Runners Breeze Through New Marathon Course

The 17th Los Angeles Marathon featured a flatter course, a record number of competitors, a slew of patriotic displays and even a wedding ceremony near the 6-mile marker.

But the new course, which eliminated a grueling uphill climb through Hollywood, failed to produce the records that organizers envisioned.

More than 23,000 runners from all 50 states and more than 80 countries began the race downtown in the shadow of the future Disney Concert Hall, which will be home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The day’s athletic fete also included a 25-mile bike tour, a wheelchair race and a 5-kilometer run/walk.

Stephen Ndungu of Kenya won the 26.2-mile race, the first man to win the race in two consecutive years, with a time of 2:10:27 that easily beat other elite runners. But Ndungu’s time was nearly a minute off the record set by fellow Kenyan Simon Bor in 1999.

In the women’s race the winner, Lyubov Denisova of Russia, recorded a time of 2:28:49, which was more than two minutes off the race record. Denisova and Ndungu, who both beat their personal best performances, won $30,000 each and new Honda Accords.

Some runners said the advantages gained by the new course were erased by the higher temperatures, which topped 60 degrees at the 9:13 a.m. start and climbed past 70 as the event wore on.

“For marathoners, anything over 60 degrees is considered hot, but the course made a big difference,” said Jim O’Brien, 49, track and cross country coach at Arcadia High School.

Others, such as Denisova, said they enjoyed the heat or were not affected by it.

Race officials credited the course design with lowering the number of people who became ill after crossing the finish line. “The finishers look really strong,” said Marie Patrick, executive vice president of the L.A. Marathon. “In spite of the heat, it speaks a lot for the new course. They’re tired, but they’re not in absolutely terrible shape. People are looking to be in much better shape crossing the line than they’ve been in past years.”

Couple Get Hitched Along Route

Runners Brian Gillespie, 48, and Maureen Kennedy, 50, took a 45-minute break from their run to get married. The couple met four years ago at the L.A. Marathon at Mile Six, and they chose to get married Sunday at a rose garden near USC along the course.

They were joined at the ceremony by other marathon runners, and the group then finished the race together in just under six hours. The ceremony “took a little while and we were getting stiff, but it was worth it,” Gillespie said.

Gillespie and Kennedy planned a Mexican food dinner Sunday and a honeymoon later in the year in Big Sur, where they plan to run a marathon.

Love, it seems, was in the air.

Kenny Spellman, a carpenter from Thousand Oaks, finished the marathon and then stood on the sidelines waiting for his girlfriend, Emily Kanney, to catch up. He held up a placard saying, “Emily, finish the rest of your life with me.”

“At the time, I was really dragging, but obviously that gave me a huge, huge boost,” Kanney said. Spellman then accompanied her across the finish line, holding his sign and a bouquet of roses.

Two other couples became engaged at the race, officials said.

Thousands of spectators and family members lined the marathon route, hoping to motivate friends and relatives. Many hooted, whistled and screamed in hopes of drawing the attention of a runner, at least long enough for a quick picture.

Standing along Figueroa Street, spectator Phil Lamar of Simi Valley caught a sweatshirt hurled at him by his wife, Cynthia, running in her second marathon. “She’s worked her little heart out,” he said. “It’s been a long, long dream.”

The race’s start was delayed by nearly 30 minutes because police discovered a suspicious package on Figueroa, near Pico, about 10 to 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the wheelchair race. “We wanted to look at it well before competitors went by that site,” said Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, explaining the delay.

More than 20 miles of the 26.2-mile course were new this year because of the redesign. The course took runners to the farthest point west in its history, flirting with the border of Beverly Hills, before heading back to downtown for a finish on Hope Street north of Olympic Boulevard.

More than 300 of the participants, dubbed the Legacy Runners, had taken part in all 16 previous L.A. marathons. “After the first one, they’re all easier,” said Michael Harris, 42, of Glendale.

Racers cited different motivations for running. Four brothers said they ran in honor of their late brother, Bobby Gutierrez, 38, who died in 2000 from cancer. Gutierrez died two months after he ran his last L.A. Marathon. “He just loved to run marathons,” brother George Gutierrez said. “He was the guy to beat all the time.”

While personal pride and dedication drove many runners, others were pushed along this year by a sense of patriotic duty. In a post-Sept. 11 gesture, runners decked out in their red, white and blue, some waving giant flags or bearing smaller versions flying from baseball caps and strollers.

Five-year-old Jaryd Dorsey, clutching his father Earl’s hand, walked the 19th mile in honor of his mother, Dora Menchaca, a 45-year-old Amgen Inc. researcher from Santa Monica who was killed in the Sept. 11 crash of Flight 77. Menchaca had run in the marathon for the previous three years.

“She wanted to do it again,” said Denise Menchaca, Dora’s sister-in-law, who handed out Gatorade on the sidelines with her children. “But she never got the chance.

“It just seems like that [nostalgic] feeling is in the air this year,” Menchaca said. “Everyone seems to be running for something or someone.”

Firefighter Draws Strength From Tragedy

New York firefighter Dan Rowan completed the 25-mile bike course and then ran the marathon. Rowan said he began to feel leg cramps after a bathroom break late in the marathon. “I was motivated at that point by thinking about all of the guys we lost. That got me through it.”

But there were those simply there in the name of fun, like the three Elvis look-alikes pushing their way down Mile 20 along 6th and Fairfax. Randy Thiele, 45, Jeff Padilla, 52, and Rob McNair, 47, all wore Elvis Presley garb, complete with large black pompadours, gold chains and white glittery jumpsuits.

They took turns pushing a stroller with a picture of the King on the front and a radio blaring his greatest hits inside. “We’re here for the slower runners, to keep up their motivation,” said Thiele, well on his way toward finishing his 12th L.A. Marathon. He’s done it as Elvis every year.