Race# 32 Overall

Here’s a fun race to run, I said.  It would be fun running at night, I said.  I guess I should have known something was up when I went to get my bib and shirt about two hours before start time just to find out that my bib was already gone.  Really?  I was watching them pull through the bibs.  Were they simply not paying attention?  So one lady who seemed sympathetic said that I would get a replacement bib and walked off to supposedly get one reissued to me.  The other girls (including the one who searched for the initial bib) didn’t really seem to care, or they just simply had no clue as to what to do with my situation.  They just froze until I finally moved to the side and allowed for some more people to check in.  Here’s your sign!

Xmas Tree

So I waited for what ended up being about twenty minutes.  The original lady walked back and forth a handful of times, glancing my way every now and then, I just assumed she was still working on my bib.  Eventually, she stopped walking altogether and just started handing out shirts and never looked my way again.  But the other girls looked at me a handful of times then.  Were they just expecting me to leave?  It was like the entire tent was clueless.  Even a lady I work with who was volunteering with check in was completely clueless, “Oh, they better not have lost your bib” before proceeding to go back to playing with the jingle bells and antlers.  So then the city Christmas tree was lit (without me present) and the fireworks started going off.  At that time, I just gave up and threw my hands up in the air.  I walked off, took some video of the fireworks and figured that I wouldn’t even bother running this race.  What incompetence.

Fireworks

I ended up meeting up with a friend back by the parking garage, and we walked back to the start line and check in.  I walked up figuring that either they would have a replacement bib ready or they would be completely clueless.  Well, as you can probably expect, they were totally clueless.  So this guy walking by sees my predicament and he proceeds to getting me a replacement bib very expeditiously.  But he didn’t take any of my information, simply my name.  He didn’t even care about my previously assigned number.  So I make the joke, I wonder if the guy who took my bib will run faster than me, maybe I’ll want his time.

We line up at the back of the pack to start the race.  I just now that there’s going to be a bottleneck as the streets were not clear (plenty of parked cars on both sides of a fairly narrow street to begin with).  We start finally and we’re off.  We take things a little slow to avoid the bottlenecks but I can’t say that it was as bad as I expected, perhaps because we started near the very back.  We were able to get around a lot of people pretty quick though.  The pace was about 10:15ish.  Lots of people wearing antlers.  Most people wearing the jingle bells.  A few people dressed up as reindeer even though they looked like gophers or hedgehogs instead since they were round and had no real antlers sticking up.

Capitol

The state capitol building was lit up green and red for Christmas.  Perfect time for a picture.  So I take the picture right where the turn is from 4th Street to Spanishtown.  That’s when I notice a lady down on the ground and two guys helping her up.  First casualty to this night time event.  I was curious whether or not there would be any lighting issues with this particular race, especially since a co-worker had mentioned how he fell in it two years prior.  Well, as long as the field of runners isn’t too packed and I pay attention, I figure it shouldn’t be… Jesus Christ, I just tripped over whatever it was that lady must have hit…

And I went down hard in slow motion even.  I started tumbling and there was nothing I could do about it but brace for the fall.  I hear someone scream about the ‘crack’ and once on the ground I think I even saw the ‘crack’.  Crack my ass, it was like a mini fault line in the middle of the road.  I didn’t even try to get up as I was more worried about other people tripping over it, maybe even falling on top of me.  So I yell and point “Watch out for that crack thing!”  Meanwhile some poor lady is waiting on me, trying to help me up but I guess I wasn’t in a great hurry.  But I realized I needed to get up and at least off the road.  She helped me up, I thanked her and immediately felt the pain as I began to hobble towards the sidewalk.

Hey, where is Danielle?  She had her earbuds in and was right in front of me but she must have missed me going down.  She was gone now.  I’ll just say that she tripped me!  Haha.

Meanwhile, I look down and all around and notice blood in three areas, both knees and all along my right arm.  Ouch, the right arm took the brunt of the fall.  It looked pretty bad.  But hey, it wasn’t broken or if it was I couldn’t tell.  If anything, my left arm felt a little more suspect for a few minutes, but I think it was just in shock.  I saw the first lady finally take off in front of me.  She must have done the same thing I did, fall, get up, inspect her body, assess her injuries if any, and went back on to running again.  So I start to run.  Ouch!  Wow, can’t really tell but I think I’ve really screwed up my foot somehow.  Must have stubbed that big toe good.  But how far ahead of me is Danielle?  So I took off running again, although at a slower pace.

About half a mile up the road at right past the first water stop, I found her.  I hold up my arm to show her my injuries and she thinks I’m wanting to bump arms for encouragement “Yeah, buddy!”.  No, no, don’t touch it.  See the blood?  You should have seen her face then.  I think she was more startled than I was when I fell.  Haha!  I explain to her what happened, not to mention when I caught up to her and stopped running for a moment, I realized that I had really messed up my foot more than initially thought.  Now, she did ask if I wanted to head back to the start.  But we were almost as far away from the start as we were going to get anyway, plus I’m supposed to be tough right?  “Nah, I’m already out here, let’s do this!”  Hell, it’s only a 5K, right?

Well, I just hobbled the last two miles of that 5K.  Actually, for all the local races that are shorter than a true 5K, this one was a good quarter mile or so longer.  How about that!  But since I fell in the first mile, it made for a long two miles to the finish.  At times it felt better running (albeit awkwardly) but I just did what I could.  The pace dropped to about 16:30.  Ha!  I walk faster than that… when I’m not injured.  😛

The last two miles took us over a few speed bumps and two parking lot access gates and we saw no less than another four people go down although I can’t say any looked as serious as me and the first lady I saw.  The rest seemed to shake it off quicker.  I was told that some older lady fell on her head and needed an ambulance, but I don’t remember ever seeing her or the ambulance, but god knows where she was in the field.  Not to mention, they ran out of water!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention…  Remember how cold it was in New Orleans earlier in November for the Jazz half marathon?  Well, summer came back the first week of December.  It was 82 this particular day and it was still 80 not long before the race start time.  It was warm, muggy.  Supposedly there were people passing out and puking at the finish line.  And the event staff had nowhere near enough water.  They ran out for a long time before I guess some local business gave them extra water.  I guess they were expecting another 35F wintry day and everyone would want hot chocolate.  Although they had all week to watch the weather channel and see that it was going to remain in the 70s and 80s the week leading up to this particular event.

And I was bummed at the finish.  From such a tragic event where I tried to scrape most of the skin off my right arm and possibly break my toes (actually I fractured two of them but I wasn’t sure about this at the time), I was just sure that I would get to utilize the EMS tent at the finish.  I mean, most races have some sort of medical standby and this race did think about having trainers to stretch and massage people prior to and after the race.  What do you mean they don’t have an EMS tent?  WTH?  So now there is no medical, there’s no water… What the hell turns into What the F***!!!

But this is where my second co-worker friend turns up with her true awesomeness.  Carrie has got to be the sweetest person ever, and fun as hell.  She locates a basic first aid kit.  At least it has iodine.  She also helps to find water although not until after she cleaned my wounds the best she could with what she did have and wrap it up in the only tiny gauze tape she could find.  Event director… terrible job.  Worst race ever so far!  But Carrie made up for it in the end.  I guess I can forgive them.  lol

Post race sucked though.  Most of the food was gone.  There was some super long line for what appeared to simply be a tiny bowl of red beans or jambalaya.  Then we walk around the corner for some pizza (now I have a pizza a beer craving), but the place was pretty packed.  We run into a few other co-workers and I explain to them how Danielle tripped me so that I wouldn’t beat her this time.  Haha.  I guess it was best not to stop for pizza and beer.  It helped me decide to go on home and properly clean up my arm with alcohol and peroxide and to pull off my sock to find out what damage I had done to not just my big toe but the one next to it as well.  LSU Purple!  Nearly a week later, I still can’t move right on it.  Guess it’s going to take a few weeks for sure.

But it was a success right?  Not so much because I finished it.  Who cares if I’m stubborn.  But it was a success because I wanted to run at least one race in every month of the year this year (to make for last year) and this race did that.  I have officially completed a race (minimum 5K) in every month of 2014.

Oh, and as far as times go… the guy who took my bib did end up finishing first in his age bracket.  Actually, the bib should have said he was 36 but that would have placed him second in that age bracket, so he must have complained and gotten the director to change that bib to be age 41, which placed him first in that age bracket (but they didn’t change the name).  And since they didn’t have any clue who the real Daryl Williams was, I finished second to last in the same age group.  I guess the just copied his info and put it for my replacement bib info.  Now that there are two of us, age 41, I think that other guy should be disqualified.  Haha!!!

Either way, I think I’m done running for the remainder of 2014.  See you guys next year.  Happy Holidays!!!

Race: Reindeer Run

Date: December 5, 2014, 7pm

Place: Baton Rouge, LA

Time: 46:24