First things first — let’s talk about the highlights of the 36th Annual LA Marathon.
Steve and Alexis cheered me on at Bronson and Hollywood and were a huge boost. I was already feeling a bit rundown and sore and this was only about mile 9 or 10. But seeing them helped propel me for the next 8 miles or so. So, hooray!
Mask on… mask off.
I’ll get to the negatives shortly, but here was the other massive boost that came both during the race… and afterwards when I was feeling a bit down. Somewhere around mile 20/21, there was a dog giving out high fives (with a little help from his human). I had missed a “power dog” that was at mile 19 with a sign that said, “pet this dog and get a power boost!” Unfortunately he was on the other side of the road from me… so all I could do was air pet him. But then this dog appeared, high five at the ready! And it was great.
To make matters even better, after the race I had an email from a lovely spectator who I had never met. She was apparently at that corner watching the event with her mom and daughter and had grabbed a video of me. She tracked down my name and found runkevinrun.com and sent it over to me. So, Emma, you made my day! And what a lovely reminder that there are truly wonderful people in the world. We can get caught up in air rage and partisanship. But then we find a stranger sharing a dog video to restore some faith in humanity. Huzzah!
And boy did I need some boosts after the race ended. This was not only because in a repeat of 2005, Scott Bakula leaped passed me like it was NBQD (no big quantum deal). As I texted some friends this afternoon, we should never forget that “Bakula” rhymes with “Dracula”… because he sucks. [Side note: I hear Mr. Bakula is really a nice person and does not, in fact, suck… but in this instance, let me have this moment].
The race also just wasn’t that much fun. I don’t know if I wasn’t in the mood or was struggling with my un-fitness. People have asked me for years facetious questions about why would I want to run 26.2 miles… what was I running away from… and today I found myself wondering the same things. I felt… wiped out. Part of it was sore muscles and struggles to maintain strides from the halfway point on (and if I’m being honest, earlier, whenever there was a hill to climb). I walked a great deal… far more in the second half. I would walk/run but not in any kind of strategic, rhythmic manner akin to a Jeff Galloway training module. I just would run until I couldn’t. And I couldn’t a whole lot. But I tried to “runner up” and snap shots of the traditional photo spots:
Part of me wants to blame the new course route. Previously, we would run “from the stadium to the sea,” starting at Dodger Stadium and running to the Santa Monica pier. But because of SOMETHING… and I’d wager it was money… Santa Monica no longer wanted to be involved. So the new route is “from the stadium to the stars,” which had us running from Dodger Stadium to the Avenue of the Stars in Century City (home to most talent agencies… and Fox Tower which stood in for Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard). Only what we really run is from Dodger Stadium to the Avenue of the Stars… then run past the finish line at mile 18 while watching faster people finish so we can run a four mile out and four mile back stretch to Westwood. It’s a real mind-fudge to run past the finish line… and the hill at mile 25.5 through 26 is rather cruel. Maybe it wasn’t so much a hill as a graded incline… but it sure as hell felt like a hill… plus, that’s where I got Bakula’d.
My finish time was fine… even good for a lot of reasons. But it was 40 minutes slower than my 2020 race… and well out of range of a Boston Qualifier; it was just so freakin’ hard to keep going.
So in summary I would suggest to the McCourt Foundation that for 2022 they make nice with Santa Monica and get the sea segment back, make sure all runners have family and friends cheering them on, and ask more dogs if they would be willing to high-five some humans.
