Easy to Be Hard

Attending any sort of running conference is a virtual ride in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups at Disney World: lots of whirling and spinning in all sorts of expected and unexpected directions anda touch of nausea as you wobble your way back onto solid ground.

Les Smith at the Portland Marathon hosts a race directors’ gathering in the days leading up to the early-October marathon. The panels are usually composed of much the same roster of long-running experts in the field—folks who were around when cavemen ran from saber-toothed tigers and when running in America was confined to either punishment laps for having goofed up on a sports field or a way of escaping the long arm of the law.

These folks are the people who have shaped the sport over the decades into what it has become and, in most cases, learned running from the black toenails and chafing thighs up by competing in the sport probably more often than was good for them. Most of them have, by dint of time and experience, reached the level of the guru who sits outside his cave on the mountainside waiting for the young acolytes and searchers for truth to seek him out.

But sometimes not.

Some of the young who arrive come not to seek advice and truth but to lecture the guru on How It Should Be. Some of us codgers at first find this approach disrespectful and arrogant until, escaped from the withering assault on age and experience, we sip a glass of Oregon wine later that evening and reflect on what arrogant idiots we were at that age.

We chuckle at the underinformed who demands that there be one aid station for every mile in a marathon or she will not sign up for our race. She has likely never heard of hyponatremia and probably doesn’t know that the revered Boston Marathon didn’t put water on its course until 1978 yet lost very few people to dehydration in the previous 81 years the race was contested.

Or the young computer tech who wants nothing to do with a race that does not fall neatly into one of four categories—5K, 10K, half-marathon, or marathon—and in the process ignores most of the largest and oldest races in the world. Did you know that the three largest road races in the world do not fall into any of those four camps! and that many of the oldest races in North American don’t, either? The Bay Area’s Bay-to-Breakers and Dipsea

(both roughly 7.5 miles or thereabouts; people don’t rightly care all that much) are both about 100 years old, as is the Berwick (Pennsylvania) Run for the Diamonds (9.1 miles). Over the years, the Boston Marathon has been anything but consistent in distance: 24.5 miles (1897-1923); 26 miles, 188 yards (1924-26); 26 miles, 385 yards (1927-1952); 25 miles, 962 yards (1953-1956); and finally 26 miles, 385 yards (from 1957 to today). In any case, the whole 26 miles, 385 yards is completely arbitrary and is not by any means the distance Pheidippides (or whatever hemerodromos it was) ran from the plains of Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C.

But the one that rankles most (beyond the person who castigated a hardworking Oregon race director for not spending excessive time creating a suitable T-shirt in both men’s and women’s cuts and the one who threw accusations around relative to how put upon women in running were while some of the same men who had moved women’s running forward rapidly in the 1970s and ’80s were sitting in the room holding their tongues) was the one who bristled at the suggestion that it would be beneficial to the running world if some races were made more—rather than less—difficult.

The discussion centered on how too much emphasis was being put on making marathon courses too easy and that it was not necessarily good for the runner because (1) a completely flat course is extremely wearing on the leg muscles and (2) why take potentially

good scenery out of a course just to make it flat? These suggestions were apparently an outrage. Marathons should be made easier, the old fogies were informed. Marathons were already too hard. Well, duh!—that’s why they’re called marathons’.

Over yet another glass of fine Oregon wine that night, the old farts talked about some of the most memorable marathons they had ever run, and none of them involved pancake-flat courses. There was mention of Pikes Peak—alas, not exactly 26.2 miles! There was mention of the difficulty of the Boston course and how it took a real student of the sport to learn how to save or mete out energy on various segments of the course. The New York City Marathon’s specific challenges came up. A discussion followed of how itis more advantageous to a marathoner to have some hills in the first few miles to get blood pumping big-time into the big leg muscles and how variations in terrain help massage the leg muscles and run them through varied ranges of motion, thereby saving them from the monotony of the same exact range of motion for 50,000 strides, which, one race director laughed, “can cause carpel-tunnel disease of the legs.”

Then the conversation really became esoteric because there were, as usual and increasingly more so at these affairs, several ultramarathon race directors. You can imagine where the discussion then went: ultramarathoners wallow in relating how difficult a course was … or is. The hallowed names Leadville and Hardrock were uttered,

and then someone had the audacity to bring forth the double-dog dare ultra’s Name That Should Never Be Spoken: Barkley. For the uninitiated, the Barkley Marathons—a 100-mile ultra or a 60-mile “fun run’”—were founded in 1986 by madman Gary Cantrell. The Ultra is run in Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg, Tennessee, and consists of five 20-mile loops, with a 60-hour cutoff and 54,200 feet of elevation gain and loss. Since its inception, only nine runners have completed the 100-mile race. That, of course, put a real damper on the whole discussion, as it always does, because how are you going to top Barkley?

The discussion of the benefits of difficult races petered out, and the hoary old race directors devolved into talking about high-tech T-shirt fabrics, and one

ing back because some manufacturers had evolved cotton T-shirts to the point that they were potentially better than high-tech shirts, and then we all had a final glass of wine and went to our hotel rooms to go to bed, which is what over-the-hill race directors do when there is no longer anything difficult to talk about.

‘According to RunningUSA, the largest road races in 2009 were these: 1. Rome’s Stracittadina Fun Run, 4K, 64,000 finishers. 2. Sydney’s Sun-Herald City2Surf, 14K, 62,754 finishers. 3. Frankfurt’s JPMorgan Corporate Challenge, 3.5M, 61,000 finishers.

2“Marathon: a long-lasting or difficult task or operation of a specific kind. Source: The New Oxford American

of them revealed that cotton was com- _ Dictionary. —Rich Benyo

Note from the publisher—Digital M&B has arrived!

That’s right—starting with the March/April issue, Marathon & Beyond will be available in both print and digital formats. We’ve inched toward this juncture slowly because we wanted to make sure we found the best industry partner to work with. We have, in a company called Advanced Publishing. Our digital edition will be viewable on Macs, PCs, and iPads.

Subscribers who pay for a digital subscription—or who add digital to their print subscription (read on for how to do that)—will receive a welcome e-mail and instructions for setting up secure and individualized access. You’ll receive an e-mail when each issue is ready. Because it takes only a few days for the digital edition to be available (compared to several weeks for the print edition), digital subscribers will “receive” their magazines first.

The digital edition will look exactly like our print edition, and you’ll have lots of cool tools for navigating through every issue. Plus, every issue is archived, so you can go back to reread any digital edition any time. One neat feature of digital is that advertisements are “live.” When you come to an ad, if you click on the URL in the ad, you go right to the Web site.

on the road with kathrine switzer

Indomitable Spirits

Running with Pheidippides in Athens

The bus stopped at a light in front of the Panathinaiko Stadium and everyone cheered. I don’t think there was a DNF among us. Seriously, we all would have chosen to die honorably like Pheidippides rather than quit this particular marathon. It was, after all, the 2,500th-anniversary marathon, the big one, a once-in-50-lifetimes experience.

Quitting must have been a near-run option in several cases, though, including my own, when my thighs went immobile with cramps at 19 miles and I jerked to a stop, pushing back panic at the thought of trying to drag myself for seven miles to Athens. Despite warnings that it was a tough course, plenty of us were surprised how tough—not just the strategically placed hills, but also the unforgiving marble and asphalt road surface that is most excellent for shredding the quads.

But those were the negatives—the only negatives—of yesterday. Today we proudly wore our Greek blue-andwhite Athens Classic Marathon 2010

race shirts and spun out our individual stories of survival and triumph as the victorious Athenian soldiers must have done two and a half millennia ago. Three hours? Six hours? Nobody cared, nobody judged. Run, run-walk, walk-run, walkwalk, how many gels, how much water, did you drink the Coca-Cola? Did you get sunburned, too? Did the EMT guys in the yellow coats spray you? What was that stuff, anyway? Man, I cannot even move today! That was the excited surface conversation, the we-did-it kind of chatter that is a prelude to the more significant things we wanted to say but couldn’t yet articulate.

Many perhaps went to Greece to check another important marathon off the must-do list. Actually experiencing it, however, touched us in ways that surprised us. Something profoundly emotional occurred in Greece.

Nine hundred runners (from the Marathon Tours & Travel group alone; thousands more came from around the world) straggled off planes and onto buses, jet-lagged and travel weary from 12 to 30 hours of travel, weather delays, and the preoccupation with work and

family left behind, and they arrived ina place most hadn’t researched that well. They just knew they were here for an important event.

Perhaps the first realization that this was something more than special was when they had their first sight of the Acropolis. It dominates over all of Athens and beyond, out to the sea, humbling you. In the world, there are a few sights that leave you breathless in their magnificent sense of eternity, and the Acropolis is one of them. It speaks to us: you are here, at the birthplace of the civilized world. You are privileged to be here, to run in the footsteps of someone who ran with the news of that civilization being saved. You have chosen to run in this sacred place; now it is your duty to go beyond being a runner and become a pilgrim. Everyone on the bus was momentarily silent at the sight.

Historical perspective

Maybe it was the quick stretch-thelegs run we took to the Panathinaiko Stadium when we arrived that further made the point. It made us feel giddy— this is where we will finish! But it came to life when marathon historian and writer Roger Robinson, now unable to run with a worn-out knee, met us there with stories of other fabled finishes, ancient and modern. Some, like the finish of Spiridon Louis in the first modern Olympic Games and in the first real marathon event, ignited our sport into what it has become today. Nailing our emotions for sure was the race route, not particularly scenic but saturated with the sweat and

tears of our own marathon gods and goddesses—Stefano Baldini, Ron Hill, Meb Keflezighi, Paula Radcliffe, Rosa Mota, and Mizuki Noguchi, as well as— metaphorically speaking, anyway— Pheidippides. His indomitable spirit permeated the race route. It was exciting to think that maybe a pebble on the side of the road had been under his foot as he raced to Athens 2,500 years before.

The route had gone from a goat path to a dirt road to a polluted truck route to a smooth, modern highway. Today, closed entirely to traffic and with astonishingly well-appointed aid stations, the well-marked course was pumping with Greek music and lined with thousands of bravo-shouting Greek spectators waving olive branches. The runners themselves did not disappoint,

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A For author Kathrine Switzer, the 2010 Athens Classic Marathon was an important step into history, but it was also her first road marathon in 34 years and a return to the race that denied her entry in 1972.

either: wanting to know everything that was going on, most left their iPods at home. They also wanted you to know where they were from, so they wore club and national shirts, not ones graffitied by race advertising. Seeing places like Cyprus, Ukraine, Bangkok, Reykjavik, Dubai, Seychelles, and Gibraltar jolted us away from our suburban lives and drew us together in a bond to share this experience. I read somewhere that molecules stay around forever, so it is feasible that with every breath we take, we exchange not only some molecules of each other but also those of old Pheidippides himself.

Lastly, we arrive at the Panathinaiko Stadium, shining bright marble white on this sunny autumn day, filled with color, cheering, and the theme music from Zorba the Greek. When we finish a marathon, the usual first thought is that at last it’s over. Today, I think, is different. Even desperately wanting it to end, many of us used that particular stadium entry as time for recollection, validation, and tribute.

For me it was my first road marathon in 34 years; part of the reason to run it was that I had been denied entry into the race 38 years before because it was then a men’s-only event. Running here allowed me to validate the successful emergence of women’s running worldwide in my own mind. [also ran because I didn’t want to have any regrets about an activity that has given me so much in my life; I didn’t want to miss it and later wish I had been there. That is always worth suffering for. Then, like everyone else, I merged my personal resolutions

with the sense of having made the best tribute we could to our history and our heroes ona stupendous anniversary. We all felt as though we had come through an enlightening experience, indeed, like worthy pilgrims, and felt that by running in the footsteps of history, we also make them our own.

The ING New York City Marathon: four champions, a new order

Edison

“You have to have a blue wristband to come in here, sorry!” said the guard at the door of the ING NYC Marathon pressroom. Since I had every press credential imaginable and had been coming into this room for 40 years and knew everybody, this was not only a surprise, this had to be big news.

As I got fitted for my blue bracelet, I was told the upcoming press conference was a special one for Edison Pefia, the Chilean miner who along with 32 others was trapped underground for 69 days. His appearance at the ING New York City Marathon ignited such huge news interest that the NY Road Runners press office had to restrict space and issue special passes.

Although I had seen headlines of the story of the rescue, I was hazy on specifics since I had been on the road at six marathons in six weeks. Seeing my puzzled expression, Road Runners CEO Mary Wittenberg told me that never in the history of the race had they had such demand for a story. I thought, How could any New York City Marathon running story be bigger

than Paula Radcliffe running after her 2004 Athens meltdown? How could it be bigger than when Lance Armstrong ran? Dear God, how could it be bigger than when P. Diddy ran?

But it was. Global, national, East Coast, Hispanic, and the entire New York press corps were there. They not only sent cameras, they also sent their on-camera stars, so suddenly us kinda grungy running writers were nearly blinded by more beautiful people in one room than we had ever seen. It was like the Emmys in Hollywood.

Thanks to GPS and cell phones, Edison arrived right on time from JFK, looking only the slightest bit flushed and battered from his long flight from Santiago and the celebrity welcome at the airport. Such an entrance is a lot to ask of even a seasoned pro, but he was calm, charmingly honest, and very genuine as he answered questions and told his story before so many people. The cynic in me worried that Edison might be making the most of his 15 minutes of fame, but that notion was quickly dispelled. Truly, he seemed like a sincere man, an ordinary person who had been through something extraordinary and was both exceedingly grateful and very happy.

In brief, the story is this: an accident in a gold mine resulted in the miners being trapped with diminishing hope of rescue. World authorities and equipment were rushed to Chile. For 17 days the miners had almost no food, limited light, and no contact with the outside world. When it was discovered that they were alive, an opening was created,

and food and emergency supplies were wiggled through a long, narrow tube. But getting the miners out was still a lengthy and perilous undertaking.

The subterranean marathoner—and Elvis is in the mine

All the miners were initially very depleted from lack of food, but after day 17, they were gradually revived with a systematic nutritional plan. One of them, Edison Pefia, who ran for fitness, decided that running would relieve the stress and help him “Get closer to God and prove to God that he wanted to live.” Edison cut down his heavy mining boots and began jogging in the long corridors of the mine. Later, when other supplies began arriving, Edison’s family got a pair of running shoes and an iPod with Elvis Presley music down to him. He managed three to six miles a day.

Finally, on day 69, the world watched and rejoiced as one by one the miners were brought to the surface. Each had an amazing story, and Edison told his about running in the mine. The New York Road Runners cheered especially loudly for Edison and invited him to come to the ING New York City Marathon, thinking he would be a VIP, watch the race, and enjoy a nice champagne breakfast with the sponsors. Edison jumped at the invitation, not to watch, but to run.

For a man who had never run the marathon distance before, had only the meagerest of training, and only three and a half weeks before had been darkly entombed for 69 days, to make such a statement at first seemed outrageous—

the most optimistic of wishful fantasy. But on the other hand, Edison’s decision seemed the most sane, joyful, and logical of choices. He made the choice to visibly show once again the indomitability of the human spirit. He survived before and he would do it now, this time by willingly embracing the rigors of the marathon as well as all else that life will throw at him in the years to come. He finished in 5:40—on a bad knee, no less—said he will do it again, and said he did it because he wanted to show everybody that they, too, can overcome difficulties.

Haile

“His smile could illuminate all of Times Square in a power outage,” journalist Roger Robinson whispered to me as Haile Gebrselassie walked into the room and gleefully began answering questions. This is the world record holder. This is the undisputed king of the marathon. And this guy is so friendly and easy-going he makes everyone smile back.

But when he runs he’s a killer. You cannot argue with a 2:03:59 and nine marathons under 2:07 (three of those under 2:05!). You have to be in awe of acareer that has spanned 17 years at the very top and set 27 world records.

Yet a couple of tough-ass New York City journalists decided to create an issue by saying that Haile’s records are remarkable but that he has set them on flat courses in ideal conditions with exceptional pacers, choosing to run for fast times and avoiding head-to-head competition. Personally, I thought these

journalists were ungracious and must have had a memory lapse. Although it is true that Haile had never raced a hilly marathon, anyone who watched him over the years on the track and in previous marathons saw a man giving everything he had. Most vivid in my memory is Haile fiercely battling the great Paul Tergat in the 10,000 meters in the 2000 Olympics. It was one of the most dynamic head-to-head races ever, and in one final, impossible gasp, Haile flung himself across the line for gold. Sure looks like a competitor to me! Haile arrived in New York City with the papers and blogs full of this story and with a kind of “OK, let’s see what he can do on New York’s rolling course and with a loaded field!” tone. He handled it all with smiling forthrightness, saying that of course he had been going for marathon world records in ideal conditions, because at his age—37—he didn’t have much more time to get faster, so he was trying to get the records while he could. Now that he is at last in New York, he said his focus was to win, and he implied that he was going for the course record (Tesfaye Jifar, 2:07:43, 2001).

Accusations sting

Privately, though, Haile was both annoyed and hurt by the accusations. He is not only an athlete, he is a man who is devoted to responsibility: in Ethiopia, he has several businesses and employs over 600 people. He feels acutely responsible for the well-being of those employees and also feels responsible for the success of his work since he is

a role model as a businessman as well as an iconic athlete. Haile believes the real hope for the future of Ethiopia is people working, and he wants to show how his businesses can be an example to others. For anyone to insinuate that he avoids anything got to him.

“T’ve been Haile’s agent and good friend for 13 years, and these last weeks have been the first that he’s trained so hard that he has turned off his cell phone,” says Jos Hermans. “He’s even asked his wife to manage the hotel business until he gets through New York. He wants to win, and yes, he’s in great shape—he did 10K on a treadmill at home last week in 27:50 for a speed workout.” (Mental note: Addis Ababa is at 8,000 feet of altitude.)

There are no pacers in New York, and the field is full of many young lions who would love to beat Haile. A few of them have even been his pacers as he set or attempted world records: men who know him well and know how he runs. Yet for the first 15 miles of the race, none would pass Haile, even though the pace was slow. It was the perfect example of how the alpha male intimidated and dominated without doing anything exceptional.

It was also an amazing example of stoicism. Several of us learned the day before that Haile had a knee problem; by race morning many picked up his Twitter message that he had seen a doctor and fluid had been taken from the knee. You could not tell that from his face in the race, and yet he must have been in incredible pain. Still, nobody challenged him.

Then, boom, close to mile 16, on the steep downward slope of the Queensboro Bridge, just as the runners were to enter the raucous streets of Manhattan, Haile slowed to a stop. Those with bad knees know you can often run uphill, sometimes limp through the flats, but running downhill is excruciating. He turned to his teammate Gebre Gebremariam, the only other Ethiopian in the race, and told him, “You have to move. You have to reach them.”

It’s always one of the most exciting sights in running to see the elite runners come off the eerily quiet Queensboro Bridge and shoot down the ramp into the screaming mobs of people lining First Avenue. This time, it looked as though each individual man in the front pack was a drop of water that hit a sizzling griddle. They flew in all directions, running wild, like their lives depended on it. And in a way, they did, for here now was an unexpected chance to grab victory, fame, and glory.

In the end, it was indeed Gebremariam who was victorious in the men’s race, and in the women’s it was Kenyan Edna Kiplagat, who held off American Shalane Flanagan. Of the three, only Edna had run a marathon before. As they crossed the finish line, you had that excitement of seeing new joy and a new future in these young faces, but there was also that visceral pang of seeing our old champions tire, falter, and fade.

Contemplating the end

I’ve been broadcasting marathons for over 30 years, and I am never not

touched by this sensation. This year, though, something exceptional happened, and I felt as though a bomb had shattered my heart. With my broadcast finished, I drifted over to the pressroom to hear the interviews of the elite finishers. I arrived at the same time as Haile Gebrselassie. He was not smiling. He limped. He could not quite sit down nor quite stand easily on the stage.

He began to explain that he could not go any farther on his knee, that he was grateful to everyone, and then, “I never think about retiring. For the first time, this is the day. Let me stop and do other work after this. Let me do other jobs. Let me give a chance for the youngsters.” He wiped one eye. Someone behind me said, “Oh, my God.”

An anxious journalist asked for clarification—“Are you saying you are retiring?” Haile wiped his hands across both eyes, looked up and said, “Yes. Idon’t want to complain anymore

… it’s better to stop here.” And then he just raised one hand—as if saying, “stop, please, peace’”—and limped off the stage.

I wanted to shout, “Haile, no! You’re just hurt and tired! Don’t let a few tough people pressure you, don’t go when you are down, you’ll get it back, don’t go now!” Instead, I burst into tears.

Haile and Edison inspire me. They bite off a lot of life and they are grateful for every morsel. They take responsibility and pass it on. They try to be good examples. They smile when they are scared. But they’re human, too, and are exquisitely vulnerable. And they never quit trying. I’m not sure what Edison is up to now, but Haile has reconsidered retirement and has said he plans to run the Tokyo Marathon in February after all. He is considering the 2012 Olympics. My heart is mended. The indomitable spirit of Pheidippides lives on.

An L.A. Story

The City of Angels (finally) realizes its potential as a marathon destination.

was supposed to be done with this marathon stuff. In 2008 I decided that I was

officially retired from competitive running. No more beating myself up in the

pursuit of PRs and the like. I would continue to run and sometimes race but with a ratcheted-down, less-demanding approach. There might be a low-key 5K or 10K here or there—maybe even an occasional half. My body applauded. My wife, who doesn’t enjoy seeing her guy so achy all the time, whistled and whooped.

But then the LA Marathon went and did it.

On November 9, 2009, race organizers unveiled a new point-to-point course dubbed the “Stadium to the Sea.” The gun would go off at Dodger Stadium. Participants would wend their way through parts of downtown, Silver Lake, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Westwood, Brentwood, and Santa Monica. Along the way they would run past such iconic landmarks as the Disney Concert Hall, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and Whiskey A Go Go before finishing a stone’s throw away from the Santa Monica Pier. For someone whose entire running career has been based here in the City of Angels and whose opinion of his hometown marathon has until now bordered on the unprintable, the new layout—well, much to my wife’s exasperation—it was far too enticing for me to pass up.

An auspicious beginning

After years of fits and starts, it appears as if the Honda LA Marathon, formerly known as the City of Los Angeles Marathon, is finally ready for its close-up. The 2010 edition marked the silver anniversary of a race whose lineage can be traced directly back to the success of the 1984 Olympic Games. The XXIII Olympiad was filled with highlight reel footage—from decathlete legend Rafer Johnson igniting the cauldron high above the Memorial Coliseum, to Carl Lewis matching Jesse Owens’s feat of four gold medals on the track, to Mary Lou Retton’s spunky performances in the gymnastics competition. But for fans of distance

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Over 25,000 runners set off to experience LA‘s picturesque new point-to-point course.

running, the one image that glows brighter than all others is that of Joan Benoit Samuelson racing along sun-splashed streets on her way to a gold medal in the first women’s Olympic Marathon.

By 1986, the year of LA’s debut, the marathon movement was in full bloom. In 1976 there were an estimated 25,000 finishers in U.S. marathons, and by 1980 that number had skyrocketed to 143,000. The upward trajectory in growth was just as evident in Europe, too, where marathons being staged in London, Paris, and Berlin were well on their way to becoming civic happenings. So when the Los Angeles City Council rubber-stamped the idea of giving the city its own namesake event, it wasn’t exactly going out on a limb. With a huge population base among the most health conscious in the world, the promise of good weather, and a reputation as a can’t-miss tourist destination, it seemed a given that any marathon staged here would become a smash hit.

The inaugural edition of the race drew 10,787 registrants, the most ever for a first-time marathon on U.S. soil. And, predictably, that number grew in the early days: year 2: 14,697; year 3: 17,040; year 4: 18,918. But then things plateaued. The marathon stalled at 19,843 registrants in 1992, and while Chicago and New York’s field sizes were zooming past the 30,000 mark, LA wouldn’t crack the 20,000 barrier until seven years later. Some blamed an unattractive course, which was tethered to the drab environs of downtown. Others blamed poor management and the feeling that race organizers were more interested in staging a three-ring circus

© 2010 Kristin Burns/LA Marathon

than a top-notch running event. There was the marathon, yes, but on race day there were also attempts to feature such add-ons as in-line skating and a bicycle tour.

Tipping the lid off the box—finally

Epiphany #1 : According to MapQuest.com, the quickest driving route from Chavez Ravine to Santa Monica is 19.49 miles, and the trip should take precisely 25 minutes. As any Angeleno can readily attest, however, getting snared in Los Angeles’s notorious traffic congestion can make that distance feel like 194 miles and the travel time more like 25 hours. But on the morning of March 21, 2010, the streets have been cleared for marathoning and there, in the shadow of Dodger Stadium, my fellow distance hounds and | are rubbing our hands together in anticipation of 26.2 miles of vehicle-less sightseeing.

The LA Marathon hit the wall in 2009. Original ownership sold the race rights to Chicago-based Devine Racing in 2004. On September 25, 2008, financially strapped Devine, in turn, sold those rights to Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team owner Frank McCourt, through his affiliate, LA Marathon LLC. But the McCourt team, which would soon include then-President Russ Pillar, Race Director Nick Curl, and Creative Director Peter Abraham, quickly found itself in a bind: the date for the fast-approaching race had yet to be finalized.

“T don’t think the previous owners did a stellar job of community outreach,” says Curl, who has been involved with the race off and on for many years and who has recently taken over the title of chief operating officer with the retirement of Pillar.

Religious leaders of churches near the route had for years complained about how street closures associated with the event affected their parishioners’ ability to attend Sunday service. Although Devine had already announced a traditional Sunday race date in March, the City Council acquiesced to the churches’ concerns and, after much negotiation, the McCourt team reluctantly agreed to change the upcoming race date to Memorial Day, Monday, May 25, 2009. To many running observers, the move was just the latest in a long series of head-scratching missteps that have plagued the marathon since its inception. To no one’s surprise, the 2009 race saw a dramatic 17 percent drop in participation.

In terms of the number of finishers, Los Angeles had slipped to the 13thranked international marathon, sandwiched between Singapore and Hamburg. New York, London, Berlin, Chicago, Paris, and Tokyo each drew well over twice as many runners.

“When I left the company in 2006, just three years earlier, we were over 25,000,” says Curl. That number had eroded to less than 15,000. “You talk about an asset getting tarnished…”

The idea that the second-most-populous city in the country could draw so few marathoners during the heart of a distance-running boom says more about the

previous ownership’s stubborn unwillingness to change direction than about Los Angeles itself. And what made that mind-set even more perplexing is that this is a city that celebrates reinvention like no other.

“In 1992, I ran the LA Marathon on the old course,” says Abraham. “I’ve always been an outdoor athlete and a runner, so I’ve always followed the race. You could see that it never really got past the B level. I didn’t think there was a big vision to make it a world-class, fantastic experience. I didn’t see that in the execution of the event, either as a runner or as a spectator.”

“Tt was held in parts of the city that I wouldn’t have necessarily gone to on my own, so that was kind of interesting,” says Chris Johnson, a seasoned Santa Monica-based runner who estimates that she has run close to 10 Los Angeles Marathons since its inception. “But it was certainly ugly. The only reason why I kept signing up for the race was because I like to run marathons and it was in my backyard.”

“You knew that you had the potential to be something cool,” says Curl, who explains that McCourt’s interest in buying the rights to the race was contingent upon a complete course makeover. “He was most concerned about bringing the communities together. [A point-to-point course] was not an original idea. But he had the strength, desire, and wherewithal to make it happen.”

“My philosophy is that you can’t have a great running event without a great course,” says Abraham. “If you think of the really great running events—New York, Big Sur, London—those are all great courses.”

A Just past the 11-mile mark, marathoners run past Hollywood’s historic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

= = Ss E

Tipping the lid off the existing box, Curl says, was the most exciting part of the process.

“We had a bunch of people sitting around in a room saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we go down this street or that street,”” says Curl, explaining how the new course went through some 50 different variations. “It was exciting as heck. The concept was simple: make it emblematic of Los Angeles.”

The year of planning dangerously

Epiphany #2: I’m running west down Sunset Boulevard, after having settled into apace I feel reasonably confident I can sustain, and suddenly there it is—the Hollywood sign—on a hillside in the distance, majestically framed by structures on either side of the street. It winks at me just like the Emerald City winks at Dorothy and her huggable pals once they finally emerge from that spooky forest in The Wizard of Oz. And all I can think is, wow, now that is pretty cool.

Though the “Stadium to the Sea” concept was born early on, the McCourt team’s goal was to do more than just design a memorable, scenic racecourse.

“We wanted to bring everyone together to celebrate Southern California,” says Curl.

“Russ Pillar talks a lot about the transformational power of sport,” says Abraham. “That’s what’s exciting about the marathon and this route and the way it traverses the city. You’re transforming charities, spectators, runners, and city government. It’s an uplifting civic experience.”

It’s clear from sitting across from these guys that they are passionate about what they’re doing. When constructing the new LA Marathon, Pillar, Curl, and Abraham were fixtures at marathon expos across the country. They not only wanted to share their ideas about the future of the event, but they also wanted to hear feedback from past participants and potential registrants.

But Los Angeles has always been a magnet for dreamers. Drawing up a course wish list that finally affords marathoners the opportunity to run past and through Chinatown, the Sunset Strip, Rodeo Drive, Route 66, and Ocean Avenue is one thing. Making such a list a reality is an entirely different matter.

Angelenos are notorious for never wanting to be inconvenienced. They bemoan the lack of a robust public-transportation system, but whenever the powers that be float plans about tunneling beneath the city’s eclectic mix of neighborhoods to implement an underground rail system, the citizenry quickly and vociferously puts up resistance. The region hasn’t had a professional football team since the Raiders took their show back to Northern California in 1994, and though everyone agrees that, yes, maybe a city this populous should have an NFL franchise, ironing out the details to make it happen ranks pretty darn low on the communal bucket list.

“You were literally running down the street,” says Curl, recalling how the entire McCourt team was trying to put the pieces together on the fly. “We were working with the five different jurisdictions and at the same time designing the route. It was all happening in real time. Think about it: there are five police departments that are involved, five transportation departments, five city managers, and five city councils. The meetings are rather extensive.”

Most marathons grow from seedlings. Boston’s inaugural field included just 15 athletes and New York’s, in 1970, consisted of 127 runners doing a few loops through Central Park.

“This is not a race like Boston that has been around for over a hundred years,” says Curl. “They evolved into it. This is a race that for 24 years was in one jurisdiction and never really had to shuttle runners. There are complexities. How do you go from zero to 60 mph?”

LA, in a sense, was trying to replant a 24-year-old grove of maturing trees with scant time for it to take root.

There were also cost considerations to take into account. Creating a bigger race footprint doesn’t come cheap, especially when it entails crisscrossing wellheeled communities. And what would happen if one of the jurisdictions refused to open its doors? Would the entire “Stadium to the Sea” concept come tumbling down like a house of cards?

“The biggest thing was getting the course,” says Abraham. “That was the linchpin to the whole plan, and that was nine months of nonstop work.”

Fortunately all of the pieces came together.

“Tt was unanimous from all of the municipalities to allow us to come through their city—unanimous,” says Curl, who credits not only the Herculean efforts of McCourt but also those of Howard Sunkin, at that time the Dodgers’ senior vice president of public affairs.

The honeymoon blessing

Epiphany #3: We turn off Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills and find ourselves running straight down Rodeo Drive, one of the most affluent retail corridors on the planet. Today there is not a freshly minted Rolls Royce, Maybach, or Lamborghini in sight, but what I do see completely takes my breath away. Throngs of spectators line both sides of the tony little street, and an even bigger crowd awaits straight ahead near the majestic Beverly Wilshire Hotel. And it occurs to me that the last time I remember this city of mine demonstrating this type of civic pride and support for an athletic event was way back in 1984.

For all intents and purposes, the 2010 edition of the race was a second inauguration of sorts. Race organizers had to contend with a delicate balance—how to keep the marathon’s loyalists happy while trying to completely overhaul the vibe of the race. Los Angeles is made up of so many diverse neighborhoods that