It’s been said that the Los Angeles Marathon should be nobody’s first marathon.  From the rather hilly course to the unpredictable winter weather, folks who run the LA Marathon as their first tend to make it their last.

Yesterday, I learned firsthand the brutality that is the Los Angeles Marathon.  Although I’ve lived in Southern California most of my life and for my entire running career, I’d never run the LA Marathon.  It’s usually held in March, a crazy busy time at work.  So when the US Track & Field Association chose LA as the site of the Olympic trials and a date of February 13, the LA Marathon advanced the date of the open race to February 14^th.  I saw this as my one and maybe only opportunity to run the LA Marathon.

Training

After blowing up big in Santa Rosa trying to chase down Oprah Winfrey’s 1994 MCM marathon time, I started training for LA in early October.  I told myself that I would catch Oprah and run the LA marathon faster than 4:29:20.

Straight away, I made some changes to my training plan.  I dumped Pete Pfitzinger in favor of Hal Higdon’s Advanced I training plan.  While the mileage was about the same between the plans, I seemed to be better adapted to the lower daily mileage and six day a week training plan Higdon offers.  I found over the 18 weeks of the training plan that if schedule or circumstance called for two rest days, it was relatively easy to double up one day and get the miles in.

Also I slowed down my training pace.  In mid October I had the opportunity to run as a pacer.  I ran a 10K race at an 11:00 minute mile pace.  This pace is much slower than my 10k race pace.  I found that after running 6.2 miles at an 11:00 mm pace, I felt tired.  I felt like I got a good workout in.  I realized that there may be some truth to slowing the training runs down.

Finally, I unlocked the mysteries of and ran the training plan.  Higdon’s training plan called for 800 meter repeats, or run really hard for 800 meters and then back down for 800 meters.  I don’t have access to a track, so I never bothered to do speed work.  Early in training, I realized that 800 meters is roughly ½ a mile.  The distance between the traffic lights in my home town is ½ a mile.  A light went off in my head, and I started to do the speed work Mr. Higdon (and Mr. Pfitzinger) called for.  I also found a ½ mile hill on Jamboree Road and did hill repeats there.

The Course & Weather or Why the LA Marathon Sucks

There’s a special level of hell reserved for the designer of this course.  The old LA Marathon Course began and ended at the Coliseum. It was flat as a pancake and ran through some not very nice part of the City of Angels.  No landmarks.  Just gang tag.  The current course runs “From the Stadium to the Sea”.  It was designed to run through the parts of LA that it is best known for.  It starts at Dodger Stadium, and runs through DTLA, Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, Wilshire Boulevard, Rodeo Drive, San Vicente Boulevard before finishing on Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica.  The problem with this course is that there isn’t a whole lot of flat ground.  The course hugs the foothills that mark the northern terminus of the LA basin.  It all up or down from the stadium to the sea.

The other thing that makes the LA Marathon miserable is the weather.  Last year, the weather was brutally hot.  I was hoping that between the date change to February and El Nino, I would be spared the sizzlefest that is de rigueur for the LA Marathon.  Nope.  With no cloud cover, the temperature rose from the high 50’s to the low 80’s quite quickly.  At least the course runs west.  The rising sun will be at my back.

Race Day

Race Day started with a 2:30 am wake up and a 3:00 am ride with Kevin and Nora Mullen and Houssain Jahanian from A Snail’s Pace Running Club to a parking structure in Santa Monica near the courthouse and a few blocks from the finish line.  There I boarded a city bus that took me and 21,000 of my best friends out to Dodger Stadium.  We assembled in our assigned corrals in the parking lot.  Joking about the traffic, one of my fellow corral mates quipped, “Running was the fastest way back to Santa Monica.”

The First Five Miles

Dodger Stadium in at the bottom of Chavez Ravine.  At 7:00 am, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti sounded the horn and we took off running.  We start by running up the hill, out of the ravine and down through Chinatown, Little Tokyo and into Downtown LA.  I caught up to Nora Mullen here.  We chatted for a bit.  Passing the mile 4 marker, I ran up Bunker Hill to the beat of a Japanese drum corps.

Mile 1 – 9:54

Mile 2 – 9:29

Mile 3 – 10:23

Mile 4 – 10:15

Mile 5 – 10:11

Miles Six through Ten

At the top of the hill and out of the shade of the tall buildings, I caught my first glimpse of the Hollywood sign.  I also caught up to Starr, the Cliff 4:30 Pacer.  She started way ahead of me in the corrals.  As I approached Starr, I realized that I might be going out too fast.  I decided to fall in behind her and run with the pack.  With a goal of beating Oprah’s 4:29:20 marathon PR, I knew that if I hung with Starr, I would beat Oprah.

As I headed up Sunset Boulevard, I past Hyperion Boulevard, the street the Disney Brothers would set up their animation studio in 1923.  We head through Silver Lake, Little Armenia, and Thai Town.  Starr was quite talkative.  While this pace still felt easy, I’m not sure I could have kept my mouth moving as much as she did.  We took a brief walk break in the water stops which thankfully were set up every mile.  Because of the heat, I drank both the water and the Gatorade.

Mile 6 – 10:18

Mile 7 – 10:02

Mile 8 – 10:08

Mile 9 – 10:13

Mile 10 – 10:33

Miles Eleven through Fifteen

Mile 11 turned onto Hollywood Boulevard and though the tall buildings that make up the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  With the El Capitan Theater on the left and the TCL Chinese Theater and Captiol Records Building on the right, the shade and crowd support was amazing through here.  From here we jogged back to Sunset Boulevard down the hill into West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip.

In Hollywood, I also ran into Cindy Carlson from my running club.  She was wearing cat ears and raised money for kitten rescue.  Hanging near but not in the pace group, we chatted about the race, the experience.  We were glad that Monday was a holiday.

Mile 11 – 9:58

Mile 12 – 10:12

Mile 13 – 10:19

Mile 14 – 10:13

Mile 15 – 9:52

Mile Sixteen through Twenty

We left West Hollywood for Beverly Hills.  We ran past the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and Rodeo Drive, and onto Santa Monica Boulevard.  Toward the end of mile 16, I began to feel dizzy.  I hit a port-a-potty in hopes that it would relieve the stress and dizziness.  With the toilet stop, I lose both Cindy and Star but a return to level headiness.  Mile 17 was brought to us by Air France.  I get that shoe companies like Sketchers and sports food companies like Clif sponsors a race. I’m not quite sure why Air France is a sponsor.  I guess they see value for money here.

While I’m reasonably familiar with DTLA, Dodger Stadium, and Hollywood, I’m becoming somewhat disoriented because don’t know my way around Beverly Hills or any of the cities on the rest of this route.  At Mile 19, I see the 405 freeway off in the distance.  Santa Monica is on the other side of the freeway and the finish line is in Santa Monica.  I’m almost done!

Mile 16 – 10:08

Mile 17 – 11:24 (toilet!)

Mile 18 – 10:15

Mile 19 – 10:29

Mile 20 – 10:42

Mile Twenty-One to the Finish

When I reach the 405 freeway, my relief turned to rage as shortly before crossing under the 405 the course turned right and headed towards UCLA.  Loping around the VA hospital, I head onto San Vicente Boulevard through Brentwood.  I’m done.  I’m so done.  I’m wracked in pain from the waist down.  Mentally, I’ve descended into the FML zone. Marathons are stupid.  Half Marathons are wonderful.  Oprah is stupid.  Why am I here?  I just want this to be over.  I’m never running another marathon ever again.

Passing mile 23, I’m greeted by my running club’s cheer section.  Monet runs out onto the course, puts an ice cold towel around my neck and a cup of cold water in my hand.  Joy offers me a doughnut.  (The doughnut is a running gag between us) I decline the doughnut, drink the water, dump the towel and stagger on down the road.

As I head down San Vicente, I notice that the numbers on the cross streets are descending.  The road is also descending.  The last two miles of the marathon are downhill.  Betting that the first street is Ocean Boulevard and the Finish Line, I start counting down the streets.  Also the temperature drops by a good 10 degrees as the sun is obscured by a marine layer and coastal fog.

Turning onto Ocean Boulevard, I see the Finish Line Arch over the heads of my fellow runners.  This wretchedness is almost over.  The road is lined with people cheering.  Running towards the arch, it disappears behind the runners, and then reappears at mile 26.  With a shout out from race announcer Rudy Novotny, four hours and thirty-seven minutes after leaving Dodger Stadium, I cross the finish line. I’m done.

Mile 21 – 11:08

Mile 22 – 10:59

Mile 23 – 12:19

Mile 24 – 11:51

Mile 25 – 11:45

Mile 26 – 10:50

Finish – 4:37:58 – a 17:38 improvement on my prior marathon personal best time and only 8:38 slower than Oprah.

After the Race

I wind my way through the finishers chute where along with the usual finish line stuff (medal, water, banana, etc.) I’m handed both a cold towel and a Mylar sheet.  After claiming my checked bag, I realize that I have a problem.  I have no idea where we parked the car.

A few minutes later, I remembered that we parked were next to the courthouse.  I pulled out my phone, opened Google maps, and looked for the courthouse on the map.  With tens of thousands of people in the finish line area, each of which had a cell phone in their pocket, it did not take me long to figure out that Google maps wouldn’t work.  The cell tower was overloaded.

After a few minutes I realized that a police officer would know where the courthouse was.  There were a lot of cops in the finish line area , but it took me a while to find one from Santa Monica PD.  I found one, got directions to the courthouse, and found the car with a napping Kevin “Another Marathon, Another BQ” Mullen and a bottle of Coke waiting for me.  Kevin and I hung out waiting for Nora and Hossein to finish and find their way to the car.

Lessons from the LA Marathon

1. Oprah’s still pretty fast;
2. Hal Higdon and I are now best friends;
3. Keep on training, adding core strength to the training plan; and
4. I’m never running the Los Angeles Marathon ever again.

You actually held it together quite nicely given the conditions. If you can ever find decent weather and a halfway decent course, you'll smoke Oprah. In fact, if I were you, I would set my sights on the celebrity who is at or around 4:15, and make that my goal.

As an aside (after seeing your pic), I have never drank a Coke (or any pop for that matter) after a race.

The Coke at the finish line became a tradition. At my first marathon, my wife snuck one out of the VIP tent when I finished.  Coke never tasted so good.  I used to drink four or five cans of Coke a day.  I also used to be morbidly obese.  Now I only one when I have a marathon finishers medal around my neck.

As to a better weather and flatter marathon, I'm headed back to Santa Rosa in August.  It's very flat and has shockingly good running weather for August.  It produces lots of BQs.

Congrats on the new PR!

And I am never running the LA Marathon again and my weather was wonderful.

Loved the RR!

Marathons are stupid.  Half Marathons are wonderful.  Oprah is stupid.  Why am I here?  I just want this to be over.  I’m never running another marathon ever again.

Been there!

Congrats on the PR.

Congratulations on the PR!  One day you will catch Oprah.

I'm smarter than you, I decided to DNS this one when they announced the forecast.  I did get the $175 t-shirt.  A friend (who looks nothing like me) took my expired driver's license to the expo and passed as me at packet pickup.

That sounds darn brutal!  Congrats on your marathon and your determination!