L.A. Marathon Gives Students Leg Up on Life
When 17-year-old Norma Puentes steps to the starting line this morning for the Los Angeles Marathon, it will be with fierce determination.
A junior at John H. Frances Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, she intends to finish all 26 miles and 385 yards--to prove to herself and her family that she is someone.
“No one in my family has ever done anything special,” Puentes said while standing recently near the high school track before a training run.
“No one in my generation has even graduated from high school. I want to do this for pride and to show my family we can do something,” Puentes said.
Puentes will be among 14 teenagers from Poly High running today, part of a 1,200-member group dubbed Students Run L.A. who have trained for months on their own time, running after school and on weekends.
By and large, the teenagers in Students Run L.A. hail from low-income families and troubled neighborhoods. Many are immigrants; most are Latino. The 14 Poly High students are native Spanish speakers.
As the months--and the miles--have ticked off, they have gained confidence in their physical abilities. “Lost 15 to 20 pounds,” Puentes said with a smile.
Those who stick with the program--which begins with walking and easy runs in the fall, then ratchets up to six- and 18-mile training runs--stay in school, stay out of gangs and stay away from drugs, according to Students Run L.A. officials.
“My parents know my time is well spent,” said Victoria Galicia, a 17-year-old Poly High sophomore. “They feel good I’m avoiding things such as drugs.”
Most significant, they learn--many for the first time--that it’s OK to have real hope for the future. They learn they can dream big dreams--and that they can make them come true.
One of every 20 runners in today’s race will wear the distinctive Students Run L.A. pink cap. Almost all will finish; 96% did so in 1995, 98% in 1996, 97% in 1997.
Last year, according to officials, 97.5% of Students Run L.A. teenagers earned their diplomas; 69% went on to college or technical school.
“If I do this, I can do anything else I want,” said Omar Ojeda, 16, a Poly High junior. “I want to have a career, be a person with a future, be something. When I started to run, I started to see I could accomplish anything.”
Puentes said: “I want to go to UCLA, study computers.”
Students Run L.A. operates out of about 85 middle and high schools throughout Southern California, primarily in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The program began informally in the late 1980s, launched by Harry Shabazian, a teacher at a Boyle Heights continuation school, and a handful of his students.
It has grown into something of an institution, with a $500,000 annual budget, a structured week-by-week training program and a free pair of running shoes for the students who stick with it.
“We don’t call it a human relations program, but that’s what this is,” said Marsha Charney, executive director of Students Run L.A. She added: “I shouldn’t say this, but we’ve never had a fight and this is our ninth marathon.”
A few times a week during the school year, students run with their school groups under the direction of volunteer teachers and leaders--at Poly High, a group that includes biology teacher Jose Vela, math teacher Hardip Singh, track coach Sergio Lopez, alumnus Mario Rivera and Jose Moran, a school custodian.
Moran, 36, will be running today in his 10th L.A. Marathon. “My wife told me 10 years ago, she said, ‘You’ll never do it.’ To prove it to her, I did it,” he said. “I got hooked.”
“The kids love him,” Vela said. “He’s not your basic custodian.”
Also on board is assistant principal Heather Daims. She’ll be running her first marathon.
“If I was going to do all this work, get the kids involved, get the staff involved, I needed to be out there too,” she said. “This needed to be not just lip service.”
Daims said with pride that she has lost 47 pounds while training. A personal bonus amid the real focus: “My thought is that all our kids are at risk, and any time you can teach kids to dream big, to support them in realizing a big accomplishment, it’s a great thing.”
No matter what happens today, Vela added, the long training runs have served to bond students and staff.
“We’ve gone through a lot of pain together, the pain of running. Early on, one of my kids saw I wasn’t going to accept anything less from him than I would from myself--he saw me go through all that pain too.
“Now he’s just really able to give me all his effort. He’s into wanting to learn. This is really a great thing.”
That student, Luis Ramirez, 16, a sophomore, said he has spent the last few weeks imagining the feelings he will have when he crosses the finish line.
“I’m going to reach a goal,” he said with a big smile. “A goal I set for myself. To me, that’s something big.”
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By the Numbers
35,000 finisher’s medals for runners and bikers
1000 eight-foot tables
50 computer terminals
68,000 runners’ and officials’ T-shirts
6,700 yards of barricade tape
185,000 safety pins
28 water stations
8,200 credentials for staff, volunteers and media
4,000 balloons
40,000 “No Parking” signs
500 banners along the course
1 major field hospital
78,000 people who attend the Marathon Expo
250 stretchers
8.5 tons of ice
4,500 water station volunteers
1.5 million paper cups
16,000 Mylar blankets
2,500 cups of coffee
300 tubes of K Y jelly
60 cellular phones
100,000 posters
65 vans to transport runners
1 million spectators
22,050 feet of rope
470 portable toilets
2,500 trash cans
50,000 goodie bags with over 70 items
3,500 chairs
6,000 course marshals
50,000 gallons of water
450 medical volunteers
9,500 gallons of isotomic beverage
250 signs at the finish
15,000 race day volunteers
350 volunteer ham radio operators
11 medical units
218 police
300 doctors and nurses
1,200 rakes to clean paper cups at water stations
30 ambulances
332 national / international race directors
20,000 bananas
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Street Closures
All roads on the L.A. Marathon route will be closed beginning at 5 a.m. today and will reopen on a staggered schedule.