Roadworthy Trio : L.A. Matathon: A transplanted Finn, Camarillo chemist and a wheelchair racer from West Hills took their passion to the streets of the city and turned in some creditable performances.
Luggage in hand, Jussi Hamalainen of Agoura Hills runs 12 miles to a bus stop in Woodland Hills because:
a) He wants to break in his new Nikes.
b) A large animal is chasing him.
c) It’s faster than driving on the freeway.
d) The airport shuttle is cheaper in Woodland Hills.
The answer is d. Hamalainen would have to spend an additional $4 to take the shuttle from Agoura, which seems to make him an extremist when it comes to saving a buck. But while Hamalainen has to be careful about money, he’s really only extreme about his running. A 12-mile jaunt hardly makes him break a sweat, much to the relief of his fellow shuttle passengers.
Hamalainen, 43, is a professional running extremist. A transplanted Finn who moved here 2 1/2 years ago for the sole purpose of running under sunny skies, he runs 100 miles a week, enters ultra-marathons (50- and 100-mile road races) and often does a marathon before breakfast.
“Jussi (pronounced U-C) enters 10Ks just for fun,” says Thom Bancroft, who’s letting Hamalainen live in a trailer behind his house. “He’ll run the race and then run home with the trophy.”
Hamalainen ran the recent Los Angeles Marathon in 2 hours 32 minutes 36 seconds--roughly four minutes off his personal best--and finished 52nd. “The marathon is really a short race for him,” Bancroft says.
Rain and cool weather at the L. A. Marathon reminded Hamalainen of Finland in the spring, and the snow on distant mountains reminded him of the Finnish winter, which was the reason he left the country.
“I like it here,” he says in halting English. “It’s no cold.”
Hamalainen was introduced to Bancroft by Bancroft’s daughter, who had met Hamalainen through a Finnish-born track coach at Cal Lutheran. Living on a small sponsorship from a Finnish furniture store in Beverly Hills, Hamalainen hangs out with other runners and socializes at a Finnish community center in North Hollywood.
While Hamalainen suffered no side effects from the L. A. Marathon, Laura Burns of Camarillo was a tad creaky in the knees the day after the race. And no wonder: She has undergone five knee operations for injuries sustained playing volleyball.
“My knees were pretty sore,” says Burns, who finished 33rd among women with a time of 3:05:42.
Maybe Burns’ problem was playing volleyball so far from a beach--at the University of Idaho. She didn’t take up running until after college, about four years ago. This was her third L. A. Marathon and her best finish. A year ago, she staggered in at 3:42 with aching feet caused by tight shoes.
This year, she tried a prerace diet recommended in a book her brother gave her. “But I didn’t feel any difference as far as energy,” she says. In fact, she blamed the diet for causing her to bottom out at 18 miles when she was on a 2:52 pace.
“But I was really encouraged with my finish this year,” says Burns, a 26-year-old chemist. “After the race I remember saying to myself, ‘Gosh, I should take running more seriously.’ So now I’m doing the Big Sur Marathon next month.”
Burns says she would run “twice a day” if she wasn’t such a workaholic. “I have to force myself to get out of the office and run. But I have to do it. I get pretty wound up at work and running is the only thing I can find that relaxes me.”
To avoid strain on her knees, Burns trains in the dirt fields behind her house with Kali, her 11-year-old Lab mix.
While runners usually have aching legs after the marathon, wheelchair competitor Don Caron of West Hills felt sore in the upper body. Caron rolled across the line in 2:12:08 to finish 20th in the wheelchair division.
“After the race, runners always come up to us and say how much they admire what we’ve done,” Caron says. “But we admire them. It’s a lot harder to run than to wheel.”
Caron has been in four L. A. Marathons and found the going tougher than usual this year because of the rain. “Us Californians are sort of soft and weren’t prepared for the rain,” he says. The moisture “made your hands slip on the rim” of the wheelchair. In last year’s race, Caron clocked 2:06 and was hoping for a sub-two-hour performance this year.
A spinal injury in 1963 put Caron in a wheelchair and he got into road racing during rehabilitation. Today, he works out with a regular group of wheelchair racers, usually at Griffith Park.
“The harder you work, the better you get,” says Caron, a purchasing agent for a construction company. “There’s not a lot of secrets to doing well.”