Every year, the city of New Orleans hosts the Crescent City Classic, a 10K road race that runs from Jackson Square downtown to City Park in the middle of the city. It’s the day before Easter, and this was the first year I’d been in town to do it. I felt like that was pretty appropriate, because this year I’m actually running a lot. It was my first race since the half marathon, so that was exciting. Also, three of my friends were running the Crescent City Classic as their first race ever, so I was really excited to be able to support them.
I didn’t really put that much effort into training for this race – I didn’t stop running (except the second half of February) but my runs were definitely not as intense as they had been at the beginning of the year. I was mostly trying to stay in 10K shape. The only thing I couldn’t have prepared for was the heat. The race started at 8:30 a.m., and by the time I crossed the start line at 8:35, it was already hot and humid. I got through the first two miles pretty easily, and I forced myself through most of Mile 4, but then the heat started to get to me, in spite of the water stops at every mile. The sun stayed pretty unforgiving down most of Esplanade Avenue, all the way to City Park, so I had to stop and walk a lot of the race. This was disappointing, especially because I ended up finishing the race eight minutes slower than my personal best. But now I can just chalk the heat up to experience and work on getting used to running in those temperatures (especially since I’ll be in New Orleans all summer, I’m going to need to get used to it!)
One thing that was really fun about the Crescent City Classic though, was that everyone is really friendly, and just looking to have a good time, in true New Orleans fashion. In honor of Easter, a lot of people ran the race in bunny ears, and a lot of people wore other costumes (I couldn’t imagine running in anything that would make it even hotter). Toward the end of the race, I started talking to this lady who was wearing bunny ears about how hot it was and how exhausted we were. She ran half marathons, too, so we were able to talk about that. We got to the last water stop and then decided to run to the finish line together. That’s one of my favorite things about races – runners are all a little bit crazy (who else decides to run 6, or 13, or 26 miles just for fun?) and most of us aren’t in it to win, but we still love it. Over 6,000 people finished before me, but I still felt like I walked away a winner.
After the race, I immediately ran into one of my friends, and we waited for another friend to cross the finish line. Both of them had been pretty nervous about finishing the six miles going into the race, so I was really excited to be able to welcome them to the club of crazy runners today.