Marathon Reverses Tradition

After 10 years of starting and finishing at the Coliseum, the Los Angeles Marathon goes downtown today, starting its 11th annual race at Eighth and Figueroa streets and finishing it at the Los Angeles Central Library at Fifth and Flower.

And if everything seems a little confused to spectators along the way, it may be because of the course. It’s reversed, and people such as Ulysses Griggs, captain of the water station at Mile 24 for all 10 races and used to a long day, finds himself at Mile 5 with time on his hands after the field passes.

“I’ve never been able to see the entertainment, and so I think I can this year,” Griggs said.

When Bill Burke, the race’s president, decided to move the start and finish lines and reverse the course and smooth it out in the interests of a quicker race, he figured it was just a matter of fans panning their gazes from left to right after 10 years of right to left.

Not so. “Every time I go down the hall in the office, the people in operations call me names,” he said.

The rough edges of the transition appear to be smoothed now, and the field, 19,000, will begin at 8:45 a.m., 10 minutes after the wheelchair competition begins. The marathon will have a group of foreign elite runners at the front, some of them eyeing the race record, 2 hours 10 minutes 19 seconds, and the $25,000 bonus for breaking it, as well as the $15,000 and a car for winning the race.

Others, particularly the Mexican women’s team and the teams from Ukraine and Belarus, are concentrating on running for times to make their countries’ Olympic teams.