L.A. Marathon May Not Stay the Course

The Los Angeles Marathon is in a fight for its life and might soon be flattened.

Not the race itself, which is expected to attract another 20,000 runners Sunday, but the 26.2-mile course, which begins and ends downtown and takes runners on a “tour of the city by foot,” according to race President Bill Burke--past the Coliseum and through the Crenshaw District, Koreatown, the Wilshire District, Hancock Park, Hollywood and Echo Park.

If the course doesn’t yield an event-record winning time this year--and the woman in charge of recruiting elite runners to the event says it won’t--it could be significantly altered--and leveled--for the 15th running of the marathon a year from now.

Burke wants the L.A. Marathon record of 2 hours 10 minutes 19 seconds, set by Martin Mondragon of Mexico in 1988, expunged from the record book, and he might be willing to abandon the event’s philosophy of reaching as many of the city’s communities as possible to achieve it.

After winner Zebedayo Bayo of Tanzania finished last year’s race in 2:11:21, Burke brought in consultants to study the course and recommend changes that would yield faster times and, subsequently, attract better runners.

Especially troublesome is a long ascent into and through Hollywood in miles 14 through 20, with the course elevation climbing from 225 feet in mile 14 to 394 feet in mile 20.

After two months of study, however, Burke was told the course would have to be radically redesigned to make it flatter. He abandoned plans to alter it, saying he’d give it another year.

Still, the event’s co-founder says, “Everybody knows I want a sub-2:10 marathon,” which is something of a benchmark of a fast marathon.

But he won’t get it until he changes the course, says Anne Roberts, the event’s elite-athlete coordinator.

“It would give me no end of pleasure to eat my words on that because I love that race,” says Roberts, who also recruits elite runners for the New York and Lisbon marathons. “I think it brings an awful lot to the city of Los Angeles, and I think they have done a spectacular job.

“But I can’t see it [a sub-2:10 winning time], especially if the weather doesn’t cooperate. If you get a hot day, on top of that hill--forget it.”

Burke says Roberts made her position clear after last year’s race.

“After telling me what a great field we had,” he says, “she came to me ranting and raving: ‘We’ve got to change the course because I can’t keep bringing all these world-class athletes here and not give them [good] times.’ ”

Answers Roberts: “He’s overstating it, to say the least. I don’t rant and rave. . . .

“What he should have told you is that I went to him after the race with a copy of the split times and a copy of the elevation map, and I showed him where the race fell apart. It fell apart on the hill. They went from running sub-five-minute miles to running high fives. And then when they came off that hill, at the end of the race, they were back to sub-fives.”

Illustrating the difficulty of the L.A. course, Bayo ran 2 1/2 minutes faster in the New York City Marathon last November . . . and finished third, six seconds behind winner John Kagew of Kenya.

“That guy, along with 10 other athletes in last year’s field, was the real deal,” says Roberts, who has attracted another strong group to this year’s race, including four runners whose best times are faster than the event record. “He’s a major, major talent. He proved it in New York, and I thought he proved it in Los Angeles. He ran very smart and very tough.”

The course, though, was unyielding, prompting Burke’s study.

Pat Connelly, commissioner of athletes for the L.A. Marathon, suggested a course that, instead of heading north on Rossmore Avenue toward Hollywood Boulevard just past the halfway point, would continue west on Wilshire Boulevard to Fairfax Avenue.

The runners would then head north on Fairfax to Melrose Avenue, where they would head east back toward downtown.

“It would be an outstanding course,” says Connelly, who tutors about 2,000 runners as the marathon’s official coach. “We’d get up into Hollywood, where I think the city wants part of the race, but we’d avoid the long climb. Thinking only of the athletes, this would be the best course.”

A marathon, though, is as much community event as athletic endeavor, as another consultant reminded Burke last spring.

“You can’t bring the people to the marathon, so you’ve got to bring the marathon to the people,” says Allan Steinfeld, race director of the New York City Marathon. “You’ve got to design the course so it goes through your ethnic areas and your higher population areas to get the people involved and excited. . . .

“And so when Bill mentioned to me that he might want to change the course, I told him, ‘You don’t want to lose that feeling of community because the people embrace this race because they feel it’s part of them. Don’t lose the integrity of the race.’ ”

While the L.A. Marathon course has changed several times, most notably in 1996 when the start and finish were moved from the Coliseum to downtown, it has always ventured into ethnic communities in the north part of the city and included a long stretch along Hollywood Boulevard.

Though the runners want only a course that’s “easier and faster, simple as that,” says Connelly, race officials want to preserve the event’s history.

At the same time, though, they want a faster race.

“It’s a balancing act, a juggling act,” says Marie Patrick, executive vice president of the event. “Right now, we want to have the fastest course possible while also keeping the neighborhoods and the city involved in the event. But maybe after this year we’ll do something dramatically different for our 15th anniversary in 2000.”

Or maybe not.

“I’ve got to tell you, if somebody runs a sub-2:10,” says Burke, “I’m going to keep this course forever.”

* When: 8:45 a.m. Sunday

* Where: Starts on 5th and Figueroa; ends on Flower Street north of 5th Street in front of Arco Plaza

* TV: 8 a.m., Channel 13