They’re a Little Hot About the Marathon

The top personnel at the Los Angeles Marathon say a change in course will bring in faster times and more elite runners. This may help a little, but being a middle-of-the-pack marathoner, the real answer, Mr. Burke, is to please, please, please change the start time to an earlier hour!

The weather for Sunday’s race was ridiculously hot. It may not be a good business decision, but an earlier start will result in faster times.

Jon Umeda

Monterey Park

*

As a runner and finisher of the first 14 Los Angeles Marathons and as a volunteer in the last two, I always taped the race so that I could see it when I got home. For 16 years, Channel 13 did a very good job in televising the race so that it included all 20,000 runners as well as the elite runners. I was concerned when I found out that Channel 9 was taking over the coverage of the marathon, and was more concerned when I heard that they were only doing three hours of coverage. Leaving the air at 11:30 a.m. will leave most of the runners still fighting their way down the course.

When I watched this year’s coverage of the race on Sunday night, I was really disappointed. Not only did they not explain why the race was delayed for 28 minutes, they also ignored most of the 22,000-plus runners. After the start of the race, they never went back to “the pack” to see how the warm temperature was affecting them.

They also ignored all of the great entertainment centers along the route and the cultural points of interest. In fact, they seemed to ignore every aspect of the race except the leaders and their stories.

Please, KCAL, look at the tapes of the previous L.A. marathons and follow their example of how a marathon should be televised. Give back the race to the people.

Bill Deom

San Dimas