Crowds Cheer 4,000 in First O.C. Marathon

Well before sunrise in a chilly parking garage, Wayne Mitchell sat folded in the front seat of his Porsche, eyes closed, fighting a nervous stomach and thoughts of the 26-mile run ahead.

Sunday’s inaugural Goodyear Orange County Marathon would be the 36-year-old United Parcel Service driver’s 14th such test of endurance, but it never gets any easier.

Hours later and heralded by bursts of Marine cannon fire, Mitchell was launched along with 4,000 other runners, skaters and wheelchair racers from the starting blocks outside Anaheim Stadium and into the streets of Orange County.

Through six cities, from neighborhoods to business parks, thousands of spectators lined the route to welcome the county’s newest sporting event.

In the end, runners were hard-pressed to keep pace with Marcelino Crisanto of Mexico City and Minnesota’s Janis Klecker, both of whom battled a warm midmorning sun and an uphill climb to the finish line to claim their victories and the keys to new BMW automobiles.

With temperatures in the mid-70s, Crisanto finished with a time of 2 hours, 15 minutes and 58 seconds, while Klecker posted a 2:35:09 time.

Run on the same day as the New York Marathon, the Orange County race is envisioned by local promoters as an annual celebration of athletic achievement that will soon take its place with the world-class marathon events in Boston, Los Angeles and New York.

“This is cause for a great deal of Orange County pride,” race spokesman Jack Gerken said even before racers began assembling at the starting line. “It is a total community event; that’s why it’ll work.”

Though hampered somewhat by warm sunshine, the winners and others praised the flat race course and were thankful to those fans who hung welcome signs from traffic signals or shouted words of encouragement as the participants passed.

“This was an excellent course,” said Crisanto who had to come from behind and did not take the lead until Mile 24. “It is an important race in my career. I hope I can come back.”

From Anaheim, the race route wound its way south to Orange, past Civic Center Plaza in Santa Ana, through Costa Mesa and partially around the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station before finishing at the balloon-festooned Bren Events Center on the UC Irvine campus. Total prize money was $42,000 in addition to the two BMWs worth $26,000 each.

At Flower and Central streets in Santa Ana, Jim and Sandy Neal brought their lawn chairs to the sidewalk for a better glimpse of the race, all the while sipping coffee and picking through the Sunday newspaper.

“It’s not very often a race comes right by your front door,” Sandy Neal said. “It’s not too often you can run through the streets of your own neighborhood. A lot of times, the traffic is so bad you cannot drive through it.”

Neal’s husband, however, was concerned with the temporary closure of some city streets to allow the runners through.

Even so, Sunday morning traffic was light, and there were few backups or other problems as hundreds of officers, representing more than a half-dozen law enforcement agencies, were out on foot, horseback and in patrol cars.

“The people seem to be really cooperative,” said Kelly Herrin, a member of the Orange County Search and Rescue team, who was helping direct traffic. “It’s inconvenient. It’s got to be for . . . residents who live around here. But everyone’s really understanding.”

Argie Alcaraz, 21, said she only learned Sunday that the route would take runners past her home at Flower and Segerstrom streets, but she came out and cheered just the same.

“It’s just for support,” she said.

About 45 students from Willard Intermediate School in Santa Ana manned the water station at the 8-mile mark, arriving at 6:30 a.m. to catch the wheelchair racers and skaters. Two hours later, the students were still wired and waiting with refreshments when the first runners passed by.

Erin Berkery, a sixth-grader, was among those working the one-block stretch.

“I had water on my head and water in my shoes,” the 10-year-old said as the last of the runners left her station.

Most race fans tended to gather near the mile markers and aid stations along the route, and probably the most vocal, short of the finish line crowd, were those outside Saddleback High School at Mile 12.

There, a marching band belted out some brassy victory music and cheerleaders celebrated along the sidewalk. At one point the band changed the pace, causing one exasperated runner to quip, “I think they’re playing taps.”

Although some race leaders seemed oblivious to the cheers and shouts, there was plenty to laugh about along the way.

One woman, who appeared to have strayed from a weekend Halloween party, prowled the starting line area dressed as a pumpkin, while a competitor in the marathon skate apparently couldn’t stand to be too far from his mobile telephone. He had it strapped to the top of his helmet.

The skaters seemed to include some of the most animated of the competitors. Sharing the same Anaheim parking garage with Mitchell, Tustin’s Mark Sutcliff and his two buddies had a John Cougar Mellencamp song cranked on the truck stereo, guzzled black coffee and laced up new in-line roller skates for their first-ever marathon.

“We’ve been training for three weeks for today,” said Sutcliff, a surgical technician operating on two hours sleep. “We feel like we are kind of special today. For us, this is awesome.”

For most, if not all, nothing looked more awesome than the finish line, a giant archway made of orange and green balloons. Along the final yards, spectators watched from the street side and from a crowded crosswalk above Campus Drive.

“Compared to L.A. (Marathon), this is heaven,” said a 44-year-old man participating in his 101st marathon. He declined to be identified because of his affiliation with the Los Angeles race. “This is much, much nicer.”

For others, the lack of shade took its toll.

“I really started feeling it at 18 miles,” said Lorraine Gersitz, 37, of Fullerton, who finished in 3 hours and 30 minutes. “It could have been a little shadier. But it’s a nice race. Lots of people came out and shouted out their towns. It helped to know where we were.”