Things have been a bit busy lately and I have been avoiding my blog. I have been training rather heavily and pain free. Not too much to report.

Last weekend I did head down south to New Orleans for my first half marathon of the year. Traveling for races is always an experience and this trip was no different.

This was the inaugural Rock and Roll Half Marathon and one of the most interesting races I have ever run. The city itself is quite unique. We spent Saturday afternoon roaming around the French Quarter. I found the further you go into the French Quarter the more French Quartery it gets. The outside has the chain restaurants, the tourist Voodoo shops, and the sweet shops. If you venture in 4 or 5 blocks it get quite intense.

We found this out while looking for Voodoo dolls for my kids. We ended up in a very cheerful looking Voodoo shop.This was not the goth looking shop but more of a hair salon type place. The woman at the counter was very chipper and thrilled to help. She informed us we needed to be quite because someone was in private session in the back. What is private voodoo? No clue and frankly I don’t want to know.

About 4 o’clock the drunk 20 somethings and alcoholic 50 somethings started to make their nightly trek to Bourbon street. This is a cue for someone like me to go to get out of dodge.  We went and had an early Cajun dinner and headed back downtown. We spent a couple hours losing money in the New Orleans casino before heading off to an early sleep.

The race the next day was a lot of fun. The course shows off the beautiful parts of the city, but also take you trough the burned out abandoned buildings.  It was a constant transition of scenery. The course itself was very flat which was fine with me. Due to a rather nasty Chicago winter my long runs were limited to the 7-10 mile range. At about mile 10 I started to feel the lack of training.

I finished in 1:58. Not a record but respectable for the first race of the year. All in all a very fun trip and a well run race.