I was sort of interested in this series last year but didn’t do it for a variety of reasons.  I think one weekend there was a conflict with another race, and then after the Classic in 2013, I just didn’t want to drive back down to NOLA so quick.  This year, I had a friend and coworker convince me that we should do this.  So we did.  All three runs are put on by different organizations so they differ in degrees of preparedness and support but one of the NOLA running groups decided to put all three together as a part of a bridge series.  If you complete all three, there is a medal.  There are also awards for finishing times of all three runs combined.

April 5th – Hale Boggs Bridge (St. Charles Parish)

Hale Boggs

This was the first of the three.  It had been a cold winter, but it was beginning to warm up fairly nicely.  This particular morning was still a bit chilly.  It started off around 50 that morning, maybe getting up 56 for the race itself and it was overcast.  This race had a 5K and 10K option; however it was noted that your total time would be counted towards the series time no matter which one you did.  We couldn’t figure out why anyone would do the 10K then unless you were already sure that you didn’t care about the series and just wanted to run the 10K.  So we did the 5K.  The 10K started about 2 miles down the road and ran on top of the levee to our spot.  The timing was odd because after about 75% of the 10K runners ran past us on top of the levee, our race started down along the road.  We made a U-turn on the road after about 1/4 mile while the 10K group had to go about a mile down the road before their U-turn.  So this meant that we began to merge with the 10K group pretty quickly after our start, which definitely caused a few problems I heard.  I also had a problem with navigating around walkers and strollers as there was little effort to segregate people by pace in any of the three races.  It took me nearly a mile before I was around the slower groups and on a steady pace that I was comfortable with.

Of course, I still took plenty of pictures.  Sure, I hate people who stop in front of me suddenly to walk, talk, tie a shoe or take a picture.  That’s why I make a huge effort to get along the edge of the course or to at least make sure nobody is behind me before I do anything different.  I try to get over to the edge, especially for pictures and tie a shoe (although I haven’t had to tie a shoe yet in any race I’ve done – knock on wood).  I might stay on course to walk but I make sure nobody is anywhere near behind me before stopping.  Anyway, the point is that there was a lot of complaints about people stopping to take pictures and yes, I saw plenty that could have been more tactful with how they did it.  But being as I took pictures too, I’m certainly not going to complain.  It’s not often you get to run/walk across huge bridges over the lower Mississippi River, so who wouldn’t want to photograph the moment.  But please people, have respect for your fellow run/walkers.  That’s all I ask.

This bridge was basically a straight up and down with a curving off ramp towards the end, plus a false hill right before the end because the off ramp has to go back up and over a railroad track before reaching the River Road and the finish line.  What a perfect place to take race pictures of participants, right at the apex of the false hill where everyone is already mad and tired from having to make one last short climb before the finish.  Haha.

Of all the races, I found the post race support the best for this one.  There was a small medal for the St. Charles bridge run.  You were also given cold water, along with plenty of other opportunities for cold water.  There was a great band playing and there were beaucoup food opportunities, all free.  The shirt was really comfortable too.  I went into this race thinking that this one would be the worst, but being as it’s been around probably the longest, it was actually the best.  The timing wasn’t great though.  There was a start time and a finish mat, but no start mat.  There were also inmates manning the janitorial duties at the finish under watch of the local sheriff’s department, which just felt a little creepy at times.  I can only imagine how the women and children felt.

St. Charles Race Time: 0:33:03

May 3rd – Huey P Long Bridge (Jefferson Parish)

By early May, there was little fear of it being too cold again.  Summer was already setting in.  This race actually marked my first time over the Huey P since the reconstruction project which was probably one of the largest projects in Louisiana history.  They took the two narrow steep lanes and turned them into three huge wide lanes with shoulders and made the ascent more gradual.  This required some major bridge work as the original structure was already established and somewhat narrow to begin with.  The bridge itself was opened in 1935.  So I was interested to see what the new structure looked like, post construction.  Wow, impressive.

For the first race, we had a choice to park at the start or finish and bus to the start or back from the finish.  I found it easier just to park at the finish and bus to the start.  For this race, everybody parked at the finish and bused to the start.  Luckily we had a huge Walmart parking lot to use, but the whole area is in a very congested part of metro New Orleans, Elmwood.

We used school buses to bus back and forth.  We were bused to a very wooded sort of secluded area off to the side of Highway 90 on the Westbank near Bridge City.  I found the start very odd.  It just didn’t seem right at all.  The water also tasted funny but it was good and cold.  There was also a drone flying overhead taking pictures and video of all of us throughout the race.  That was neat.  The start area and mat weren’t impressive as it was constructed at the last minute, but in the end, timing for this race was the best of all three.  There was a clear start and finish time and timing seemed to go perfectly.

For the first race, they closed off the shoulder and one lane.  For this race, they closed off the entire eastbound span.  Nice.  So we had the whole highway to ourselves for about an hour.  This gave us plenty of time to run and take pictures.  I think on bridge support with water was the best for this race as well.  The offramp to the finish line was a straight shot.  The shirts were nice also.  Several runners dressed as Huey P Long himself.  There was a lot to like about this race.

The finish area was odd though.  It was dirty, sort of grassy, in the area between the two bridge spans, and at a major intersection.  So there was a lot of traffic to navigate once the bridge and roads reopened which could have been quite dangerous for people with children.  No medals were given, but we did get a nice glass.  The food was also pretty good too but the choices were a little less than in St. Charles.  The band was just as good though.

Overall, I thought the timing was best at this race.  On road support was great.  The course was fairly easy, the straightest and probably the most gentle uphill but a steep downhill.  Maybe it shouldn’t be on a Saturday morning to avoid some of the traffic.

Huey P Race Time: 0:30:09

June 7th – Crescent City Connection (Orleans Parish)

For this race, once again you had the option to park at the start or finish and bus to the start or vice versa afterwards.  And once again, I found it much easier to park at the finish; although, that could have been an issue.  For starters, you have to go to the start (on the Westbank) to get your gear and bib, unless you pay the $5 to get it delivered to you, which I did.  I really didn’t want to park on the westbank and bus back afterwards.  But they don’t give you much direction about parking at the finish either.  Because of the lack of direction, and the general knowledge that there was plenty of parking near the finish, it was assumed parking wouldn’t be an issue.  But when we arrived, almost all of the general knowledge lots were closed, and a few of the smaller nearby ones wanted $10+.  In this regard, the race did a poor job in notifying participants about potential parking situations.  So I had to go look for roadside parking in the neighborhood nearby that wasn’t illegal, which isn’t always the easiest thing to find in NOLA.  There are permits required for most neighborhood parking and then general street parking can be hit or miss with all of the Do Not signs for various reasons.  After a couple of circles and realizing that I would have to walk a good ways back to the race area and buses, I finally found a roadside spot.  Of course the advantage of this was that I didn’t have to wait long from catching the bus, getting to the start, and actually starting the race.  Unlike the previous two runs, this race was 4 miles in distance and not a 5K.

This race certainly had the most participants.  The St. Charles run had 1600.  The Jefferson run had 1200.  This one had at least 2200, but we never know how many for sure.  There were major timing issues with this race.  Turns out that supposedly there were 1300 registered about a week before the run.  Then all of a sudden over 1000 registered in the final week which totally screwed up the race’s plans.  They ended up being way short on shirts, so I didn’t get a shirt in my size.  As a matter of fact, I had to drop down two sizes just to get a shirt, so I just gave it to someone else.  The timing mechanism supposedly was new, perhaps experimental.  So it ended up missing a lot of the runners as they crossed either the start or finish.  I was one of them, AGAIN.  Of all the runs I’ve done now, this is the second that had a timing issue for me personally and it just happened to be another race run by Allstate Sugar Bowl and the Crescent City Classic.  All I can hope is that they get their timing issues taken care of by 2015.  There are two other smaller CCC runs later this year, but I don’t intend to do either.

As far as this race went, this was June.  And the race started at 6pm, which was too early to be honest.  It was 94F at the start of this race.  Yet the CCC advertises this as a sunset race.  So they really need to push it back to 7pm or later.  Or, perhaps they should reschedule this race for earlier in the spring, or back in the fall like it was originally scheduled.  This race had a few more rolling ups and downs and steep curves due to the road construction of the HOV (carpool) lanes.  It hurt my feet more than usual around those curves, and it hurt more because of the heat and lack of water on the bridge itself but otherwise I felt fine.  There also was a serious lack of post race support, food after the race.  There were only three food trucks to pay for food and two had stranger food (not what I’d consider after race foods) plus the snoball truck had serious mechanical issues.  I never got a snoball.

So all in all, I rate this race the worst of all three which surprised me since I was expecting this one to be the best.  That disappointed me.  But the views from this bridge are definitely the best.

CCC Race Time: 0:45:13

Personally, my thought is if they’re going to turn this into a series run, perhaps one organization should manage all three to give it some consistency.  But each has it’s good and its bad.  I would definitely want to do the series again, but as said before, the CCC needs to get their timing issues corrected before next year.

Video from all three runs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NChTQAMOGuk