ate in a different establishment
for each lunch and dinner, saw the big muddy bend in the Mississippi. My favorite times were getting on public
transportation and going to Audubon Park one day and City Park another. We did
this to get in a lot of walking. The
first day, Monday, after the marathon, my legs were pretty tired walking around
the French Quarter. But they gradually
felt better as the week went on.
Audubon Park is west of downtown, a starting a couple blocks
below Tulane University. The trolley
ride out went through a nice area where the city gentry reside. After walking around for an hour, we
approached the entrance to the Zoo.
Admission for a Senior was $27.50 and we were not about to pay that
much. But a young woman with two young
children saw us walking away and came over and said she could get us in on her
yearly pass. She agreed the charges were too high for people who were only going
to be there once. So we spent about three
hours in the zoo. A lot of work was
going on to expand it, so maybe after it is done, it would be worth spending a
full day at the price.
On our last day in New Orleans, we went out to City
Park. Before we had gone, I had already
checked out the course of the New Orleans Marathon, which is two weeks after
Baton Rouge. It starts on a street which
is only a block from where we were staying, goes out to Audubon Park, back into
town past the French Quarter and then turns north to City Park. The half-marathon finishes there at the
beginning of the park. City Park is so
big (I guess at least four miles long and over a mile wide), that the second
half of the marathon merely has to go along the edge of the park on the west
and north side and maybe a mile more before turning around to finish in the
same area as the half does.
Walking into the park, I read the plaque, which stated that
the park was built in 1938 by Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. This project employed 20,000 people. We only
saw the tip of the park, but in it were three great attractions: A garden and arboretum, the New Orleans
Museum of Art, and a sculpture garden.
New Orleans seems to be bouncing back after Katrina. There is a lot of building going on, not only
private high-rises, but a huge Veterans Affairs Project that we passed on Canal
Street.
On Friday, we were up by 3:30 A.M. in order to catch our
shuttle by 4:15. We arrived at the
airport quickly and went through security pre-screened. So we had to wait for 5:00 A.M. in order to
get some breakfast. Our plane was on
time, but it had to wait to be de-iced before take-off as we would be ascending
through clouds laden with possible frozen precipitation. We were really lucky as a later flight may
have been delayed by freezing rain. We
also lucked out missing the big snowstorm at home and the delays involved with
that. Three days later, we landed on
time and made our way home. Our son and
daughter-in-law had come over and shoveled our driveway, so we didn’t have to
immediately tackle something like that and we could concentrate on unpacking
and unwinding.
Recommendation: The
Louisiana Marathon has much to recommend it- a high probability of good
weather, a flat and fairly scenic course, and killer after-party. Baton Rouge doesn’t have much going on, so
it’s better to limit time there and plan to spend some time in New Orleans,
which has something to appeal to everyone.
We were not much for spending time on Bourbon Street, which had someone
at most every bar trying to pull you in.
There are numerous beggars, probably more prostitutes than the one or
two we saw, and musical street acts, all looking for some money. Like Las Vegas, New Orleans is another city
where walking down the street drinking is not a problem. We found that after Monday (MLK holiday),
most of the people being tourists were older couples. Of course, partiers would prefer to come
during Mardi Gras. I would guess that
hotel prices are higher then.
