For Some, Streets of Downtown Spark Running Love Affair : ‘I almost think we see the city in its best light. You aren’t insulated like you are in an automobile.’

For most of its 9-to-5ers, Downtown is but a place to work.

The imposing edifices of commerce and banking, justice and government collect them in the morning and send them scurrying toward home in their cars and buses and trains in the evening. They are desk jockeys whose most strenuous daytime activity is hiking to lunch, peering straight ahead to avoid making eye contact with panhandlers.

That doesn’t describe Lisa Haller’s workday. And it doesn’t describe the feeling she has about Downtown. For her, and for dozens or perhaps even hundreds of others, the heart of the city is also a place to run.

Dedicated morning runners such as Haller describe the odd quiet of the streets before 7 a.m. and covet the chance to see the details of change, the day-by-day metamorphosis that goes unnoticed while driving by or negotiating crowded sidewalks on foot.

“What I love best is that I can literally watch what’s going on in the city,” said Haller, 37, the director of sales and marketing for the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Hope Street. One of her regular routes goes from the hotel out to the Los Angeles Convention Center and then loops back to the Los Angeles Music Center.

“I saw the Convention Center from when the land was being cleared to the opening,” she said. Now, in addition to checking out the activities at the Bonaventure and the Biltmore, she is keeping track of the makeover of the Ahmanson Theater and construction of the new Walt

Disney Concert Hall.

Other evangelists of running Downtown preach about the pleasures of seeing the city wake up.

Chris Tesari used to work in the Wells Fargo Bank building Downtown. Now he’s starting a Westside restaurant. But he still drives to the Ketchum Downtown YMCA from Marina del Rey most mornings to run with a group of regulars.

They leave the Y on Hope Street about 6 a.m. and head over to Dodger Stadium and Elysian Park, zigzagging along Temple Street, Beaudry Avenue, Sunset Boulevard and Elysian Park Avenue. The return route is usually back through Chinatown and down Broadway. Some mornings they run as many as 11 miles.

At any given time of the day, the park is probably the most popular destination because it is shady and relatively traffic-free even during the day. Also, the park’s trails and roads provide several loops of various distances, some with hills, some relatively flat.

“It’s interesting in the morning,” he said, because the denizens of the dawn get to know each other.

“There’s an Asian gentleman who waves at us and jumps up and down when we go by. There’s another man who’s in his 80s or 90s and he sweeps the sidewalk in front of a bakery on Broadway every morning. He gives us the thumbs-up and claps for us. It’s just a great feeling to start the morning to have someone do that for you.

“I almost think we see the city in its best light,” he said. “You aren’t insulated like you are in an automobile and . . . you can hear and smell the city.”

Noontime joggers face greater hazards. Bus fumes. Stop lights that turn a free-flowing jog into a frustrating series of sprints. Traffic cops ready with their ticket pads to nail jay-runners.

Jennifer Smith, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Y, said she once got stopped by a police officer who wanted to ticket her for crossing at a red light on Olympic Boulevard. She managed to talk her way out of it by saying she didn’t see it.

“When I’m running, I don’t want to stop,” she said. “That’s why, for me personally, I don’t run at lunch.”

But the most dedicated of the noontime runners exult in the curbside tumult that gives them the feeling of being in a race complete with cheering spectators every day.

One of the sheriff’s deputies who works at the Criminal Courts Building Downtown runs a 3 1/2-mile loop that reaches 5th Street and Grand Avenue at its farthest point south and includes several hills.

On some inclines a pedestrian will challenge her for a block or so. “As I’m dying going up a hill there’s always someone running in their regular clothes who always beats me,” said the deputy, who asked not to be named.

Another highlight, she said, is a homeless man who is always at the same spot, engaged in a conversation with himself. “I always mark my time when I pass him,” she said.

Another noontime jogger, an accomplished triathlete, said he doesn’t worry about being hassled, even while running through some of the grimier parts of the city.

“A guy who runs projects some confidence and people figure, ‘If they’re crazy enough to run I won’t mess around with them,’ ” he said.

Of course, not everyone is willing to brave the unpredictability of the streets, the heat and the sometimes foul air that comes of a city that is tailored to the conveniences of cars rather than to the pleasures of running.

Some run indoors, pounding out 14.5 laps per mile at the YMCA. Firefighters and some city employees take the elevator to the roof of City Hall East and jog nine laps to the mile, while enjoying a 360-degree view of Downtown from 20 stories up. Others churn away on treadmills.

But those who venture out, in the morning or at noon, find the pleasures of the city unbeatable.

Beth Sestanovich, an executive assistant who lives in Manhattan Beach and works Downtown, said she prefers to run Downtown because she beats the traffic by coming in early. But there are other reasons.

“There’s a lot of hills and it’s great for training,” the veteran marathoner said. One of the hills, on Sunset, is the steepest part of the Los Angeles Marathon.

“I’ve done it 1,000 times,” and on race day, she said, “I usually trot right up the hill where everybody is just about to die.”