Race #33 Overall

I ran this year’s Classic with the same friend and coworker who I ran it with last year.  May as well compare times.  But we both knew we would have bad times because we weren’t really ready for this race.  I’ve come to realize now anything that can go wrong for my body will usually happen early in the year, January to April.  Early on I was still nursing my foot from the Reindeer debacle and then it got super cold for a few weeks (yeah, I’m definitely chicken, I admit it now), and then I get sick again for a month.  In contrast, I ran my best during the fall last year.  So now I’m leaning towards scheduling major runs in the fall and just staying local in the spring.  Case in point, I ended up not doing a half marathon in Bay St. Louis because I was still nursing my upper respiratory infection and my lungs were nowhere ready to tackle the distance.  Hell, I could barely play my first fifty minute kickball game of the spring.  So all-in-all, I think I made the best decision by putting off the Mississippi trip.

Instead, I took on a local 5K and then a few weeks later, it was Classic time again.  I signed up late so i didn’t get my name on the bib or personal delivery.  Luckily, my friend was able to save me the trouble of making two trips to NOLA.

Race Morning!!!  Well, parking has changed yet again.  Can these people not make up their mind?  So I get off the Superdome exit planning to do what I did last year and behold, the road is blocked off.  They were now sending everyone into the Superdome lot.  So two years ago, Superdome was open, last year it wasn’t so I parked down the street, this year I can’t get down the street because they’re forcing everyone into the Superdome lot again.  Make up your minds people!  I decided not to wait in the huge long Superdome line (not to mention I wasn’t sure whether my friend was going to try to park in the original garage as planned or not).  So I found a way out and around the mess.  It was a long detour around the CBD but I was early anyway so I had time to kill.  Eventually, I made it exactly where I wanted.  But now the garage parking rate went up from $5 to $8, and that’s assuming I make it back to the car before 1pm, then it shot up to $20.  Oh, so maybe this is why I should’ve just stayed in the long Superdome line.  I was actually half an hour late leaving that afternoon but the lady let me out for $8 instead of $20 because the guy in front of me complained and I guess she thought I was going to complain too.  I thanked her, told her I was prepared to pay the $20 anyway and then complained about complainers like the guy who was just in front of me.  Haha!

The weather today is quite comfortable.  I remembered that in the last two years, I was hoping that it would at least be warm enough and not freezing.  That wasn’t going to be a problem this year, or so we thought.  By April 4 this year, it’s already been in the 80s for nearly 14 days and above 70 for the last month.  Now I was actually hoping that it wouldn’t be too hot!  Well, it wasn’t hot at all.  After a Good Friday where it was 87F, a cold front came through and dropped the temperature to about 56F, and it was drizzling rain.  It was a moderate rain while driving down to the Crescent City but it let up to a light drizzle for most of the pre-race.  At one point around Mile 3-4, it did turn into a moderate to heavy drizzle but it didn’t last long although it did make it very chilly.  But all-in-all, the weather was just about perfect.  The sun even came out later towards the end of the event.

The corrals were pretty much the same as last year and we stayed one behind the other to the start line, not unnecessary merging.  Although we did see plenty of walkers, strollers, dogs on leashes, grandmas with canes, etc walking past us in Corral E while we were in Corral F.  No way grandma with the cane is finishing under an hour.  Wow!  They truly just let people do whatever behind the elites.  Although I did find out that there was a way to pay towards charity, $200 or something, and you got to start as a charity runner behind the elites.  And this could be anybody really from fast people wanting to get a good fast time to slow grandmas who just want to be near the start.  😉

Another kind of crappy thing, They did not let us run on both sides of Poydras after the start.  So that made for a fairly tight beginning all the way down to Peters and into the Quarter.  It ended up not being a big problem honestly for me because we had already decided that we were going to take it easy, so we weren’t in any big hurry.  We didn’t dodge anyone really.  We found a good pace behind someone and basically just followed through the CBD on to the Quarter.  We also took a few pictures on the sidewalks.  So the crowds really didn’t bother me as much, because I wasn’t trying to get a fast time anyway.

Even with the rain/drizzle, I was surprised at who all was out spectating the run.  There were a few bands, one in Jackson Square.  The line at Cafe du Monde was long, as usual.  We saw two people running in front of us all of a sudden zip off into Jax Brewery, I guess looking for clean bathrooms?  Haha!  We saw tons of great costumes as usual.  We caught Moses standing in line for a bathroom on Esplanade.  We also ran past a bunch of storm troopers and one or two of those sand people from Star Wars.

Dragos was set up with the beer truck and I guess margarita mixes again.  A few other people had their own home made margarita mixes on the side of the road.  I swear, one of these years we’re going to stop actually running this and just walk and drink the route while walking with a fun float.  We saw plenty of them this go around and on the way back.

We finished it up a little slower than the previous year but were still proud of our finish, especially since we were walking the route back afterwards, plus it was raining slightly and a tad chilly but not cold by any means.  We got our post race beer and food and decided to head on back towards the Quarter early so that we could see as many people/floats as we could who were still traversing the route, and we saw plenty.  Only downside was that the Tropical Isle we stopped at the previous year for hand grenades was actually closed this morning.  Totally unacceptable.  But we still found drinks and pizza down the street.  The best part though was that they didn’t mess up my time this year.  Small downside, the finisher medals were a lot less special and more generic this year.  Still one of my favorite races though.  Can’t wait until 2016.

Race: CCC15

Date: April 4, 2015, 8AM

Place: New Orleans, LA

Time: 1:21:55