A Run for the Money : Business: From energy bars to shoes to New Age music, marketers at the Quality of Life Expo take aim at the thousands of marathon runners.

They will not be checking out the duck sausage pizza at Spago, the martinis at the Monkey Bar, the all-night party scene at Roxbury.

They have descended on Los Angeles bearing running shoes, discipline, and--sometimes--their own food.

“I bring what I need with me; I’m a vegetarian,” says 39-year-old computer programmer Randy Caldwell, who’s traveling with fig bars and high-carbohydrate energy snacks that are all the rage with athletes. And he has plenty of practice deflecting the temptations of sinful cities: He lives in Las Vegas.

Caldwell and thousands of like-minded souls are not your typical weekend-in-L.A. tourists. They are among the 16,000 registered runners who will line up at the start of the ninth annual L.A. Marathon on Sunday. They come from every state, and from several foreign countries.

The only thrill Caldwell and his fellow athletes seek is a smog-free Sunday to run 26.2 miles. That and a recommendation for a good Italian restaurant--the food of choice is pasta. But Caldwell may get his carbohydrates at his aunt’s house in Garden Grove. “She’s prepared for me,” he said with a chuckle.

The runners’ ascetic bent is not lost on the marketers cramming the north hall of the Convention Center. There, at an event billed as the Quality of Life Expo, runners could register for the marathon then traipse from booth to booth, poring over everything from shoes and T-shirts to safety food graters and New Age music cassettes.

On Friday, a vendor a block away was grilling up jumbo hot dogs wrapped in bacon, but that presented no temptations for this crowd. At the expo, runners could happily eat their way from Mrs. T’s pierogies (1 gram of fat and 60 calories each) through caramel rice cakes, low-fat cookies and virtually every energy bar on the market.

“It’s like a healthy party,” said Les Martisko, who flew in from Minneapolis and planned to run the marathon with his wife, Linda, who lives in Newport Beach. (They have a commuter marriage.)

Nobody seemed to be feeling deprived.

“Are you kidding? We’re happy to be out of the snow,” said Jane Laub, a record company accountant in Minneapolis who flew in with her husband, Mark, and Martisko, to run the marathon. They were all eating their way through the food venues of the convention.

Weather was a welcome diversion for others too. “I trained in the snow and I’m going to run in the sun,” said Dianne Glasson of Lodi, N.J. “Yes, ma’am, I ran 20 miles in a blizzard.”

Runners are big on mental toughness. L.A. is easy to disdain. “It’s an easy town not to party in--it’s too big and disgusting,” said Robert Chestnut from Santa Cruz, who plans to run the marathon but on Friday afternoon was hawking Skinny Chips at a booth (the job was paying his way to the marathon.)

Others admitted to a bit of temptation. “It’s hard for me to come early,” said Glasson, who is staying with friends in Pasadena. “My friends are going out tonight and I’m staying home tonight. I’m going to bed by 8 p.m.”

But as soon as she crosses that finish line, she expects her husband, Chris, and 4-year-old son, Patrick, to greet her appropriately. “As soon as I’m done,” she said, “my husband will be waiting for me with my carbo-drink and a beer.”

And even Caldwell, Mr. Vegetarian, admits he will capitulate to a post-race weakness.

“I think I’ll have lots of Mexican food--with cheese and sour cream.”

* MARATHON: A look at the 26.2-mile course for the runners, C1. Map, C6