Ultra
It’s not quite been a year since my friend Buck dared me to run the LA Marathon with her. It had been almost 30 years since I last ran in earnest. For 20 of those 30 years I’d lived a life someone else described as a “bad Larry Clark photograph”. I emerged from it all [...]
6 Miles Downtown
My urban loop – the first 6 miles of the LA Marathon route, basically: Dodger Stadium to Sunset Blvd down to Main, Main to 1st, 1st to Grand, Grand to Temple, right on Bellevue and then down to Echo Park, around and back to Sunset. If it were the marathon, I’d hang a left and [...]
LA Marathon Elite Women
The LA Marathon has a battle-of-the-sexes challenge. The first man or woman to cross the finish line wins a $100,000 challenge bonus. The women get a head start of 18 minutes 47 seconds, a handicap calculated by comparing the average times of top runners of each gender. In six previous challenges, the men and women [...]
Julia Mallon
I love this photo for the obvious reasons: the juxtaposition of the powerful, beautiful runner on the right and the man in the wheel chair looking over his shoulder at her as he passes behind her in the opposite direction. He’s not an LA Marathon spectator but someone going about his business on the sidewalk. [...]
LA Marathon
I expected it would be challenging. I expected I would be exhausted and hurt all over. I had worries about 26.2 miles since the furthest I’d ever run was 20 miles, twice, and the second was not so much fun. I devised the usual plans to trick myself into not psyching myself out. The first [...]
