When my wife, Gina, and I travel to marathons, we usually go with a group.  But every so often it’s just the two of us.  Our trip to Louisiana for the Baton Rouge Beach Marathon was one of those occasions.  It would be state #18 on my quest towards completing one in every state (Wow! That still means I’ll have 32 to go!).  It would be state #11 for Gina.

We arrived in Baton Rouge late in the morning on Friday, December 3^rd.  We were able to check into our hotel early, so we dropped off our luggage and went for a walk to find a local lunch spot.  The host hotel, the Marriott, was about 3 miles from downtown Baton Rouge.  We didn’t have a car, and there wasn’t much to do around us, so we just relaxed, did some reading and even caught a short nap in the afternoon. 

Baton Rouge is a very small marathon.  Having participated in several of the larger ones, we both agree that we like the smaller ones.  The Expo was held in the hotel where we were staying, but this was different than most we have been to.  It didn’t start until Friday evening at 6pm and it was held in two of the hotel meeting rooms.  One room was for packet pickup and late registration.  The other room was set up with some tables and chairs and FOOD.  Free beer, water, soda, gumbo, salad and pizza were an unexpected, and nice, touch.  We sat with some 50-State club members and shared stories about other races.  There were only a couple of vendors and they were set up outside the two meeting rooms. 

Our race bag included a nice technical shirt that was the most neon-green color  you’ve ever seen.  We also received a pair of the ugliest running socks ever.  The race is presented by “The Running Chicken Track Club” (we never did find out the origin of the name) and the socks were the same neon green as the shirts, but also had some running chickens in yellow on the anklet.  They’re so ugly that we figured we would only be able to wear them on our pre-dawn runs.  We were also given a pair of throwaway gloves, which was another nice touch because the forecast for race morning called for a cool start to the race. 

After spending a little time at the expo, we caught a taxi to the Downtown Festival of Lights.  It is a holiday tradition in Baton Rouge and included a 35-foot Christmas tree, live entertainment, a small ice skating rink, “real” snow and several roaming performers.  We walked around for a while, enjoying the holiday decorations.  We ended the evening by ducking into The Wine Loft for a glass of wine.

Race morning, as forecast, was a bit cool, about 45 degrees at the start of the race.  School buses served as shuttles to get us from the hotel to the starting line, which was at the “Beach” on University Lake, adjacent to the LSU campus.  This was a “loop” course through the campus area and the residential neighborhoods around the lake.  Half-marathoners did one loop, full marathoners did it twice.   If you’ve done a loop race before, you know that it’s hard to watch the half-marathoners cross the finish line and celebrate while you know that you have to do it again.

The race started at 7am. As we normally do, Gina and I kissed each other at the start, wished each other a good race, then went on our way separately.  We ran through the beautiful LSU campus, by Tiger Stadium (AKA “Death Valley”), and the Memorial Tower.  The neighborhoods were also very pretty and the shaded streets provided some cover from what had become a hot sun on that second loop. 

With the half-marathoners outnumbering the full-marathoners almost 4 to 1, it got a bit lonely at times on the second loop.  I’m not one to chat much while running, but I did talk with a couple of people on that second time around.  One was a young lady from Utah who was running her second marathon ever and chose Baton Rouge because it fell on her 26.2 birthday.  Cool.  I also spoke with an army soldier from New Orleans running his first marathon.

I felt strong through the first 18 miles and was able to maintain my goal pace of 9:09/mile.  If I could maintain that pace for the entire run, I would finally be able to break the four hour mark.  Unfortunately, that wouldn’t happen.  I ran into the infamous “wall” at mile 19 and struggled for the last 7 miles.  I had been fueling with PowerBar Double Latte gels, as I did through training.  When I started struggling, I broke one of the rules of running a marathon…don’t try anything new!  I carried a nut bar and ate about half of it around mile 20.  Not a good idea.  As my stomach rebelled, I remembered my awful experience with peanut butter at the Ragnar Relay last year.  I wished I would have remembered that lesson before I ate that bar.

I walked a bit and watched my average pace climb first to 10:00/mile, then to 11:00.  I still had a shot at breaking my PR of 4:09, but my body wasn’t cooperating.  Nothing hurt too badly...I was just tired.  I came around the final turn on the lake and had about ¼ mile to go.  I reached deep and picked up my pace to the finish.  About 75 yards away from the finish line, I felt my right hamstring pop.  It felt like I had been shot and it stopped me dead in my tracks.  A race official came running up to see if I was ok as I limped over to a tree and tried to stretch it out.  It loosened up and I was able to run across the line.  4:15:29. Not my best.  Not my worst.  It was a lot closer to my best than my worst.

I grabbed a couple bottles of water and went back to the finish line to watch for Gina.  She had a goal to break her PR of 4:36 and really wanted to break 4:30 so she could say she beat Oprah.  I watched the clock tick closer and closer to 4:30 and sent encouraging thoughts her way.  She came into view just after 4:29 and she was running hard!  She realized she had a chance to break her 4:30 goal and was giving it her best.  She gave me a high five as she went by and crossed the finish line in 4:29:35!  She beat Oprah!!

The post-race spread was the best we’ve seen at a marathon.  We were in Cajun Country and they served it up!  Gumbo, alligator, hot chicken wings, fried catfish, chicken nuggets, pulled pork sandwiches and more.  And ice cold beer!  I don’t normally drink a lot of beer, but have recently discovered how good one can taste after 26.2 miles on the road.  And two or three taste even better!

There were 889 finishers in the half-marathon and 234 made it through the full.  It was a beautiful day, a beautiful course, and a well-run event.  As you might expect for a small race, there wasn’t a lot of crowd support, but that’s ok.  Other than the abandoned water stop at mile 20, the volunteers were great.  Baton Rouge seemed like a very friendly town and we enjoyed our short visit.  If you are looking for a race to cross Louisiana off your list, we would both strongly recommend the Baton Rouge Beach Marathon.