show us your bibs!

new orleans, what better place to run a long distance foot race than during mardi gras season; it's flat, temperatures are not "sweat pooling in your butt crack and belly button" and there are plenty of doughnuts, i mean beignets, to fortify the fat stores before the big event.

while we did see michael j fox in the arrivals hall at louis armstrong international, i was somewhat surprised, given the season, at the lack of trannies handing out cytomax along the actual course- by the time i came shuffling through the aid station, even the most hung over should have been up and scarfing a bacon wrapped beignet or two. however, the route masters did a great job of touring us through "things from tv and the pages of people magazine in real life"-- the superdome and media focus of hurricane katrina hysteria (apparently also a football team), the funereal skyline of above ground mausoleums, mark twain's mississippi river, complete with big noisy paddle steamers lumbering by, and the quaint neon charm of larry flynt's hustler clubs in quicker succession than antebellum porches shaded by spanish moss.

so aside from all of the other verbs-- "drink"; hurricanes, martinis, cosmopolitans, and a shiraz called "ass kisser", "shop"; or at least try to figure out how to get the lady at the joe malone counter in SAKS to give us flutes of champagne- apparently it's two more decades and a very pronounced 'botox face', "eat"; anything that swam, scavenged or mooed covered in beans, rice and grits, "play"; 'talking to random strangers at the bar', which definitely gets more mileage than 'talking to random strangers you are sitting next to on the flight from portland to laguardia, and "people watch"; a couple getting engaged in the grass at franklin park, we did "run", and because i still haven't figured out how to do more than charge the bloody garmin, i used basic maths-- fairly accurately (for me). 1 under cross-trained/over run left knee with a history of dislocation minus 13.1 equals 13.1 (yes, i scaled down to the half, keep up people) divided by a bunch of other halves where i now know an acceptable pace per mile marker and when to ramp things up, equals me crossing the finish line in (personal) record time with fatigued legs, but not feeling like i just want to lie on the tarmac for 35 minutes and aspirate sport's beans. 2:07:21. final answer: i am officially on target to kick oprah's ass time at the next 26.2