April 23, 2011

The Blog Begins - Crescent City Classic

 Well here starts Frannie's world of blogging....Today I ran the Crescent City Classic in New Orleans. 

Polly woke up early and wished me a good race.  She was supposed to watch from the corner of Toulouse and Rampart as I ran by - but I must have missed the corner.  Before I knew it I was turning the corner at Esplanade.

Sea of people ahead of me

This is not the race to expect a PR (unless you are one of the seeded runners with a number less than 100).  The announced number of participants was over 21,500.  My number was in the 11,000's but there were probably at least 10,000 walkers who started ahead of me. I spent the first 2 miles zig zagging around strollers and walkers - many of whom walked 6-7 people across. 



This is the race for people to dress up in costumes and have a good time.  There were many people in bunny ears, super hero costumes, and just about anything that you can think of.  My favorite group was a group wearing Black with bunny ears and fuzzy tails.  They carried a wagon with a huge boom box.  They also had several other wagons with what I thought was water.  I hung with this group for a while because they were so large - they plowed their way through the walkers.

Bunny people with support wagons
I stopped to call Pollie and let her know that I missed her.  When I caught up to the bunny group - they had stopped.  I found out that the support wagons were full of Jello shots and the bunnies were handing them out to the runners. 


Bunnies hand Jello shots to the runners at 2011 Crescent City Classic

The temperature at the start of the race was at least 80 degrees and humidity was typical New Orleans.  So I just treated this like a Sunday slow run.  Even though - it was shorter than I should be doing to prepare for Grandma's Marathon  - which is 56 days from now.

So to recap - my slow Sunday Saturday run in New Orleans:

Mile 1:  12:37 - strollers & walker issues
Mile 2:  12:12 - they are thinning out
Mile 3:  13:00 - stopped to call Polly and take pictures of Bunnies
Mile 4:  10:32 - the walkers are starting to thin out
Mile 5:  10:14 - still crowded
Mile 6:  10:07 - I am feeling good - but there are still strollers - these people started with the Kenyans!

Final time was 1:10:42 - too fast for a slow run and too slow for a 10K - just having fun

I am running with new Brooks Ghost 3's and my feet feel good.

Now - just relaxing in the room - catching up on a Baby Blanket - will head back home tomorrow morning and hope to get a Swim - Bike workout in with Katie.  Rocket Chix triathlon is next Sunday.

Hope that I get a chance to do a mid week blog - may need Jennifer's help with some things.  I am sure she will critique this blog - and give a daughter's constructive criticism.

2 comments:

  1. great job frannie!!! blog looks great, now you just have to keep it up or your blog stalkers will get mad!

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  2. I'd so love to start running races but it's so expensive to register :P

    Great job girl!

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