Marathon number 9 was all sorts of fun. The Louisiana Marathon was held in Baton Rouge, so Britt and I made a girls' weekend of it. The boys stayed home. And while I was sad not to have my number 1 fan there, we still had a great time.
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| Britt was impressed that this man was playing a keyboard while waiting for his flight. |
We arrived in Baton Rouge, checked into our hotel, and made our way downtown for the expo.
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| Bib Number. |
We stopped for pizza at a place called Schlitz & Giggles (hilarious!) and met the vice president of the 50 States Club. Britt thought he was our waiter and struck up a conversation with him only to realize he was there to run his 360th marathon, not serve us pizza.
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| Bien Venue! |
We decided to eat at the Pre-Race Pasta dinner... or "Pastalaya" as they called it. We were both very excited because Bill Rogers (Boston Billy) was a featured speaker. He won the Boston Marathon 4 times, so we had high expectations. He stepped up and garbled some nonsense which left us wondering if he was perhaps high on drugs.
The next speaker was named Matt Long and we'd never heard of him. He turned out to be AMAZING. He was a NYC Firefighter/Iron Man who was run over by a bus, given a 5% chance to live, and came back to do run another marathon. If that's not inspiration, I don't know what is. He totally made up for Billy.
On race morning we were supposed to take a shuttle from the hotel to the race start. But when we came down to catch the shuttle, we were told that the shuttle wasn't coming. F. Luckily we were able to grab a ride with some runners who had driven to Baton Rouge. Talk about unnecessary stress!
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| Good morning, Louisiana! |
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| The Capital. |
This is only the third year of the Louisiana Marathon, but it was very well organized. Once we got to the race start, things went very smoothly.
Our goal going into this had been to break 3:30. I was feeling very intimidated by this number. If you talked to me during training, you know that I was less than dedicated this time around. I felt like the lack of recovery from Chicago, plus the holidays and cold weather were all used as excuses not to train. I only got a couple of really long runs in and my weekly mileage was low. I knew Britt had really been training, so I was concerned about keeping up.
The race started and the weather was perfect. We ran through beautiful neighborhoods and I ogled over the green yards with flowers and orange trees in the front yards. We ran past plantations and through the LSU campus. Our pace was quick, but I felt great.
Then the feeling you never want to feel in a race came... I needed a porta-potty. Nooooo! As we approached the aid station at mile 14 I saw one up ahead. I told Britt I was going to sprint ahead and to go on without me, that I'd catch up.
After the quickest potty break ever, I hit the gas and sped off to find Britt. It didn't take me long as I saw her up ahead running the opposite direction of the race towards me. She's crazy. We'd lost a minute and a half and we were determined to make up time.
Unfortunately, my mental state was not where it should have been. I was seriously struggling, but when I checked in with myself, I couldn't find anything wrong with my body. I was tired, but nothing hurt. I just wasn't there.
I pushed on for as long as I could. I didn't want to let Britt down. But I knew I was slowing her down. Finally at mile 22 I stopped to walk and told her to go on. She yelled at me. She's scary in a Jillian Michaels kind of way. But I knew I couldn't hold her pace.
I let myself walk for one minute then picked it back up. I instantly felt better. My pace wasn't as quick, but it was still a good pace. I made myself smile and enjoy the last miles while I pushed myself to finish strong.
I crossed the finish line in 3:33:36. And I felt great! I was so happy to PR, despite my lack of training and mid-race potty break.
I hobbled through the finishers' shoot looking for Britt, but she was no where to be found. Turns out she crossed the line about 3 minutes before me and hopped the barricades to try to see me finish. She must have just missed me!
Eventually we found each other and made our way to what will forever be known as the best post-race party there ever was.
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| Post Race fun. |
This post race party was serious. Tons of restaurants were there serving up Cajun food, including an entire "vegan village" serving up vegan red beans & rice and jambalaya. Heaven. I was in Heaven.
There was also live music and beer. Lots and lots of beer.
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| This dog is even enjoying the beer. |
We had our fair share of beer. Maybe more than our fair share.
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| Did I mention there was beer? |
We finished running around 11:00 in the morning. We closed down the party around 4:00 in the afternoon. Runner's high, beer, delicious food, and sunshine. What more could a girl ask for?!?!
The next day we headed out for beignets at Coffee Call. They are supposed to be famous for their incredible beignets which are said to be even better than Café DuMonde in New Orleans. Yeah, I haven't heard of that place either. But it sounds legit.
Our order of beignet fingers were ah-mazing.
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| There's a reason the south is high on the obesity scale. |
The place was bumpin'. We were lucky to find a couple of stools at the bar. People, these things were good!
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| OMB. Oh my beignet! |
Our next stop was LSU to meet Mike the Tiger. On the cab ride there I discovered that Britt thought Mike was a statue. She thought we were driving all that way to see a statue. Goodness.
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| I told your ass I was a tiger! |
Mike is real. In fact, he's the sixth Mike the Tiger in LSU history. And he was napping.
It turns out we had more fun with Mike the Statue.
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| Can't. Get. Up. |
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| I'll just stay here. |
We followed some athletic looking fellows to find that the LSU track team was practicing. This made me so so so happy! We grabbed some seats in the bleachers and watched the whole thing. These folks were fast!
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| Track! |
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| Wanna race? |
After track practice we decided to check out the stadium. It was all closed/locked up, obviously. But some worker left a gate unlocked and crazy-Brittney convinced me we should
break in! She's such a bad influence.
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| What up SEC??? |
I may have enjoyed the shenanigans and come up with some of my own.
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| Don't I look official? |
Before heading out we had another photo shoot with Mike. I was finally able to make it up on top.
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| Senior Pictures! |
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| What do you think the stranger/photographer thinks of us? |
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| We are Boston Qualifiers. We do what we want. |
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| I'm gonna rip your damn face off! |
From there we were off to the airport and headed back home. We had an incredible weekend full of fun! I'm so grateful to have such a fun running partner, even though she can be a mean and scary lady at times. I can't wait to see how far she pushes me in marathon number 10!
