Runners will tour Big Easy

NEW ORLEANS – The 41st Mardi Gras Marathon will offer runners more than just the usual challenge on Sunday. It also will offer a unique chance to tour the damage Hurricane Katrina did to the city.

“The first 14 miles they will be running through some of the flooded areas of the city,” race director Bill Burke said. “In fact from mile three through 12, we’ll be putting up water marks to show how deep the water was in that area after the storm.”

On one street, for example, the water reached 10 1/2 feet, Burke said.

Besides two water marks per mile to show post-Katrina flooding, runners will go past many of the city’s 200,000 damaged houses on the 26.2-mile course.

Runners will start and finish at the Superdome, which housed 30,000 refugees for a week after the hurricane. The course includes the French Quarter, Lake Pontchartrain lakefront and Uptown neighborhoods, Burke said.

There are about 3,200 runners registered for the marathon, the half-marathon and the 5K race held with it, Burke said. That’s down from 5,600 runners last year.