Students Make Run at Marathon

The countdown has started for Lidia Leung.

In 26 days the junior at Los Angeles Bravo Medical will run in the Los Angeles Marathon for the third consecutive year as part of the Los Angeles Unified School District-sponsored Students Run L.A. program.

Leung, who had never run a long-distance race before entering high school, joined the program as a freshman.

“I had always watched marathons on television when I was younger and thought, ‘I could never do that,’ ” Leung said. “But I’ve been able to because of SRLA.”

The program, in its 15th year, is the brainchild of educators Harry Shabazian, Eric Spears and Paul Trapani.

Shabazian, a teacher at Boyle Heights Continuation High, challenged six of his students to train for and run in the 1988 L.A. Marathon with him. He did it again the next year, when Spears and Trapani ran the marathon with a handful of their students from Reseda Aliso Continuation High.

“It was a way for us to show kids how to set goals and how to take steps toward reaching those goals,” said Spears, now the principal of Community Day Schools of Los Angeles Unified. “We wanted to show them that they could do something, no matter how impossible it seemed, if they put their minds to it.”

Participants, who number about 2,500 this year, take part in a supervised, six-month training program.

Leung started running for Bravo’s track and cross-country teams after completing her first marathon.

“Before I joined the program, I was kind of unsure about myself,” she said. “I was afraid to take chances. But now that I’ve finished a couple of marathons, I’m not afraid to put myself out there.”