We Got a Jogger

An hour or two after sunrise, Saturday, March 5, 2011.  I started this run at 8pm the night before; Will and I alternated through the night and he was finishing up his second leg of the race.  I was about to begin my third.

Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the long way - a "scenic route" that followed the Mississippi River for 126.2 miles, and an ultramarathon relay that we signed up to do.  For no good reason.  We weren't running for charity or to raise awareness for a good cause.  "Foolishness" according to Will.  I had been looking forward to it for weeks.  Couldn't concentrate at work.  Started drinking copious amounts of water out of a gallon jug in the week preceding the race.  Physical Therapy appointments, orthopedic massage, tapering workouts.  Color maps sent out by the race director were printed, laminated, hole-punched, and placed into a binder.  New gear was purchased.  Groceries were bought, cooked and individually packaged.  This race had become an obsession.

Will got off the levee.  The race had thirty legs, and two-man teams were to exchange at every third leg.  I ran 1-3, Will got 4-6, and so forth.  Do the math:  each of us had to run 5 times, and each run was between 10 and 15 miles.

Will had reached the end of leg twelve:  "I got stopped by a security guard a little ways back there."

"What did he say?"

"He asked what I was doing, and I said running a race from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. 

Then he asked me 

'What makes you think you can do that?' 

I told him I was thinking the exact same thing."

The first to reach the security guard's location (some chemical plant guard booth on the river), Will explained that we were in a race, and that others were to follow behind us. 

"I can't just let anybody run by here . . . You know who owns this levee?  Department of Homeland Security . . . somebody could just run by here, flick a cigarette and blow this whole place up.  Lemme call my supervisor and let him know."

(America, this is your last line of defense)

"We got a jogger . . ."

". . . says it's some kinda race . . . in about a hour or two they's gonna be about two hundred more of 'em comin' this way."

" . . . uh huh.  Okay."

Security Guard looks at Will, calm but suspicious, and says "Well, looks like you free to go."


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Later the same day, Alanna and I had to find Will on the levee to get him out of the biggest deluge of the race.  He boarded Camp Avalanche (the back of which which was leaking on my shorts), and he turned on the camera to document the storm.  Then he didn't turn the camera off, so the following video is a "candid camera" version of the the security guard's quotes:

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Will swearing off any and all future endurance events, and Josh enjoying the comforts of Camp Avalanche before waking up for Round 3:

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The Downpour:

Will, just after sunrise: