New Orleans Marathon Weekend

I’m typing this blog from a plane on my way to Seattle. I figured I better blog the Marathon trip before this one!

Kelly and I really did a crash course in Marathon training starting in December. We increased our mileage every week and went to Orange Theory Fitness twice a week. Our last long run before the marathon was the Saturday before, and we ran 20 miles. Kelly and I were able to do the 20 miles under 4 hours and felt really good about the progress we had made.

I was a little nervous about going straight from 20 miles one weekend to 26.2 miles the next weekend without a taper weekend in between, but I was glad we were able to train up to 20 miles.

Kelly and I caught an early flight on Saturday morning to New Orleans. It was a quick 55 minutes, which I definitely appreciated after experiencing the 10 hour drive 2 summers ago. Once we landed my mom and Aunt Joanne were ready to pick us up and take us to the Expo. We picked up our bibs, bought some merchandise, and walked around the expo.

It was still too early to check-in to our hotel, but we dropped our bags off and were starving. Our first NOLA meal was at Mother’s. Kelly and I shared the Famous Ferdi Po’boy, the Famous Ham dinner with Red beans and rice, potato salad, and French fries. And then Kelly proceeded to order Bread pudding (the best she’s ever had). This meal was AMAZING. To kill more time, we walked around the French Market and Bourbon Street.

We stayed at The Blake hotel, which was right outside the start line of the Marathon. Definitely worth paying for the convenience of that. We spent some time unpacking our race gear and made sure we didn’t forget anything. Watched a few Family Feud episodes while making plans for our time after marathon. We had 7:45pm Dinner reservations and an Italian place called Domenica. Carb-loaded on some pizza, pasta, bread and salad. We also downed a LOT of water during this time. We went to sleep nervous about the next morning!

Marathon time!

Kelly and I woke up around 5:30am to have a light breakfast and start drinking water. We had plenty of time, yet I still felt like I was getting ready up until the last minute. We walked out to our start corral and even though it was 45 degrees outside, it felt like 65 with the sun shining, and we hadn’t even started running! Since we were in Corral 16, it took about 45 minutes for us to finally START the marathon.

The first 10 miles were great. It was a big down and back through the Garden District. There were a LOT of runners at this event (23,000). Lots were walking and it was slowing us down at the beginning. I really started to feel the effects of the sun beating down on me around mile 4 and knew that was a really bad sign considering I still had 22 miles to go.

We were running downtown and I was feeling really good. We were still surrounded by lots of runners and kept our normal training pace. By the time we were approaching 12 miles, the sun was shining bright, we were no longer in the shade of the Garden District or downtown. I was starting to get really jealous of the half-marathoners that were splitting off to the finish line, and we still had 13 more to go!

Once the half-marathoners split off, there was significantly less runners. The rest of the course was a series of down-and-backs through New Orleans City Park. This was not a scenic part of the course… I was dying at mile 13 and started to walk a little bit. Definitely not something that ever happened in training, but the sun was KILLING me. Kelly and I walked/ran until mile 19 when we saw my mom and Joanne with oranges and water. I gave her permission to go on without me since I was slowing her down. At that point I didn’t care about the time and just wanted to finish it. I was really upset that I hit the wall so early, and I blame it on the dang sun! You should see the peeling action that is happening on my back right now.

I played a game with the sun and would run when it was behind a cloud, and would walk when it was beating down on me. I ended up finishing in 5 hours and 43 minutes. My first marathon was 4 hours 56 minutes, but I did a significant amount of walking towards the end.

Like I mentioned earlier, I got a gnarly sunburn on my back, a blister the size of another toe in between my big toe and “pointer toe” on my left foot, and I am pretty sure that I am going to lose my big toe nail on my right foot. What’ weird is that my knees and muscles were really aching this time around, but my toes/feet have been killer these past few days.

We got an awesome medal that had Jackson square Cathedral on it and mardi gras beads instead of a ribbon. We also got to take advantage of marathon finisher jacket. Awesome items for the cheap price we paid to run the marathon ($50).

We ate a tasty brunch at the Ruby Slipper. Cheesecake stuffed French Toast and some brisket eggs benedict situation. Kelly was always on board for sharing our food every meal.

The shower afterwards was heavenly, and Kelly pretty much fell asleep immediately. Our plan was to take a nap, and then hobble to bourbon for a Hurricane. I couldn’t sleep for whatever reason, so when she woke up I told her I was ready to rally whenever needed. While she was on the phone, I passed out, and then she did too! We woke up at 1:30 am and realized our Bourbon plan was shot. It was alright though, because we got to sleep more, and wake up early the next morning for a full day.

On Monday we woke up pretty early and packed our things so we could enjoy the city. We had already seen so much of it during the run, but were ready to take advantage of some touristy New Orleans things. Started the day eating beignets at Café du Monde, and then snagged an uber to our Ultimate Swamp Tour adventure. We had a 9:45am appointment, and this was supposed to take up about 2 hours of the day. Also it was important for us to find things that didn’t require a lot of walking. The swamp tour was so fun! We learned a lot, saw some wildlife, and got to hold an alligator! I would definitely recommend doing one if you’re looking for things to do during the day in NOLA.  No ubers were available in the area we were in , but luckily they provided a shuttle bus for $7.50 a person back to the city! SCORE.

We went to Pat O’Briens for the Hurricane and lunch. I had the best shrimp and grits EVER, with friend oysters as an appetizer. That Hurricane was delicious. I can’t believe I never had one when we came a few summers ago! We walked around bourbon some more, had some hand grenades, and people watched. The other things on our list to do closed at 3, so we got our palms read and made our way to the airport a little early. Even our Airport dinner was delicious. We got back to Dallas around 10pm. Definitely a fun trip!