Los Angeles Marathon 2008

This Sunday morning, me and my roommate Stone Cold Chinfoo headed out to the hardened streets of Los Angeles to capture the essence of the 2008 Los Angeles Marathon. We made our first stop at the corner of Hollywood and Highland to catch the early leaders.

The elite women came by first due to the twenty minute head start on the men, but what surprised us was the first male. Minutes before he came by, there were a number of "recreational" runners that jumped onto the course to get a head start on their twenty minute-a-mile pace. We thought that this guy was doing the same since there was no lead pack in sight and he wasn't a Kenyan. Sure enough, he was running right behind the official pace cars. The elite men pack didn't show up for another minute and a half, meaning this guy was running a mile thirty seconds faster than the rest. That was a physical accomplishment of it's own, but it turns out he held the lead for two thirds of the race and wound up taking sixth place.

We then camped out at Vine and Melrose where I told Ezra we'd be stationed to give him props when I realized that there were a bunch of freaks running this race. I was the freak for not having my camera running, so I got a few of them, but there was a larger army of mutant runners out there than the X-men.

We then hopped on our bikes and made it near the finish line in downtown LA. There's something about the end of the race there that doesn't get the crowd involved as much as they should, like the Boston Marathon. People are limited to stand on a narrow part of the sidewalk and there's a bunch of "VIP" seating near the end that isn't being used. The winner's sure looked happy they won, but didn't seem to have a clue whether there were people cheering for them or not.