Interview with the Advocate

Something kind of cool happened last week. The Advocate, the upstart newspaper that entered the New Orleans market when the Times Picayune dropped its publications to just three times a week, contacted me for a story about the Crescent City Classic. *
The reporter wanted to interview some top local women about the Crescent City Classic and the local women's running scene.

Ha! Top local women! I'm not even in the top twenty-five gals in this area. Not even close. But as a new member of the Power Milers, the reporter wanted to interview me for that aspect, since the main story is about the women's running community and the club just opened to women. So on Sunday, I joined some truly fast women at City Park for an interview and a photoshoot.

The interview was, um, interesting. Lots of leading questions. You know how it is. Reporters have a story, and you just fit in it. Hopefully I won't come across as a complete idiot, but the good news is that there was a large enough group of us that I'm sure I'll get one snip of a quote, max.

SUNNY skies over my run

And then, since I was already at City Park and wearing running clothes, I did an afternoon 8-miler with speedster Laura Doody, a D1 athlete from LSU who will be smoking me (and a lot of other people, too!) next Saturday. I haven't done a chatty, easy run in awhile, so that was fun - although her "easy" is not as easy for me! I was ready to be done at the end - the sun was hot and I was really thirsty. I still haven't acclimated yet - and that was without much humidity. Oh, Saturday's race is going to be a killer!

Post-run disgusting sweatiness

I wasn't really comfortable doing the interview, because I felt like an imposter: these other women are truly fast. But I didn't want to say no - I like staying involved in the running community, and am glad the paper is doing a story on women's running in New Orleans. Plus, it was actually kind of fun! I'm always interested in seeing other people ply their trade, including reporters and photographers. The story runs Friday, so I'll see how it all turned out then!

*We subscribe to The Advocate, because I like to read the paper in the morning, because I'm 70 years old, but I am still heartbroken that we had to drop the TP, which has been published for over 100 years. But they don't deliver on Saturdays, my favorite day to read the paper!