St Charles Bridge Race 10K

On Monday, one of my running friends said, "Hey, we should run the St Charles Bridge on Saturday!" There is a race series here where you can run the 3 local bridges that span the Mississippi River.  Awesome?  I think so!  Sadly, I will be out of town for the other 2.  Fortunately, I was here today and I ran the 10k.  They had a 5k as well, but since Saturday is usually our long run day, we figured we may as well do the long run.  So, the 10k it was!

5 of us signed up and none of us knew where it was!!  My marvelous friend Kelly braved the unknown and went out to pick up race packets and scout out the area on Friday.  Since this is a point to point race (again!!) we had to figure out where to park and where the shuttles would be.  We drove to the finish and parked.  The potty line was short, but the bus line was long.  And not well organized.  5k runners were bussed to a different starting point than the 10k, but there didn't seem to be different buses. When we asked, we were told we had to wait in the same line.  10 minutes later we found out there were different buses, and different lines, and we found ours and got to our starting point.

The race began 20 minutes late.  Probably due to their stupid bus confusion.  So the sun was well up by 8:35, when we finally took off.  We had timing chips, but evidently they did not want to move equipment to the top of the levee, so the gun time was the start time.  Grrrr.  I'd have tried to be closer to the front, had I known that!!  Since I didn't know that, I meandered till I got to the starting line and then started running.

The race was good.  The first 3 miles were on the levee and it was a nice trail.  There were 405 folks doing the 10k, so it wasn't too crowded.  It was really nice for me because I could run my own pace.  The 2 faster ladies were in front of me, and the 2 slower ones behind and I was all by myself most of the time.  It was great.  I ran where I felt comfortable and did my own thing and I liked it.

I was not really pleased with the race officials.  They had the 5k start 3 miles into our race, and they started the 1,000 5k walkers and runners 20 minutes into our run.  Yep, I now had to navigate my way through all the 5k walkers and slow runners.  So no more free and clear running!  It did keep things interesting.  It was like playing tetris.  You had to look for the spot, judge the speed of the people moving and leap through the opening.  It worked surprisingly well, and there was only once that the person I wanted to pass moved left when I expected them to stay straight. It was still annoying to have to run through this mass of humanity.

The bridge on ramp was a little intimidating.  And once you got on, you saw the mile marker that said you were on mile 4, and then up, up, up!  It wasn't so much that it was big.  It was, but the length if the incline was so long!  I buckled down and went for it.  Through 500 walkers, up the bridge, dodging kids and chatting women.  3/4 of the way there, my lungs said they were done, but my legs said they couldn't stop, so we kept going.  I was a wee bit concerned I might puke as we reached the pinnacle, but thank goodness, it was all downhill from there!  It was a mile up the bridge (did you catch that?!  A MILE running uphill.), and another mile down.  Wheeee!

Honestly, both the up and down went a lot better than I'd expected.  After the down, there was still a mile left, and there was one more hill.  Ug.  I owned it, I ran it and I sprinted the finish.  I was 3 minute faster than last week's race, with a 1:02:14 for 6.24 miles.   I was happy with it.

And then I learned I wasn't getting a medal.  I know, I'm about to whine, but I'm mad.  They handed out medals to the first 1000 finishers and apparently I just missed one.  I'd be okay with that, but they lumped 10k and 5k people together.  The 5k time as I passed the line was 43 minutes.  So a person running the 5k and doing 14 minute miles was getting a medal and not me?!  Really?!!  A 14 minute miles is getting a medal, and I ran twice as far doing 10 minute miles and I get squat?!  I'm really unhappy about that.  

I met up with my friends, we got food, we sat and recovered.  I have awesome running friends!

 This is the bridge, from the parking lot before the race.  Scary, no?

 The 10k runners, lining up.  We were towards the back because we figured it didn't matter.  A little grumpy that it did.

Running the levee!

 The start of the 5k runners heading for the bridge.  I know, terrible quality photos!  But this is the only camera I can carry while running 6 miles!

Here I am, nearing the halfway mark.  Its hot! 

The race brochure said we'd run by plantations, but I expected something more grand. 

Yeah, our course was to turn here and run down the grassy side of the levee to get to the road. Super. 

 Uh oh.  Tackling the bridge.  Which, I must say looked a LOT bigger when I was running it!

 So fun to cross the water.  As my children would scream, "I'm on top of the world!"

 Almost to the top.  Legs don't fail me now!

Ooooh, barges!

The last downhill towards the finish!  Almost done! 

I don't know if you can see the guy in yellow there, but he ran in a gas-mask and weight vest.  He did a bunch of Burpees (push ups, followed by leaping to his feet and jumping, then back down for another push up), right before he crossed the finish line.  I don't know what he was doing it for, but I was impressed.

Me and my unhappy face, realizing, no medal for me. 

At the after party, they had these guys in striped pants and orange shirts working clean up detail.  Yep, you guessed it, they were prisoners!  As my friend said, Only in New Orleans would they have prisoners working at a family event where children are running around.    I have to say, only in New Orleans will you get Jambalaya after your race!  

Race results.... I'm not positive....  They put papers up with your info, but the crowd was pretty thick, and I didn't want to stand there forever.  I took a picture with my crummy camera and the picture is so bad, I can't even find my name on it.  As I recall, I was finisher 220something.  221, 224, something like that. They listed 405 people as finishing.  Their time was around 30 seconds more, because the went by gun time.  The web page has no info on finishing or anything, so I guess that's all I get. 

Bottom line, I had a fun run, but was not impressed with the way the race was run, and I'm still overly grumpy about no medal.  Would I do it again.... yes!

-------------

A brief follow up.  I was annoyed enough about the issues in the race that I emailed the coordinator.  She responded promptly with the following email, and I am now delighted and fulfilled!

"Thank you very much for participating in this year's United Way Bridge run.  We appreciate your donation. I am too extremely upset with how some things were handle today.  All of your concerns will be addressed and i am hoping that people have a better experience next year. Please send me your mailing address and I will get a medal to you early next week. Also, if you are interested in participating next year I would like to offer you a free entry to next year's race.  Again thank you for coming out and we hope you will come again.  I'm very sorry. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you. 

Thank you 

Tamara"

Love My Marian

I forgot to post this earlier.

On Easter Morning, as we were getting ready for church, Marian came up to me and handed me a tiny basket.  It held some Easter grass and several candy eggs.  What a sweet girl I have!  She's the only one who thought of giving me an Easter gift.  I know she must have been hoarding and hiding her candy eggs that she'd been getting from the Housing office each afternoon so that she could share with me.  I love this girl!  Her thoughtful gesture just melted my heart.

It might be a Zombie

Tonight Callie asked me to write her some math problems. She wanted to do some just for fun.  I started writing some addition and subtraction problems for her.  She looked at them and said, "That's good, I'm going to do them to decompose."

Spring is Here!

It was hot and sunny.  Time to bring out the sprinkler! 

 No pool?  No worries!  We have Tupperware bins for that!

 Table Dancing?  Nope, I have no idea what they are doing.

Cute?  Yes, yes she is. 

 This just cracked me up. (And no, the one on the right is not mine.)

Oh, they were looking at a bird nest in the tree, hoping for baby birds. 

And hey, Levi needs a bath! 

He was not excited about it, but bore it well. 

Then he got his revenge!

Crescent City Classic 10k

I ran my first 10k race today.  That is 6.2 miles, in case you didn't know.  Dan is a rock star and drove out to see me at the end and take pictures.  I really really wanted to carry my little camera on the run, but I could not for the life of me find it!  I know I put it somewhere safe, but I cannot remember where that might be.  So I was camera-less.  No photos of my 11 best running friends at the start.

I love my running group!  I run with the Stroller Warriors, a running group for military wives.  They are wonderful and have become friends to me.  We had a van of 6 of us, and several other cars going out to the race at 6am this morning.  It was fun to be with a group of friends and nearly all of us wore our Stroller Warrior Shirts.

The race started at 8.  I was a little grumpy, because I tend to run at 6am, and all this week, it has been 43 degrees at 6am when I run.  Today, it was 65 by 8am and the sun was bright and warm. It was a sunny 70 by the end.   So, not my best conditions for a run.  Running in the heat and sun gives me migraines. But I'd hydrated well the last few days and this morning, and I'd come prepared with salt tablets.   I thought I was prepared with my Garmin gps watch, but the darn thing said it had no battery charge.  AAARRGH!!  I was so cross about that. But I'm a punk, I can take it.  I used my stopwatch to guestimate where I was and how fast I was.  Definitely not as good, but better than nothing.

Our group was separated by our seeded times, and there were only 4 of us in the red "E" group.  I knew one of them was a lot faster than me, and the other 2 I was pretty sure were slower. I'm not sure I mentioned how huge this race is.  There were tons of people.  Tons!  They sent us off in waves by corral every 3 minutes.  We did a lot of walking before we hit the start, and it was slow and clogged for the first mile.  It never did clear out, but you had less and less dodging to do as you went on.  They had shut down the streets in the French Quarter and runners ran on both sides of the street, and needed the room.  

I so wish I had been able to find my camera!  We ran right through downtown New Orleans.  The race actually started at the Super Dome.   We passed the vomity smelling Bourbon street and splashed through the waterlogged gutters, due to the nightly hosing down of the streets to clear out the alcohol and vomit.  I avoided the gutters at all costs.  My running friends were excited about the free beer on course.  And it was there!  There several spots where folks were handing out cups of beer to the runners.

We started slow, which I like.  I like a slow start and a faster second half.  We couldn't go faster the first mile, but as things cleared up a bit, my friends got faster too.  I finally had to let my speedy friend go and I dropped back with the slower 2.  They, however, wanted to do miles 2-3 faster than I normally would have.  My shins were angry about it. I think we were hitting 9 minute miles because at mile 3 we were at 31 minutes.  

I was ready to step it up at mile 5, but my one of my 2 friends was running out of gas.  I decided I'd rather stick together, especially since the sun was hot and I was feeling it. I thought I'd rather be slow and feel okay at the end, then to push it and keel over.  We got progressively slower, but I was getting progressively hotter and I could feel my internal warning system telling me I was in trouble later if I pushed it.  But muscles and breathing for miles 5-6 were great.

So we slogged out the last mile and it was okay that we didn't sprint the end, because there was nowhere to go.  The second you stepped over the finish line, it came to a standstill.  My only complaint is that finish.  5000 people in front of you walking along at the end of a race is bad.  We spent 10 minutes working our way through the chute at the end.  It was frustrating.  We finally got our water and our medals, and could relax in the enormous crowd.  It took 2 phone calls to meet up with Dan.

I could have gone to the after party.  It was suppose to be fantastic- all the free food and beer you want. But I was tired and worried about a migraine, so Dan and I just headed home.  It was a decent race, and I was happy enough.  My time based on my stopwatch was 1:05:01.  Hopefully the official results will be up soon so I can see how I compared.

Dan brought Rylee to meet me.  And Dan is the one who took all the pictures for me! 

Check out this girl!  BAREFOOT! 

There were a lot of tutus.

I can't imagine a full bunny suit would be fun to run in, but this guy did. 

Yep, another tutu. 

Yikes, not sure why one would run in a mask. 

 And I'm really not sure what this is all about!

Man in a turkey costume?  Why not?  This is New Orleans!  And the costumes are my favorite part of the races here. 

 Another tutu.... wait, thats me!  Yep, my friend Blair made me a tutu and I wore it for my race, and I rocked it.  Well, I liked it better before I saw pictures.  In my head, I'm totally 25 pounds lighter and way more svelte.  But I had a good time, so its all good!

Me and my buddies at the end!  

Super awesome medals, too.  The little runner.... it spins!

Look what I found!  A Pre race photo from one of my group.  I'm the one in the tutu!

(And yes, we are standing in front of THE Super Dome. Or, as my kids call it, "The Mega Pie".)

And the results are posted.  I apparently can't tell how fast I am running for anything.  I so need my GPS watch!

There were 17,546 runners total.  I came in #6,051.  There were 9, 365 women and I was # 2070.  My official time was 1:04:57, and the pace was fairly consistent with times ranging between 10:13 (mile 3) and 10:30 (mile 1). So, we ran about the same pace, but it just felt better and worse at different times!  Bah.