#3. Running in the Crescent City Classic (CCC): April 20, 2019

Even by my own travel standards, being out of the country for seven out of nine consecutive weeks was excessive. I couldn’t believe my good luck that one of my few weekends back home would coincide with the Crescent City Classic. A ritual in New Orleans, this 10K race starts at the Superdome, winds through the French Quarter, continues down Esplanade Avenue, and ends in a final exhausting one-mile loop within City Park.

Before the race, I got out my collection of T-shirts from previous years of the CCC and chastised myself for having discarded three or four from the earliest years of the race in the late 1970s. Still, I had a collection of 23, meaning that I had previously run the race at least 25 times. Although I was no longer jogging more than 2-3 miles at a time (on a good day), I jumped at the opportunity to run the CCC. Part of the ritual – for at least the previous decade – was to ride there and back with my neighbor, Dr. Peter Krause, a leading orthopedic trauma specialist at the LSU Medical Center.

As it turned out, running the CCC was the least of the challenges. Two weeks before the race, I was scheduled to leave Nepal for India, where I would attend the second of two international family planning meetings before returning to New Orleans. I’d have a week at home to rest up before the race. 

Julie and I had just finished our week of trekking in Nepal, and we were scheduled to fly from Kathmandu to India (its neighbor) over the weekend. Being the “responsible senior colleague,” I had planned to travel on Saturday to ensure I’d be there with a full 24 hours to finalize my presentation before the meeting that would start on Monday. Julie planned to enjoy an extra day in Kathmandu and arrive on Sunday.

My back incident caused me to rethink this plan. “Senior and responsible” or not, the trip between Kathmandu and Mumbai was going to be a lot easier and less stressful if I were traveling with Julie, who was always willing to hoist an extra bag and literally carry more than her weight. I changed my flight, and off we went at 4 AM on Sunday to the Kathmandu airport.  When I checked in, Diamond Medallion status on Delta or not, the clerk did not like the look of my Indian visa. “Why doesn’t the number on your passport correspond with the number listed on your visa?” After considerable back-and-forth, it became clear that I would not be traveling to India. I waved goodbye to Julie as she headed up the escalator to board her flight to Mumbai. I returned to the hotel in a taxi.

After several emails with Maria Herdoiza, our finance manager for project work in New Orleans, we thought we had the visa problem solved. She provided me with a document that showed the correct passport number on a visa application marked “approved.” The next morning at 5 AM, when I presented it to the same airline official in Kathmandu, he remained skeptical. But after consulting with his manager, he allowed me to board the same Air India flight that Julie had taken the day before.

I figured it would be clear sailing from there, but I had underestimated the Indian immigration bureaucracy. As I stepped up to the counter in New Delhi, the uniformed officer took several minutes to review various documents on his computer. Clearly irritated, he delivered his conclusion: I was trying to enter the country fraudulently. The problem, I explained, might revolve around my having two passports (which is quite common among frequent international travelers in the United States). He could not be persuaded that any country would allow a passenger to have two valid passports. I sat in the waiting area for a good hour, convinced that if they were taking that much time to explore my case, it was in pursuit of a solution. Finally, two officials returned to inform me that under no condition could I enter India. They escorted me to the next waiting area, where I could negotiate my return to the United States and reunite with my bags.

Mercifully, Tulane has an excellent travel agency that specializes in complicated international flights. I certainly had one. Although it took me a good 45 minutes to get them on the phone, they immediately booked me into business class on Emirates, which may be as close to heaven as one gets on international flights. I’d have to wait another 12 hours in the airport lounge before boarding my flight, but at least I saw a pathway back to New Orleans. By now, the dull pain that I’d begun to feel in my rear bottom molar while trekking was intensifying, and whatever disappointment I had for not traveling to Mumbai for the family planning meeting was countered by the relief of going back to my dentist in New Orleans.

I waited one hour, two hours, three hours in a no-man’s land for passengers with travel complications. Finally, a nice young man from Air India came over and broke the news to me: “Air Emirates has refused to take you as a passenger on its flight.” I was stunned. He explained the rules of the airport: if a passenger arrives illegally into the country, he/she can only be transported out of the country by that same airline. No other airline was authorized to pick up this offending passenger. I jumped back onto the phone with the international travel agency, and after waiting another 45 minutes, was able to connect with a helpful agent who found an Air India flight to Amsterdam, where I could then transfer to return to the United States. Miraculously, there was space available on that flight, which would leave some 10 hours later. By now it was 4 PM, and I had been up for a full 12 hours since departing the Kathmandu hotel that morning. My head began to pound from a combination of stress, an incipient cold, sleep deprivation, and the toothache. By the time we boarded Air India to Amsterdam, I’d been up for 21 hours straight, most of which was spent in waiting areas of the New Delhi airport.  Air India business class had no entertainment system for a 12-hour flight to Amsterdam, but who cared? I was en route home to my dentist.

Within 24 hours of my arrival in New Orleans, I was in the dentist’s chair. Draining the abscess brought immediate relief, and the antibiotics put me on the road to recovery. As I was counting my lucky stars that the Indian visa fiasco had allowed me to come home early, I noticed a headline on the CNN website: “Air India suspends all international flights.” The airline had gone bankrupt, and I was on one of the last international flights out of the country. Knowing the inflexibility of the Indian bureaucracy, I could only imagine how they would have coped with the situation, whereby I was only allowed to fly out of the country on Air India, yet Air India was no longer in business. I nursed my tooth back to health, relieved that I’d dodged that bullet.

Compared to the New Delhi immigration ordeal, running the CCC seems like a manageable challenge. At 6:30 AM, I wandered next door to Peter Krause‘s porch, and we headed off toward the Superdome. Runners are positioned in holding pens, based on their best previous time for the event. So long before the race, Peter and I parted ways. It was surprisingly chilly for late April. I opted for the inconvenience of carrying my down jacket during the race in return for having it during the one hour we waited for the race to start. My goal – if possible, and I doubted it would be – was to jog the entire 6.2 miles, without walking any of it. In recent years, my morning jogs had dropped from 4 to 3 to 2 miles, so 6.2 seemed like a long shot.

Never underestimate that competitive gene that apparently kicked in as the announcer welcomed us to the starting line. Running with my fellow joggers in the Green group, I hung in there; 1 mile, 2 miles, 3 miles, 4 miles. Family, friends, and bystanders lined the streets, cheering us on as we passed down Decatur St and crossed over to the welcome shade of Esplanade Avenue.  Local bands stationed along the route belted out “Chariots of Fire.”  Kentwood Water had volunteers located at each mile to hand out cups of water to joggers as they passed by. Moms and dads wove through the crowd, pushing strollers, trying to find gaps in the horde of runners where they could advance. Men ran by in their bunny costumes, in anticipatory celebration of Easter.  Neighbors in the spirit offered cups of beer and vodka shots to runners who were there for the party (hey, it was New Orleans).

Amazed when I passed the 4-mile mark, I started to envision myself crossing the finish line – still jogging. Suddenly, at mile 4.5, something gave way in my hip, and a jolt of pain shot down my left leg. By now programmed to “keep going – whatever,” I pushed on – at more of a limp than a jog. My inner voice screamed: “If you keep jogging on this hip, it may cause irreparable damage. What if you can never climb a mountain again?” The other inner voice countered: “Yes, but you’ve already done 4.5 miles of this race. There’s no way you’re going to wimp out now.” The competitive voice won out, and I pushed forward at a pace that could barely be considered a jog.

I knew the race photographers would be taking our photos a half a mile before the finish line, so I rallied. Ironically, from the shot they got of me – arms outstretched to deal with the down jacket I was still toting and smiling from ear to ear – you’d think I’d won the entire race ahead of the Kenyans. Fortunately, there were no photos of my performance crossing the finish line.

I found Peter, and we headed home. I took advantage of his medical expertise and running career to ask if he’d ever experienced a cracked toenail. Once back at home, he volunteered to examine the offending toe. His professional recommendation: super glue. He then did one step better and produced some liquid bandage from his medicine cabinet, which he carefully applied. Too bad, because it would have made for a far better story, that one of the city’s leading medical specialists had fixed my toenail with superglue.

After a quick shower, I finished packing and prepared to head for the airport. “Where are you off to?” asked Peter.  “Kinshasa, I answered.” He was almost as impressed that I was leaving for Africa after running the CCC as I was that he fixed my toe with superglue.

A few days later, I went online and learned, to my pleasant surprise, that I had won second place in the Women’s 70-74-year-old division. The record of my time over the course of the race did show a dramatic drop after Mile 4, but it was still good enough to place…no doubt an advantage of being the youngest in the age bracket.  Two months later, a T-shirt arrived in the mail that read across the back, “age group winner.” I savored a few moments of victory. Yet the real prize was that my hip had returned to pre-race condition. If there were long-term consequences to suffer from having jogged my way over the finish line, they were to be paid in the future.

I was back on track, Aiming for 80.  

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