2005 CRESCENT CITY CLASSIC © Tony Mozingo

Weeks of grueling training in preparation for a top-500 finish at the Crescent City Classic this Easter weekend counted for naught as once again so-called friends, fellow runners and other outside forces conspired to let me see my goal but not reach it.  The elusive top-500 commemorative poster, signed and numbered by the artist and presented to each runner in that group will not be hung on my wall again this year, the fourth out of the last five that I’ve narrowly missed the honor.  Instead, Pine Belt Pacer greats such as Ed Wheeler, James P. Coll and believe-it-or-not Keith Barrett, will receive theirs.  (I hope they enjoy it; by next year the Pacers will have random drug testing for its members before and after races).  As for me, I came in 530^th, just behind a resurgent Nestor Raul Anzola, who is beginning to look, run and talk like Antonio Banderas.

            It is well-documented that John Pendergrass, eye surgeon, Ironman, fighter pilot and such, was the inspiration for the guy on the diving board in the cholesterol-lowering drug commercial, Lipitor.  Naively, I thought that drug use among Pacers was limited to such as that, Biofreeze and the like, when the night before yesterday’s race I found out differently.  Seems that Mr. Barrett, in the middle of a long layoff from running and obviously fifteen pounds overweight, let it slip out that he was “taking a little something” for his ole Achilles, his back, and other ailments.  As my son Robert, 9, and I prepared for bed on the eve of the race, he asked whether “Mr. Keith knows that steroids are bad for him…” (Barrett was a guest of ours at a fishing camp on Lake Ponchartrain the night before the race and had cooked forty-cheese pasta for me to slow me down the next day.  Little did he know that when he unpacked, his medicine bag had dropped out of his suitcase).

Obviously, it is difficult to explain to a nine-year old that the bottles of pills and other containers in Keith’s bag are limited to Juice-Plus, vitamins, and Vaseline, or at least I thought they were.  When Robert asked me later,

            “What does L-E-V-I-T-R-A spell, Pop,” I thought differently.

            (For those of you who read this column regularly and know that I have never beaten the man in a race, you now know that Keith Barrett does have a secret).  Having always wondered why he could run as he calls it, “whenever the mood hits him…”, I am finally glad to find out what the secret is.  (I have an appointment with a male doctor Monday to get a prescription).           

Several weeks ago, I began training at the Purvis Fitness Center and have become somewhat of a legend there.  Locals now schedule their lunches around my workouts in hopes of seeing me train on one of the two treadmills there.  In retrospect however, I trained in the comfort of the air conditioning and on the cushioned mats of the machines and it caught up with me.  Had I taken “a little something” the night before though, I probably could have made it into the top-500.             

The Crescent City Classic is one of the great road races, attracting more than 20,000 runners and walkers from around the world.  Before the race, I felt strong as Barrett and I warmed up on Bourbon Street before making our way to the starting line.  About ten minutes until race time, we then crossed the barricade onto Decatur Street just as the Air Force Band struck up a verse or two of an exciting wartime tune.  (It dawned on us that we were in the holding area in front of Jackson Square reserved for elite runners like Leonard Verngunst and the Kenyans when we noticed a wall of packed in racers behind other steel barricades behind us). 

            “Heck, that looks like Jim Coll squeezed up against that rail back there,” Barrett whispered as I looked behind me to see twenty-thousand runners waiting to be released to the starting line.

            “Man, I told you we weren’t supposed to be out here,” I replied as Verngunst trotted up and said,

            “What the Hades are you clowns doing up here?’

            “This for the elites, man…”

            About that time, the B-group runners converged and an obviously agitated Coll ran up screaming something about how we ought to be thrown out of the race.

            With no notice and no time to argue, the cannon sounded and we were off.

            It was so humid and hot that I faded about halfway into the run, thinking about how I need to stay off the treadmills and get out on the road.

            Coll wound up 105^th, and the Levitra-powered Barrett  479^th.

            Anzola, quipping something about no pain-no gain to me in broken Spanish as we passed the six-mile mark, and poured it on and left me sprinting to the Finish line with two-tenths of a mile left in the race.

            At the post-race party in City Park, I tried to let it all soak in as I hung out with the elite Russian women in the V.I.P. tent.

            One of them told me that in Russia there is no shortage of performance-enhancing drugs like Levitra and Viagra, and that I should listen to the “Big Mr. Barrett”.

            “He is so strong,” one of them said to me.

            As Coll laid on a blanket with his legs crossed basking in the moment of his awesome finish, I thought about how much faster and stronger I could be and asked Barrett and Coll if there were any side effects to the drugs they were taking.

            “Only thing is”, Anzola retorted for them.

            “If your performance lasts longer than four hours, you should see a doctor.”

            “We recommend John Pendergrass.”