The Great St.Charles Road Race

I've been in New Orleans for a conference and when I got here I noticed they were having a race. I thought, why not? It was in a pretty part of the city (Uptown) and I could get there on the streetcar. So up I got early on Sunday morning and headed out on the St Charles streetcar to De La Salle High School. This race was put on by the New Orleans Track Club. Funny how runners are the same everywhere although I didn't see any familiar faces but I saw lots of fluer de lis! It was a 5 and 10K, I opted for the 5K since I needed to get over to my conference. It was a very small race, probably about 100 in each race. They had a 1/2 mile fun run for the kiddos and they went off at 7:45. Then we headed out on St. Charles, shortly after 8. New Orleans has a beautiful park, Audubon, and we ran about a half mile there and back out on St. Charles. It was a completely flat race but even that early in the morning it was already sunny and hot. The neighborhood is beautiful, lots of Greek Revival homes, an upscale area of New Orleans. They did their scoring really different. You were given a label at the end of the race, you wrote your name, age and finish time (honor system) and then dropped them in one of 2 boxes based on gender. Then they sorted them out and stuck them up on a board, based on finish time. I've never seen that before! They took pictures of most of the race and all the age group awards and they had it up on FB the next day and even a video of the race. They served jimbalaya after the race and even though I was hot, it tasted really good! The awards were all handmade by the art students at the high school and there were lots of the high school students there helping at the race. I'm so glad I ran this for four reasons:

1. I was chicken to go out to the race by myself, worried about the crime, the hotel front desk assured me that it was safe but I didn't trust them, thought they were trying to sell the safety of the city. But once I got on the streetcar (about 5 blocks from my hotel and it was still dusk when I walked to it) I was fine.

2. I needed a new baseline for my 5K.

3. The food here is great and I needed a good run!

4. I got to see a part of New Orleans that I probably would not have taken the time to sightsee otherwise.

Another benefit was the goodie bags were the leftover bags (gear bags) from the MardiGras marathon, including all the goodies inside, very cool!