RUNNING / LONG BEACH MARATHON : Winners Were Out of Pocket, Out of Shoes

Nivaldo Filho can go home to Rio de Janeiro now with some money in his pocket, and Maria Trujillo can get a new pair of shoes.

They each were winners Sunday in the Long Beach Marathon, and the benefits for both will last longer than it took them to cover the 26 miles, 385 yards on the city’s streets.

Filho coasted in at 2 hours 18 minutes 59 seconds, 1:22 ahead of a field he seldom saw through the seaside fog and haze.

He had come from Brazil to Houston three weeks ago, blistered his feet early in its marathon and finished 16th, winning no money. He repaired to Albuquerque, living on the cheap with one of the myriad enclaves of runners working at altitude, licking his psychic wounds, healing his blisters and figuring out a way to make a little cash.

Long Beach was the answer.

He took the lead right away, used half-marathon winner Hyon Kang of Edwards, Calif., for help with an early pace because his competition was left in the mist and calmly clipped off 5:10 miles.

After Hyon took the half-marathon turn for home after the ninth mile of the long course, Filho had only the pace car’s clock to keep him company.

“There was no competition,” he said through an interpreter. “I couldn’t see anybody after half the marathon. It was humid, but it’s been humid while I was training in Albuquerque, so it didn’t bother me.”

His closest competition wasn’t close. Juan Samuel Lopez, a 28-year-old from Mexico City, had signed up for the Los Angeles Marathon on Saturday and decided to use Long Beach as a training run. He ran in a second-place pack with Juan Salvador Gonzalez, also of Mexico, and Sam Rotich, a Kenyan living in Albuquerque who twice has been a runner-up at Long Beach.

After 16 miles, the pack scattered and Rose Bowl floats pass each other in Pasadena more often than runners did on Long Beach’s Ocean Boulevard at the head of the field of 2,000 competitors.

Lopez broke away and Rotich fell back.

“I was going to catch (Filho) and take the lead about the 23rd mile,” Lopez said through an interpreter.

Not from three minutes behind, he wasn’t.

“I speeded up and came to within about 45 seconds, and then he speeded up,” Lopez said.

Filho didn’t have to speed up much. He had gotten too far in front to be caught, and he goes back to Rio on Tuesday $8,000 richer. Lopez goes back to Mexico City to prepare for the Los Angeles Marathon with a $3,000 stake.

Trujillo, from Marina, Calif., near Monterey, had been cut loose on Wednesday by Nike, her long-time sponsor, but on Saturday, her agent, Don Paul, had talked her back into the company’s support program. She rewarded Nike with a victory, in a pedestrian 2:43:23.

That was 3:36 faster than the second-place effort of Teresa Nightingale of Delta, British Columbia, who decided to run at Long Beach with husband Larry to see how their 15-week training program was working out.

Not too bad, actually. Larry Nightingale finished eighth in the men’s division.

It was the first marathon victory for Trujillo since 1991, when she won at Long Beach and Houston.

“I really didn’t expect much,” said Trujillo, who had sought only to be among the top three finishers. “I’m a little out of shape.”

Trujillo has been nursing a toe injury, which is the product, she said, of falling arches, the inevitable result of thousands of miles on the road in her 35 years.

The answer, she said, is an orthopedic shoe, and she is back with a sponsor to make them, probably in time for her to run in the World Cup marathon in Athens in April.

She was more than a minute in front by the sixth mile and kept up her pace by running with men.

“At Mile 20, I figured I would win,” she said. “Then at Mile 25, I saw the time--2:35. I won here at 2:35 (plus 50 seconds), and here I was 2:35 and had a mile to go.”

She laughed.

“Well, I haven’t won a marathon in so long that it just feels good to win.”