Mardi Gras Marathon, 1981--"One More Time and It's Over the Side!"

Olden Days in Distance-Running

June 26, 2025

Mardi Gras Marathon 1981— “One More Time and It’s Over the Side!”

Runners invited by the New Orleans Track Club to the 1981 Mardi Gras Marathon came with high hopes.

Our hopes were drowned by a Winter Storm.

Headwinds 25 to 40 miles per hour, South to North and into our faces across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, bending us forward as we slog-strode elephant-file on the runway-straight concrete from Mandeville toward Metarie.

Singlets blown sideways off shoulders. Rain pelting with a rat-a-tat of like “splat-splat-splat.” Eyes squinting shut, scarcely able to see. The Marathon’s TV-coverage be-logoed helicopter bobbing dangerously to our Left in zig-and-zags, engine and blades thrumming overhead.

Glorious absurdity! Running a Marathon, into such a Headwind, in such Weather!

We ‘d come with high hopes, as said. The prior February, 1980, hundreds of runners had set their Marathon P. R.’s here, thanks to a mightily advantageous Tailwind that blew from North to South then. Ron Tabb set the Course-Record in 2:11:01, three months before he placed 4th in the U.S. Men’s Olympic Marathon Trial.

January 30, 1981, Friday morning, two days before the Storm slammed us on Sunday, we “invited athletes” were together for a Press-Conference in the Lakeshore District house of one New Orleans Track Club member. A Taxi hustled me to the house after a pre-dawn flight from San Francisco. The sponsoring TV-station three-point lighting placed in a Living-Room that was a little cramped for 10 athletes and at least that many reporters and organizers. Thanks to record-breaking successes by Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar from 1972 through 1980, Public Interest in U.S. men’s marathoning was high. We men and women invited through the NOTC to the race on Sunday were modest in our predictions, as runners tend to be, but we all were candid about hoping “for a Tailwind like last year’s.”

I stayed in the more-than-ample Edwardian house of a Doctor and his family, Uptown New Orleans on State Street, with another invitee, Barney Klecker.

Barney I knew from afar for his stupendous 4:51:25 for 50 Miles, a U. S. Record, in the AMJA Ultramarathon the prior October in Chicago. Barney was about 6’ 1”, black-haired, with a trapezoidal torso that could have fit a swimmer or wrestler as well as a marathoner of his height. That Friday afternoon we jogged through Audubon Park and out along the bikepath bordering the Mississippi River and its honking freighters and steel cranes, West and North.

Barney was raised on a Wisconsin farm. His accent reminded me of the Canadian Prairie, Brandon in Manitoba, where I’d been ages 1 to 6.

Barney told me how the philosophy of John Dewey impressed him. “I agree with John Dewey that you’ve got to participate in education, any kind of education, for it to matter. For any kind of education to improve you. Democracy, sure, I’m with John Dewey on that, too. But there again you have to participate for Democracy to work for you, or for it to work as a Government.”

I responded with some of the Spinoza, Kant and Kierkegaard I’d read while renting a $75-a-week “apartment” (pair of rooms) on New York City’s West Side that past Autumn, running in Central Park, and writing a profile of Bill Rodgers.

So runners sometimes talk.

The headwind was at least 10 miles-per-hour in our faces as we returned along the bikepath toward Aubudon Park and our host house.

“Is this a Tailwind, if we were running from the North to the South on the Causeway?” Barney asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “This River winds so much. I think it’s mostly East to West now. So: A crosswind if we were running Southward on the Causeway.”

“We came for a Tailwind,” Barney said.

“Yes we did, “ I said.

In 1980 Barney had run 2:15 and Doug Kurtis 2:14 behind Ron Tabb’s 2:11:01. I did 2:23 for training that morning, wearing New Balance 730 shoes and raingear over shorts and T-shirt, in my first “long run” since injury to my right calf in winning New Orleans’ Jackson Day Race over Kent McDonald five weeks earlier in that Olympic year. The next week I contracted 4th, 3rd, and 2nd-degree Burns to my right leg and both hands while tripping-pipe as a roughneck for Offshore Drilling and Exploration Company (ODECO) in the Gulf. Slow Burns they were, soaking through gloves and right pantleg as outcome of our Driller’s choice to dump 16 50-pounds sacks of Caustic Sode down the hole in an effort to weight our “mud.”

This Friday night 1981 I got to see “Marsha”, Marie Cordier, my great friend of Winter 1980 in New Orleans. Using a car I rented for the weekend, we went to “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” at a Theater downtown. We appreciated again Lily Tomlin’s versatility and nuances. “So smart!” I stayed with Marsha and her kids Nikki (“Nicole”) and Jason and Danni (“Dannielle”) overnight and met Cliff Cooney of the NOTC for a jog in Audubon Park the next morning.

By Saturday evening the usual waiting-to-race tensions mounted and coiled in my gut. For marathoners the seven to 10 days of tapering before competition strains both body and mind. The would-be world-class athlete goes from 20-or-so miles per Day to little as 12, then 10, then 5, before his or her Race. Work-outs diminish from four Hard per Week—say, two Days of Intervals faster than Race-Pace, one Day of Steady-State at least 8 miles straight at Race-Pace of faster, and one Long Run at least 1 miles beyond the Marathon’s 26.2. Typical training results in regular draining of energies, in short. The Week of Tapering, when only one Work-out is at all taxing, results in one’s body growing more and more stoked in explosiveness and shorter in its fuzes.

The Doctor and Family hosting Barney and me on Uptown’s State Street, just off St. Charles and its streetcars, feted us with a Supper of Seafood and Pasta and Rice—prescriptions for the Carbo-Loading then in favor. I retired upstairs to one son’s bedroom as its guest and tried for sleep. Anticipation percolated through hours.

I read some, wrote a letter to Amby Burfoot of Runner’s World, and imagined how the next morning’s Marathon. On Sunday, December 1 I’d won the Oakland Marathon in 2:18:42 despite traveling from Bellingham by car and Seattle by Flight on Saturday, 9 minutes ahead of 2nd and with 5:56 over the final one mile and 385 yards, during a 100-miles + Week. The eight Week of work since then advanced in their improvements of Intervals and Steady-States. I was more than 2 minutes faster over the timed 10-milers on Thursday. Thus I was at least 5 minutes faster in my “shape” for Mardi Gras than I’d been for Oakland—and I was for more rested. I’d had 20 Weeks straight of 100+ Miles each, excepting one of semi-injury after 5:09:58 for 50 miles in New York City’s Central Park on October 6, and strength accrued from plateau to plateau.

2:13 in neutral conditions and sub-2:11 with a a Tailwind like 1980’s were my minimal expectations. Saliva rose with tension in my shoulders. Tossing and turning for hours was itself a kind of pleasure, entertaining wish-dreams and banked spectators’ applause toward the FINISH banner again….

Well, the Big Storm shook shutters and casements of the Doctor’s house on State Street even before dawn. Rain such as slants with a diluvian obscurity in the South streamed across glass. One Doctor’s son drove Barney and to the Bus downtown that would take us invitees with “elite access” to the Start Area. We could only shake our heads and smile. “It could always clear up,” Barney said. “It could,” I said, “the weather here changes fast. But I don’t think so.”

We rode across the Causeway to the North Shore by Mandeville. We stepped out to more fog and tried and to stay dry and warm. Start-time of 7:00 would have been Near-Dark in the kindest of weather. We essayed quick and short warm-ups.

One incident rallied a crowd into the open. Some branch of Police Officer—I think it was a Parish Sheriff—arrested a runner for peeing beween the road and woods. Cherry-tops whirled in the fog and Pre-Dawn. Bobbing up-and-down in the Cruiser’s back-seat, shouting and not hand-cuffed, was the Captive Pisser. “

“What are you doing!” the Officer was asked. “What is he supposed to do but piss outside?” the Officer was further asked. Dozens more runners in already soaked sweatsuits and Lycra and yellow and pink Ponchos surrounded the whirling cherry-tops.

“I told him to stop!” the Sheriff (say) responded through his closed window.

“You told him to stop! It’s a Tropical Storm out here! No one can see more than ten feet! Let him out! Stop this nonsense! He’s got a race to run.”

“Let him out!” “Let him out!” “Boo! Boo!” “Let him out!”

Several protesters clambered atop the Cruiser’s trunk. They crouched and wobbled and jumped up and down in more or less time with Captive Pisser’s bouncing in the Sheriff’s internally windowed back-seat.

“Get off my trunk! Goddamn you, I don’t want this to get serious!”

“You—let him out! Let him out!”

“For goodness sake, Officer, release him. Let him out. No one is offended by anyone having to pee outside in these conditions. Let him out. This is Marathon morning.”

Again—in the South—in Louisiana—gentility in the form of a well-spoken woman, addressing Authority with Kindly and Implicit Superiority, prevailed, and the Captive Pisser was set free … in his Military-Camo Poncho … to cheers and shoulder-claps.

We were eager for the Start. “Sooner the better—if we’re gonna have to run into this —‘cause on the Bridge it’s gonna be worse.”

Blast of an air-horn sounded thin in the wind and rain. We felt out how strong the headwind was. It was tough. Within two miles the decision: “We got to pack up. Baby Elephant Walk. Like Cross-Country. One of us leads for a half-mile. Then the back goes to the front. Okay?”

Doug Kurtis and a tall, dark-haired runner not present at Friday morning’s Press-Conference had separated themselves ahead of our group of a half-dozen or so—Barney, Pat Devaney of Colorado, Raul Llusa of Argentina, Steve Molnar of Pennsylania, and me.

On a clear day.

The Causeway’s length of 23.9 miles is of five sections whose adjoining each forms a little “bump” in the straight, parallel lines across Lake Pontchartrain. Also, around 8 miles from the North Shore, a bascule, or drawbridge, can be opened for boats and Ships. It and the humps create breaks in the road’s monotony. We had markers for our linked line’s dogged progress.

With the bascule Bridge up.

Doug drifted back to our pack around six miles. “Good move,” I said. “Who is that up ahead?”

“I don’t know,” Doug said.

“He’s doing a heck of a job.”

The lone leader endured as our linked line crossed, humping “bump” after bump, that morning of slanting rain and sideways bobbing TV-Station helicopter and headwind 25 to 40 miles per hour. His back, dark hair and singlet, his posture Frank Shorter’s ideal of the “vertical hyphen” despite the wind, made a brave figure. We following could talk easily, as our pace was little faster than 6:00 per mile, though we had to shout to be heard.

“Does anyone know who he is?” I asked.

“I think his name ’s Clay,” Pat Devaney said. “Michael Clay. From Kentucky. College runner.”

“Great job he’s doing! It’s like “Lawrence of Arabia”. “Lawrence of Arabia” wet.”

We went over the closed Bridge around 8 miles. We climbed and descended two more of the humping bumps. Still Michael Clay of Kentucky maintained his lone, brave leading-distance of around 200 befogged meters. Irritated mutters barked among us as our slog grew longer. Runners complained about the inevitable clipping of heels, as we traded traded places in “breaking the wind.” We passed 18 miles and the second-to-last humping bump.

Michael Clay’s back appeared closer with our descent. “Let’s go! Let’s go help him.”

With such a such a buffeting absurdity of a Marathon—with such a slow pace as our turn-taking linkage could manage into the wall of wind—with the TV helicopter bouncing crazily and dangerously nearby—and with a impossible reversal of grand hopes by Mother Nature’s weather—this race especially acts of character.

Then I heard Barney bark in that high-palatal honk of the North, from middle of the pack: “Goddamn it! I told you! Stay off of my heels! One more time and it’s over the side!”

“No! No es mi falta!”

Laughter is counter-indicated for success when one is trying to compete, but I laughed out loud, an irrepressible rolling from the gut, at Barney’s warning. Over the side! One more time and it’s over the side!

Pursuing Michael Clay.

We at last caught Michael Clay around Mile 24, as the South Shore and lights of Metaire arose spectrally down the Causeway. “Hey! Come with us. Take a break! You’ve been out front so long!”

Thus we proceeded. The “day” was unchanged. Wind and rain were unabated. It was a remarkable storm. We bent to forces beyond our control and savored what relief as moving nearer to the Finish offered. I led too much of that closing 10-K-or-so after 20 miles. Once our pounding steps had splashed down the last little descent to the South Shore and Metairie—Causeway Boulevard, how I’ve longed to see you—how good it is to see you!—and we turned at a right-angle to the so-welcome short stretch of Esplanade and its FINISH banner, I was wore-out, near woozy with the weather, and Doug and Raul spurted past. I barely held onto 3rd ahead of fast-closing Steve Molnar of Pennsylvania.

Barney and I still laugh about this Marathon.

“One of the great experiences this sport has given. The funniest, I think—what you shouted out there!”

LAGNIAPPE

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