After pandemic lockdowns brought the New Orleans Rock n’ Roll marathon to the virtual stage in 2021, a triumphant return was planned for the early months of the 2022 season. Despite some challenging weather during the leadup to race day, the Rock n’ Roll team and our team here at BCC Live rolled up our sleeves to produce a fantastic race! But how did it all go down?
CANCELLATIONS, DELAYS, AND A TERRIFIC AMOUNT OF RAIN
Of course, as if on cue, the weather leapt to the occasion to cause some trouble. Winter storms across the Midwest caused a wave of delayed and cancelled flights in the week leading up to the race. While some staff were affected, we here at BCC received a stroke of luck thanks to Denver’s characteristically dry weather. What little snow the airport weathered (ha!) was already on its way out when we boarded our flight. Figuring that was the end of that, we settled into our seats on the plane…
…and flew directly into a tremendous thunderstorm hovering over New Orleans on our way in. An on-time flight soon became a delayed arrival as we waited on the tarmac, hoping the lightning would clear out enough to let the ground crew guide us in. Couple this with flash-flood conditions making the roads into canals, and the team ended up with far less time on-site than we expected on our first day.
However, a little rain can’t keep the BCC team down. Packing our equipment and luggage into bags (and onto our laps in our car) to keep it dry, we hustled to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center to start our first tasks: providing sound, internet, and merchandise point-of-sale systems to the vendors and staff on site at the Expo venue.
By dividing our forces, BCC conquered an extra-large Expo. One team member handled the setup of eighteen independent Cayan point-of-sale systems enabling visitors to purchase gear and merchandise for the upcoming race. Meanwhile, two discrete internet sources were set up by another BCC team member using the same LTE-powered bonding units we use to livestream events in the field, not only allowing the point-of-sale systems to verify transactions securely but also providing handy Wi-fi for Rock n’ Roll staff to run their systems and support athlete needs. Finally, our last two team members got in a workout the way BCC loves to do it: by carrying in a string of 6 Mackie powered speakers to broadcast the music from the venue’s DJ booth. No problem! What’s next?
NEW ORLEANS SITE SETUP: MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME
Fortunately, the torrential downpour elected to settle down to a trickle by the next morning—enough to make things look a little dreary and slippery but not enough to wash anything away anymore! We also received a real gift courtesy of the city and the University of New Orleans: thanks to a convenient parallel road, the road for the half-marathon start line was closed to traffic by Friday morning, far earlier than many other events. Thanks to this, our team put in a great morning of work getting ahead of schedule and partially setting up the start line, as well as prepping our equipment for a speedy setup of the rest of the venue.
This excellent pace continued through the rest of the day, allowing us to carefully get everything as ready as it could be before race day while refining our plans for delivering sound and internet to the finish-line venue. But when the end of the day rolled around, it was time to hurry again—with an early morning the next day, it was a race to find somewhere to eat and get to bed at a reasonable hour! Unfortunately, long lines at all the restaurants we tried caused us to settle for delivery, but of course dining in the comfort of the hotel lobby meant we had a shorter trip to our respective beds.
THE 2022 ROCK N’ ROLL NEW ORLEANS 5K RACE
Even though the 5K race is shorter than the 10K and half-marathon, that doesn’t mean we care about it any less. Waking up well before 4 AM, our team arrived onsite with our equipment ready and our plan best-laid to make it an event to remember. We were met with a vicious early-morning chill that cut through our coats and gloves—but what better way to warm up than getting in motion? Getting our hustle on, the team built our dedicated 5K setups (consisting of a string of QSC K.2-series speakers, a dedicated mixing panel, and all the accoutrement to power and link the equipment together) for the start and finish apace… and then had to stand still at the audio mixing consoles while the cold seeped in. But the infectious energy of the Rock n’ Roll announcers and the excited runners warmed our spirits, and every team member was nice and toasty by the time we had to take down the 5K equipment again.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of our day—with the 5K complete, we had to set up the start and finish for the 10K and half-marathon! Once again, our extra prep time and early venue availability paid off, as we were able to set up both the start and finish almost completely by mid-afternoon. Normally, our job involves completely setting up and tearing down the start line in the span of a few hours on race day, so everyone was grateful to get ahead of pace.
But here at BCC, getting extra time doesn’t mean we just go to sleep early. With the extra time, we checked in on the Rock n’ Roll staff members to coordinate our plans for race day and refined our speaker setup to provide crystal-clear audio across an even wider area than we originally planned. By the time the evening rolled around and we had to tear down our equipment at the Expo, we were as ready as anyone could possibly be for a killer event. So how did the 10K and half-marathon go?
PRACTICALLY FLAWLESS: RACE DAY
The header speaks for itself. Thanks to our plan and a heroic effort by every BCC Live team member, race day went off without an ounce of trouble. Additionally, the fantastic race venue in and around the University of New Orleans allowed us to quickly move wherever we were needed with any amount of gear in tow—whether that was maneuvering a box truck up to the finish line to load it up with hundreds of pounds-worth of speakers and electrical cable or walking from the start to the finish on foot to deliver a handful of extra AA batteries.
Perhaps as an apology for the rain earlier in the week, New Orleans also offered us absolutely beautiful weather—sunny and clear, but with a gentle breeze to keep anyone from getting overheated. Our winter coats and heavy hats were soon exchanged for T-shirts and baseball caps—thankfully everyone came prepared for all sorts of weather! With the music from our speaker setup providing an upbeat energy to the day, it was smiles all around throughout the event.
Revitalized by the weather and the air of positivity, tearing down the start and finish also went by in the blink of an eye. One of the best parts about Rock n’ Roll events is that each piece of equipment has a specific role and a specific place to be loaded onto the trailer, so loading up at the end of the day is just a matter of following the packing plan we’ve executed countless times before. Once we were through with our packing, we had the rare treat of spending time on-site and off-hours with the Rock n’ Roll staff, discussing the way the event exceeded everyone’s expectations and basking in the glorious weather.
Yet again, however, our day wasn’t done there. Saying our goodbyes, we loaded up our luggage and headed to the airport to fly home the same day—though we would’ve loved to stay longer and enjoy the area, there’s always more work to be done elsewhere! Even now, we’re finalizing the plans for our next few events, connecting with staff and customers, and figuring out how we can take every project to the next level. How will we do that for our next event, the legendary Rock n’ Roll Las Vegas half-marathon? You’ll just have to wait and see!
