10 Feb 2019 - Rock and Roll New Orleans half marathon

Enjoying the sights in the Big Easy

The latest stop on my half marathon tour of the USA was in New Orleans Louisiana.  This was our first visit to the Big Easy.  New Orleans is an interesting place with lots of opportunities to indulge and experience just about anything you desire.  We experienced many things including my successful finish in the Rock and Roll half marathon.  This was my 21st state that I have completed a half marathon in.

Leading up to this race, I've been training with an online stats based program called TriDot.  About once a month I take an assessment in swimming, biking and running and they use that assessment to design a training program for me.  One of the toughest things for me was they had me train most of my running miles in HR zone two.  In the beginning I had to walk/slow jog in order to stay in this zone.  In fact my runs during the first month were as much as 4-5 minutes slower than my normal 9 minute per mile pace.  Interestingly enough I can now run in HR zone 2 and my runs are only about 2-3 minutes per mile slower than my normal pace.  They say this gap will continue to narrow if I stick with the plan.  I think this means I will run more efficiently with less strain on my heart and body.   The down side of this training is my running pace slowed down about a minute per mile overall.  With this data and the 20 pounds of holiday weight I haven't lost yet (arg), I knew my finish time for this race would be slow.  TriDot was predicting a 2:20 finish but I would not accept that.  My dream was to finish sub 2:00 but realistically knew I could finish under 2:10.  So my goals going into the race were:


  1. Finish the race
  2. Enjoy the experience
  3. Finish between 2:00 and 2:10

Gator petting at the airport

Julie and I arrived in New Orleans on Friday.  We did not rent a car and instead used Uber for getting around.  Uber took us to our condo we rented which was at 330 Camp St in the warehouse district.  From the outside we had no idea what to expect but were pleasantly surprised once we got into the condo.  The condo was conveniently located near the French Quarter, the race start, and everything else we wanted to experience.  After arriving we unpacked, walked a couple blocks to a grocery store, and then settled in for the night.


There it is!  Guess this makes it official!

Mardi Gras!  Looks just like us....

Saturday we did lots of walking including to the race Expo.  This was my 5th Rock and Roll event and my first since 2013.  I had big expectations for the Expo and was disappointed.  The Expo was held in the Convention Center and was decent sized but didn't seem to offer much variety and there were minimal freebies given out.  I look forward to trying new race nutritional products and we didn't seem to find much of this.  As I said it was huge but to me didn't offer many bargains or anything I was interested in other than my race packet.


Let's get this show on the road!

The race started on Sunday morning at about 730am.  Our walk to the start was just a couple minutes so we didn't go down there until 7am.  We were assigned into corrals based on expected finish time.  I was in corral number 4.  The start was an exciting area and well organized.  They played the national anthem and then started the corrals.  My corral took off about 735am. 


No wonder I'm slower...

I felt good for the first couple miles and probably went out a bit too fast as I averaged just under 9 minutes per mile.  If I could have maintained this pace, I would easily have met my dream sub 2:00 finish.   But around mile 4.5,  I started to slow down and almost each mile after was slower.  Eventually I settled into a slow (for me) 9:45-10 minute pace with the goal of just trying to enjoy the race and finish it.  I really don't remember too much about the course other than parts of it were out and back and it was mostly flat. 

My number one fan!

There was adequate fan support along the course and also a couple bands playing.  The energy around the race was good and there were plenty of water stops along the way.  The highlight for me was seeing Julie about mile 9 holding up the sign she made and cheering me on.  Mile 12 was my slowest mile so I tried to kick it in for mile 13 but just didn't have much left. 


Showing off my new medal..


I ended up crossing the finish line at 2:07:17.  Not very fast but I did accomplish all 3 of my goals and completed state number 21!  My numbers compared to the other racers aren't too bad either:

Finish time:   2:07:17
Overall:         1893rd out of 7484  (Top 26 percent)
Men:              1026th out of 2704  (Top 38 percent)
Age group:
(Men  60-64)     27th out of 110    (Top 25 percent) 

I have a nice new race shirt and a cool finishers medal for my effort.  Once the race was done, we took about 3 days to thoroughly enjoy New Orleans.  Some of the fun things we experienced were:


 Bourbon Street:

We walked Bourbon Street but not at night!  It is a wild place.  Lots of drinking, music and craziness.  It was a bit too wild for us so we really didn't spend too much time there.  We did find a couple less crazy bars off of Bourbon Street and listened to some really good jazz and blues.

Bobby Bare sings about this woman...

Photo bombers on Bourbon street!



 Eating and Eating and Eating....

New Orleans has some incredible food and we didn't hold back, especially after the race.  Julie even took me to a couple fancy restaurants: Brennans and Broussards.  All the food we experienced was really good.

Crepes right after the race.

We have now experienced Po boys..

Going to the famous Cafe du monde!
We had to eat beignets a couple times!
Yum, these suckers are good!


Muffuletta's!
Drinking my fancy coffee!!

Double Decker Bus Tour of the city:

The Double Decker hop-on hop-off bus tour was an expensive but a great way to see the highlights of the city and determine where you want to go back to.



 World War II Museum:

 If you ever get to New Orleans, definitely do the the WW II museum.  We spent 5 hours there and didn't even get through half of the museum.  I'm not much for museums but this one is top notch..





 What's next for me:
 May 25 - seriously considering running the Oregon Spring 1/2 in St Paul Oregon
 August - Atlantic City Ironman 70.3 Triathlon







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