Sanda Bullock’s house! The best example of the fancy houses we ran by.

Well, that wasn’t pretty. Our run, not the route.

All my New Orleans running research pointed to one thing: the best place to do long runs was along the St. Charles streetcar tracks. Apparently, it was cool to run right on the tracks (providing you got out of the way for any oncoming trains, of course!). There was a park about 10k from our apartment so I made a plan:

• Run to St. Charles
• Run along St. Charles to the park
• Run around the park
• Run along St. Charles back to downtown
• Run along the waterfront home.

I can see why this was the recommended route. We chose to run on the sidewalks there, but quickly saw why the tracks were recommended: the sidewalks were really uneven, thanks to tree routes forcing cement into the sky.

The park was beautiful and was filled with runners and cyclists. The Garden District is filled with big old houses and we passed Tulane and Loyola University campuses. We looped through the park and headed home.

But about halfway there, we started to fade. Hard. We decided to be like the other runners and run on the tracks — the soft dirt felt good on our tired legs. But when we made it to the waterfront, both Jill and I were dead tired. We were cranky and sore and hot. So, with 3k left, we called it quits.

While this is disappointing, I have come to terms with it. This wasn’t a normal long run: we are in a different city in a different climate and have been way more active these past few days than normal. And I was still coughing up a storm on this run. So we will take lessons learned back to Toronto with us and hope they make us better runners.

The run: 22.7k in 2:34:$5
The route: