For Marathoners, 26 Miles and Thousands of Reasons to Run Them

It’s one of the most rigorous, demanding sporting events created by man--it even killed Pheidippides, who ran the first 26-mile course now known as a marathon.

And so, when the 14th annual Los Angeles Marathon takes place Sunday, it will attract some of the most physically fit, toned specimens of human endurance in the region and even the world--and many of them just hope to finish.

Joining them is a unique group of participants who, some might say, have no business trying, let alone finishing, the grueling road race.

Take, for example, Sondra YeVette, 44, a beauty care specialist in Los Angeles who has only one good lung.

Or Martin Mooney, 39, a onetime athlete from Orange County who now suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He will be in a wheelchair, pushed by 26 volunteers, to raise funds to fight his fatal disease.

Or Vera Uliantzeff, 39, who has survived three bouts with cancer. A resident of West Los Angeles who was born in Santiago, Chile, Uliantzeff is running to raise money for Project Mexico, an orphanage in Tijuana.

These and dozens of other runners with a variety of physical and medical challenges will use the road race as a means to confront their limits, set an example and raise money to help others who share their afflictions.

“It’s human nature to seek out people who have conquered things,” marathon President William Burke said. “Everywhere I go, someone stops me and tells me a story of someone in their family, a friend at work who . . . uses the marathon symbolically. They say, ‘If I can do this, I can do anything.’ If you take 20,000 people in a marathon, you’ll find 20,000 different stories.”

Burke estimates that at least $1 million will be raised for charities in connection with the marathon.

The disabled won’t just be in the marathon. At the 12th mile, at Wilshire and Harvard boulevards in Koreatown, the Unification of Disabled Latin Americans in Los Angeles will be in charge of the aid station and the entertainment to cheer on the runners.

The entry of disabled competitors here, organizers hope, will also distinguish the L.A. Marathon from the two better-known road races it is always compared to--the Boston and New York City marathons.

“New York will never be L.A.,” Burke said. “L.A. will never be Boston. We’re Los Angeles. When you see the faces of our marathon, the 20,000 faces genuinely reflect the face of Los Angeles.”

Burke is quick to point out that Boston limits the size of its marathon to a third the size of L.A.’s through a qualifying time requirement. And New York attracts a large contingent of foreign competitors, which limits the number of locals who can run, he said.

After several years of capping the field of runners at about 19,000, Burke said, more than 20,000 will run Sunday. An estimated 17,000 bicyclists and an additional 100 people in wheelchairs will participate, both records for L.A.

Regardless of contestants’ abilities, it’s all about trying to finish. And there should be no mystery about that for the runners, according to Robert Girandola, an associate professor of exercise science at USC.

“Running is the best thing you can do to be healthy,” said Girandola, who has run 12 marathons. “I try to tell students it’s the one activity that you don’t need a partner. Just go out and go. That’s the appealing part of it.”

‘It Really Changed My Life’

In the case of the physically challenged runners, just getting ready for the marathon is an accomplishment.

YeVette said it took her the better part of 10 years after surgery removed most of her left lung before she was healthy enough to start running. “I did breathing exercises, yoga; I rode a bike and did weightlifting,” she said.

“When I ran and walked and finished my first marathon, it really changed my life. If you really put your heart or mind into something, you can achieve. Completing the marathon made me feel so good because it’s helping me as a person, keeping me healthy.”

Uliantzeff, who was told in 1993 that she had only a 20% chance of surviving her third bout with cancer, took up running after reading about a woman who completed the L.A. marathon despite an advanced case of breast cancer.

“It was like a lightning bolt hitting me,” she said. “It gave me courage that someone like me was running a marathon.”

Her story, including having to quit training for the 1991 L.A. Marathon when a melanoma was discovered on her leg, prompted race officials this year to give her the Patsy Choco Award, named in memory of the Southland woman who ran the marathon despite having breast cancer.

Mooney, who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease two years ago, doesn’t have to train for the race to inspire others. With slurred speech, an early symptom of the condition, he tells of a decision to embrace the disease that will eventually kill him.

“If I had to choose between my old life [before the disease] and my new life,” Mooney said, “I’d choose my current life. In my old life, I was selfish, temperamental, drank too much. I didn’t enjoy life. When I got my diagnosis, I realized I was truly alive. Most people don’t have the opportunity like I do.”

Mooney decided to enter the marathon after watching a television feature last November in which Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a nationally known advocate of doctor-assisted suicides, administered lethal drugs to end the life of a man in the advanced stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“There is always hope,” Mooney said. “In the last year and a half, many people have been serving me with their caring, time, money, prayers and kindness. The least I can do to pay them back is by doing the marathon.”

Challenges, Accomplishments

Such stories impress even hard-core runners like USC’s Girandola, who gets excited with each new convert to running.

“Running 26 miles is tough enough,” he said. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to run on an artificial leg or with one lung to cover that kind of distance. It’s a tremendous challenge and a tremendous accomplishment.”

Then there’s 53-year-old Jerry Dunn, a sometime masseur from Spearfish, S.D., who took up running to help him overcome alcoholism and drug addiction.

Dunn, who says he holds the world record for the most marathons run in one year--104 in 1993--has been training for Sunday’s event by vowing to run the L.A. Marathon course for 14 consecutive days leading up to race day.

“I never think of quitting,” he said Tuesday after completing the marathon course, some of it on sidewalks, in a little more than five hours.

“Some days are more fun than others, but I accomplish what I set out to do. I kind of represent the middle-of-the-pack runner,” said Dunn.

He’s running in L.A. to prepare for a new goal next year: He wants to break his 104-marathon record.

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The Race

The 14th annual Los Angeles Marathon is scheduled to begin at 8:45 a.m. Sunday at Figueroa and 6th streets downtown.

The course runs south on Figueroa to the Coliseum, skirting the famed stadium and the USC campus. It winds through the heart of the city, including Jefferson Park, Country Club Park, Koreatown, Hancock Park, Hollywood, Westlake and Pico-Union.

The run ends in downtown.

The bike competition, officially dubbed the Acura L.A. Bike Tour, starts at 6 a.m. at Figueroa and Exposition Boulevard and finishes in nearby Exposition Park. The bike course differs from that of the marathon, bypassing Koreatown, the Mid-Wilshire area and downtown.

The wheelchair portion of the marathon is to begin at 8:20 a.m., 25 minutes before the scheduled start for the runners.

A 5-kilometer race also is planned, set to begin at 9:30 a.m. at the Los Angeles Convention Center at Figueroa and 12th Street.

Registration forms for Sunday’s races can be obtained at a three-day expo that begins today at the Convention Center.

There will be no registration, except for the 5K, on Sunday.

A map of the marathon course will be published in the Saturday and Sunday editions of The Times.