#10. Virtual Crescent City Classic, New Orleans; March 30, 2020

Sitting in Tulane’s Kinshasa office on March 12, 2020, discussing our family planning work in the DRC, we began to receive messages that President Trump intended to close the U.S. border to flights from Europe because of the COVID-19 epidemic. I was scheduled to stay an additional week in Kinshasa, but with this news, I was on the next plane back to the United States. That marked the start of my COVID confinement at our New Orleans home.

During those early months in New Orleans, we were in semi-lockdown. The value of masks was not yet recognized, and everyone - especially the population of seniors - was urged to stay home except for essential trips to the grocery store or pharmacy. Within days, the playground equipment and exercise stations in Audubon Park were covered with orange netting to indicate they were off-limits, but Audubon Park did offer the opportunity to walk, jog, and bike.

In January, I had registered for the annual Crescent City Classic, the 10K run that had become a spring ritual. My goal each year: to cross the finish line still jogging (without walking). By March 15, the organizers converted the event into a virtual 10 K run. For $70, you too could time yourself for a 10 K run in a location of your choice on the date of your choice within a two-week window. Runners would then report their times to the website, with a screenshot from their electronic device (think iPhone/Fitbit). Alternatively, one could credit the registration fee toward the 2021 CCC. My neighbor and annual CCC companion Peter Krause was among the many who decided they could find a better use for $70. Having already paid, I decided to use this opportunity to see if I could still jog 6.2 miles without stopping.

Thus, my early days of COVID confinement consisted of my own training regime, if one can call 2, then 3, then 4 miles of geriatric jogging a training regime. By March 23, I decided to try to do the full length of the race by looping around Audubon Park several times. To my surprise, I went the distance. Yet I’d failed to capture the time with a screenshot of my Fitbit app. That called for a rerun on March 30. Was it coincidental that I chose one of the coolest mornings of that week to try again? I not only shaved two minutes off my time but also managed to save the screenshot of the time and distance for posting on the website. Would I be able to maintain my position as #2 in the category of Women 70+?  The field had surely dwindled in view of the virtual aspect of this race.

I located the CCC website and listed my time, but to my surprise, there was no place to post the screenshot. Apparently, the organizers were using the honor system. I waited several weeks for the end of the window of the virtual race, then checked back. Yes, I could find my time listed, but there were no rankings by age groups.

I contacted the organizers, only to learn that in the chaos of reorganizing the race and tracking the multiple options (that also included donating the $70 back to them), they had not been able to organize the results by age groups. I had a friendly exchange with a junior staff person tasked with dealing with people like me, calling with questions and complaints. Couldn’t someone just put the results in Excel and spit out the rankings? (If the truth be known, that someone could be anyone – including me – with access to the list of times.) Also, though he didn’t say so, how valid are self-reported data anyway? We ended that back-and-forth with my sending him a photo of my collection of 24 T-shirts from previous CCC races. No hard feelings.

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