L.A. Gets a Running Start on Its First Marathon : Tracing Route of What Planners Call a ‘Magnificent Event’

Not this year. To achieve the proper fizz, you have to allow for a certain amount of fermentation.

But next year for sure. Mark it on your calendar. Same time, next year: the World’s Biggest Block Party.

Some block! Twenty-six miles long. OK, 26 miles and 385 yards, the precise distance it took Pheidippides to hotfoot it to the capital in 490 BC to announce the Athenian army’s upset victory over Gen. Datis, the 13 1/2-point favorite in the Battle of Marathon.

Were he alive today, Pheidippides would be odds-on to drop out of next Sunday’s first Los Angeles Marathon. For one thing, he’d be far too old. For another, even if the gutty little Greek were not irretrievably sidetracked by the music and merriment, bemused by the polyglot exhortations to hang in there, unnerved by the largess of total strangers bent on christening his prow with cups of water, chances are he’d never make it past the aid station on Hollywood Boulevard, the one that will be manned, as it were, by Frederick’s of Hollywood. Athens was never like this.

A ‘Creative Community’

Neither, for that matter, was Boston, New York, Chicago, those putative centers of serious American running. This one’s pure L.A., Pheiddy-Baby, or at least it will be, when the word spreads.

“This is a very creative community,” understates Judy Stolpe, director of operations for Los Angeles Marathon Inc., which won the bid to stage the race for the city. Stolpe, whose firm runs about 80 distance events annually, chooses her words carefully. “Other cities,” she says, “are not this--um--flamboyant.

“We had one offer to carpet the entire length of Hollywood Boulevard, in red. Reluctantly, we had to turn it down. If it rains, you’d have runners all over the sidewalk.”

“Even this year, with all the kinks to be ironed out, we’re beginning to sense the makings of a fabulous event,” says Connie Byram, the marathon’s director of community relations. “At first, we had to solicit support. Now we have groups literally begging to get in, to be a part of the marathon. It’s a little overwhelming.”

A Star of the Show

Along with the runners, the volunteers and the spectators (nobody’s even trying to guess at the number), the course itself, the layout, is one of the stars of the show.

‘You Could Do Worse’

“If you wanted to take your family on a 26-mile tour of L.A.,” Stolpe says, “you could do worse than follow our route.”

You could do better, too. True enough, you’ve got downtown and Little Tokyo and the Olvera Street quarter. You’ve got Chinatown and Hollywood and Vine, and Wilshire and Hancock Park and Koreatown and Crenshaw.

On the other hand, you’ve got Skid Row, too, and long stretches of barren boulevards boasting nothing more stimulating than Burger Kings and super unleaded. You don’t have the Music Center or Griffith Park or Miracle Mile or even a sneak preview of the Valley.

And for good reason. Your tour presumably would not be overly concerned with bollixing the mid-town traffic flow for five or six hours, or splitting fire-station zones in two. Your tour would not have to accommodate about 7,500 runners, nor would it have to contend with 15 City Council members, each of whom wants a piece of the action for his district.

“Believe me,” Stolpe says of the ingeniously gerrymandered running route, “there’s a story--a long story--behind every curve. Even so, we managed to get in nine of the 15 council districts--a plurality. If we’d given in to every councilman, we’d have had a race 574 miles long.”

Initial consideration, of course, was the starting line. The Coliseum was the obvious choice, though plans to run the first and last laps inside the stadium were quickly scrapped. “Too many runners to get through the single exit,” Stolpe says, “and you don’t ask a marathon runner to walk up a set of steps to exit a stadium. Remember, there were only 123 in the Olympic marathon. . . . “

Next consideration: getting the huge pack from the Coliseum to downtown. “What you want here is a street that’s wide and straight,” says Hal Bateman, who laid out the course. “It had to be Figueroa. Aesthetically it may be a little lacking, but it’s good for the runners and it gets you where you want to go.”

Assume for the moment that you are a marathon ace from Ruritania, just arrived this morning, and Figueroa is your first impression of Los Angeles.

From the starting line in front of the University Hilton, you can see two large passenger planes in the parking lot of a large building (Aerospace Museum signs are not visible).

Up Figueroa, you pass El Rodeo Coffeeshop, Oriental Gourmet Express, Manny’s El Loco (“Best Pastrami in Town”), Del Taco, The Grinder (“Heavenly Hamburgers”), Japanese Food To Go, 2 For 1 Pizza Co., Taco Porkys and an extraordinary concrete A-frame in mauve, pink and lavender purveying something called a Fatburger. At least half of the boulevard’s other enterprises sell cars, new, used and “not sure.”

No Further Clues

Few of the buildings rise higher than a story, with the notable exceptions of 1--a four-floor factory advertising Loubella Extendables, with no further clues, 2--a sturdy old sandstone billed as Patriotic Hall, and 3--the lovely domed church of St. Vincent de Paul. (Directly across from the church, a fried-chicken emporium called POPEYES--or perhaps, in deference to Vincent, POPE YES.)

Most of the parking lots are marked “No Parking,” and two-thirds of the doors to the various commercial enterprises

bear the legend “Exit Only.”

Conclusion: Angelenos park their planes on the street; eat just about anything; attend church; drive, wear or ingest something called “extendables”; can leave their stores but not enter them, and cruise incessantly in their cars, since they don’t appear to have anywhere to live.

Welcome to Los Angeles.

“Some of the sights and signs you pass register on you,” says Jamie Harris, 34, a veteran marathoner from Los Angeles, “but mostly you just pick up the general ambiance.

“There’s a gestalt--you put it all together and get the sense of a city--but it may not be the reality. It depends on where you are in the race.

“If you’re among the leaders, you’re only aware, in the main, of the runners around you, the strategy, the tactics. If you’re like the rest of us, running in the pack, you see more.

“And if you’ve had a good race, placed well, you’ll remember the city as beautiful, fascinating, even if it’s ugly. If you’ve struggled, you can remember Shangri-La as a cesspool with water stations.”

Stations a Mile Apart

Water stations--or aid stations--will be spaced every mile along the L.A. course, each staffed by 40 volunteers dispensing water, in sponges and cups, and ERD--Electrolyte Replacement Drink.

“The water stations all have long since been spoken for,” Byram says. “Now we have a waiting list. “Hey, it’s party time: a chance to have a ball with 40 of your friends and at the same time be a part of a big citywide event.”

The rush to volunteer, says Marie Patrick, Los Angeles Marathon Inc. vice president, is a residue of the goodwill generated by the Olympics, a leftover sense of community just looking for direction. “Way back, a year ago, people would ask me, ‘Oh, is something else going to happen in L.A.? Great!’ There was a strong feeling of, ‘We need something annual to keep us together, to get us even better acquainted as a community.’ ”

From Figueroa, the course bends east and into another cosmos. For a few blocks, our Ruritanian imagines he is in New York. The sun has been eclipsed by glass-and-marble highnesses, almost all of them belonging to banks.

The mass monument to mammon is interrupted only by a huge neon sign crowning the many-splendored Rainbow Hotel, a diadem declaring that JESUS SAVES. Idly, the Ruritanian speculates on today’s interest rates.

At Main Street, a sharp left at the Greyhound terminal and into yet another world, this one grayer and grimmer. Sleazy bars, adult bookstores, all-night theaters, boarded-up storefronts display the backside of Los Angeles to all the world. (Hill Street was first choice; Spanish Broadway would have been effervescent; traffic flow had the last word.)

After four biodegradable blocks, redemption: Beyond the Union Rescue Mission, the route heads down 2nd Street past St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, alongside the splendid, sleek New Otani Hotel and into Little Tokyo, preceded by sonorous gongs and maidens in kimonos.

A tricky U-turn at Central Avenue brings the pack back up 1st Street. Toward the stately white City Hall, now, and under at least the fourth billboard warning: “I’m Going to Tell David Horowitz on You!” Seven Ruritanians instinctively check their zippers.

With the course leaving the Civic Center almost before it gets there, one wonders why the race shouldn’t have finished, instead of started, there.

Stolpe agrees, but rules out an opposite run in the interest of terrain and traffic. “We would have tied up the downtown interchanges for so long that it would’ve taken two days to untangle,” she says.

“Another consideration is the elevation. Run the other way, the first 20 miles of the course would have been uphill, another Heartbreak Hill, only longer.

“As for traffic, what with the on- and off-ramps, we’re affecting not only local but state routes. As it is, we impact 86 RTD bus routes, all of which have to be re-routed. The trick is to avoid major tie-ups and at the same time, catch the flavor of the community.”

The flavor and the smell. Even if you were blindfolded, you’d know you were in Little Tokyo, Olvera Street, Chinatown, marathoner Harris says. “Your senses become more acute as you run, especially hearing and smell. I’ll never forget the Iowa City Marathon, running past those farmhouses with their cows and hogs. . . .

“And then seeing this sign, ‘Turn Around Here,’ right in the middle of a cornfield. Not quite the same in L.A.”

In Los Angeles, there is a different rhythm to the run, a delicious juxtaposition of values--Vic Nardoni’s Bail Bonds across the street from police headquarters--as the route turns up Main Street past City Hall. On the right, in a pleasant city park, a three-booster shuttle held together by a multicolored plastic belt (we call it the Triforium); on the left, the ancient and beguiling Iglesia de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles.

Of a sudden, the community peels back to reveal its true nature: layer upon overlapping layer of ethnic, racial and religious diversity; a feast for the sharpened senses; a pulsing exemplar of fraternity. Mariachi bands at Olvera; dragon dancers at the five-mile mark on Ord and Spring. Around College and down Broadway through Chinatown, and even in the cockles of this Oriental enclave, the spice of disparity: Philippe’s French Dip; Anthony Macaroni; Queen’s Bakery, George’s Liquors and Dario’s Deli.

Right on Sunset, and the steepest rise of the route. A lung-larruping 100-foot climb leads, appropriately enough, to a mortuary. It’s just a business, like any other, but one that could serve in an extremity as a symbol, even a motto, of the L.A. experience. On the mortuary facade, the legend: Wah Wing Sang, Gutierrez and Weber.

The city rests its case.

There is a rise in the marathon course from 187 feet above sea level at the start to 420 feet at the Sunset crest. From then on, it’s all basically downhill--a “negative elevation” course, since the finish, at Figueroa and 39th, is 160 feet. Isn’t this cheating?

“Not at all,” Stolpe says. “It’s normal, a matter of logistics, of setting up a quarter-mile of equipment for the finish.”

As for right-angle turns--all those little squiggles and protuberances inserted in the route to appease the city gods--they are, theoretically, to be avoided, since they rob the runners of straightaway speed. Los Angeles has 19 turns, by sheer coincidence the same number as does the New York Marathon.

The long stretch up and down Sunset has no turns. Not much of anything else, for that matter. If the runners are not robbed of speed (wheelchair racers will hit a heady 42 m.p.h. on Sunset), they are cheated of lore.

Just as the course heads the “wrong way” on Wilshire, and the Rodeo Road off Crenshaw is about as Gucci as a pair of used combat boots, there is no “strip” on this stretch of Sunset.

Among scattered and strictly functional residences, bars, Taco Ticos and the bile-colored headquarters of Jode’s Decorating Co., there are few hints of glamour, let alone glitter. Just run, baby, and take heed of the sign at the 10-mile mark, as Sunset segues into Hollywood Boulevard: U Haul, subtitled “Adventure in Moving.”

Los Angeles has few mean streets. Just tacky ones. Like so many, this one is ultimate tack.

Subtly, though, the neighborhood is changing again. Here is Terek Russian Store, Walla’s Bakery, Odabashian’s Jewelry, Bucharest Grocery, signs in Arabic and Farsi. (Guarding it all, Uncle Sam’s Subs.)

Once more, one is conscious of the pot bubbling, melting, blending its variegated ingredients into a glorious gallimaufry called Los Angeles.

“There’s a whole Armenian section up there,” Byram marvels. “Lebanese, too, and Turks. Even Egyptians. They’ve been quiet so far--they’re not really sure what this is all about--but these are the groups I want to start reaching out to next year.

“It’s so exciting seeing the groups get involved. In the beginning, I’d call them and ask if they wouldn’t want to contribute a band, even a banner or balloon. Now they call me: ‘How about if we put some Playboy bunnies at Hollywood and Vine . . . some mimes at Pershing Square . . . Spanish dancers in East L.A. . . . Korean dancers at Olympic and Crenshaw . . .? ‘

“They want to do more than get involved; they want to create . They want to say, ‘Sure, we’re different, but we are still a part of L.A.’ I love it!”

What can you say about Hollywood Boulevard? What would you want to say?

The runners, of course, at least those back in the pack who notice these things, will be disappointed. Why should they be exempt?

There are a few landmarks, to be sure: Mann’s Chinese Theater (the halfway point, more or less); Frederick’s of Hollywood, monument to the meretricious in bright purple with pink trim; off to the right, the wild and wonderful Capitol Records building, just to round off the scene.

Playboy bunnies aside, though, who is to convince the Ruritanian that an intersection of Howard Johnson’s, the New York Pizza Express, a drugstore and a thrift and loan is the Hollywood and Vine of song and story?

The road is a parody now, a thoroughfare of wig shops, “Starburger” stands, live-nude theaters, and tattoo parlors, flanked by stars in the sidewalk that the runners will never see.

After the 15-mile mark at Martel, a glimpse of reality, even domesticity: beige residences slung low among the tall palms, places with names like Sierra Terrace and Courtney Manor. Still a little hokey, maybe, but human hokey.

A left on Fairfax (pretty houses

behind hedges), another on Sunset. Entertainment-flavored businesses now--ballet lessons, tuxedo rentals, guitar stores, pawn shops. Down a singularly undistinguished reach of Vine Street to Melrose, where Christ the King Catholic Church benignly presides over the entrance to the loveliest stretch of road along the entire route. Rossmore Avenue (nee Vine) traverses Hancock Park, a neighborhood of cool conservatism, discreet opulence, real (non-palm) trees, houses set so far back from the road that the gardeners need sextants.

One half-expects the runners to pad down Rossmore in respectful silence, only to whoop it up again on Wilshire, tossing a passing glance at the imposing Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, the smoked-salmon-colored Perino’s restaurant. Then a right on Wilton, across 8th Street (the 20-mile mark) and down Crenshaw, where the route at last parallels that of the Olympic Marathon.

“We chose 8th Street because of the Korean Community,” says Hal Bateman, the course designer. “The City Council gives indirect guidance--what they’d like to see--then you start planning. You drive the route in a car, then measure the distance on a big map, with calipers.

“Later on, The Athletics Congress (TAC) certifies it, using a bicycle with a counter on the wheel. They go over the course in the dead of night, with a police escort.

“Sure, some of the streets will be tacky, but you can’t steer 10,000 runners down Blueberry Lane. You want a good, smooth, wide piece of road, like Crenshaw.”

Blueberry Lane it’s not, but it gets the job done.

By now, the finishers are more concerned with survival than scenery, which they’re not going to get anyway, not on Crenshaw, Rodeo and Exposition.

What they’re getting, though, thanks to the marathon firm’s painstaking preparation, is a last breath of life to spur them-- goad them--to the finish.

“I’ve been to the finish in Central Park--wall-to-wall people--and cheered for hours as the runners came in,” says Patrick, the marathon firm’s veep. “It’s got to be inspiring to a runner, especially on that last stretch. They’re all yelling ‘Go!’ and you go a little more.”

“If you’ve got the bands, the entertainment, you’ve got the people,” Stolpe adds.

Patrick agrees. “The idea comes from (the marathon firm’s president) Bill Burke,” she says. “ ‘I don’t want people running with Walkmans,’ he said. ‘I want live music, 26 miles of it.’ We’ve just about got it, too.”

Runner Harris discounts the effect of music--”You’re practically past it before you hear it”--then immediately contradicts himself. “There’s a little ham in everyone,” he says, “and the people, the bands can give you a boost.

“At the end, you’re doing the ‘marathon shuffle’--defensive posture, shortened stride--and maybe the hoopla helps. Yeah, I’ve been guilty of being turned on by ‘Rocky,’ by the theme song of ‘Chariots of Fire.’ ”

“It’s looking good,” says Patrick, harried but happy a week before the race in marathon headquarters, a combination loony bin and war room.

“The whole thing just keeps growing--more runners, more volunteers, more events. I don’t know where it’ll all end.”

At the Coliseum, for now.

But wait til next year!