Daniel Wilson and I rode our bicycles in the LA Bike Tour that is connected to the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday, March 7. 15,000 plus riders assemble on Exposition Boulevard between USC and the Coliseum before 6 AM to ride along most of the Marathon route. At the end of the ride, my odometer read that we had gone 22.8 miles. That is not a long ride at all.
As the ride starts at 6 AM, as the sky starts a pre-dawn glow that announces that the sun will rise soon, riders are packed in tightly and it take 20 minutes or so before you really start to move. It takes longer than that until you can safely assume you can stay clipped into your pedals as cyclists with varying degrees of skill are weaving all over the road. The announcer on the loudspeaker system is cheering us on as county and city elected officials take turns making comments on the wonderfulness of their work in the community that made the event possible. Randy Newman’s “I Love LA” is blaring through the speakers too. It is a cute song that mentions a bunch of the Boulevards that we will be riding on-- Olympic , Pico, Venice, etc.
Some fun things: Cindi and my mom, Daniel’s Grandma, AKA Doris, found a spot along the route near a Starbucks to watch us ride by and cheer their little hearts out. It is fun that all the streets are closed down and without any car and truck traffic we can ride down some usually very busy streets as the sun rises above Los Angeles. There were a lot of funny looking people—including Santa Claus—riding their bikes. I didn’t see anyone crash this year. We finished our ride before it got hot! (the runners had a different experience with unseasonably warm weather exceeding 80 degrees F.)
Some less than fun things: Did see some ambulances coming and going from the route. It is hard to find people at the end of the ride with 15,000 plus people wondering around in the quad area at USC. Kids serving a pancake breakfast at USC to support a charitable cause, hung out eating pancakes in the cooking area while people who had paid for breakfast stood in a line watching them eat pancakes and sausages while the line just barely moved.
The whole Marathon phenomenon in LA for the weekend is energizing and is an experience to behold. I remember feeling this last year too—and haven’t acted on it yet—but I imagine the glory of training as a runner and completing the running Marathon. There are 20,000 plus runners, in addition to the elite athlete runners. A couple of people I know have run in this event—Lalo Diaz and Brad Peters for example. One woman from our church ran yesterday. I don’t know who she is but someone else told me about her. David Diaz and Lalo told me they would like to run. Maybe this year is the year to get those slow twitch endurance muscles ready to go.
Cindi and Doris got interviewed by an LA Times reporter whose article appeared in today’s paper. No mention of us though. The news coverage really only went as deep as the running event. Another reason to think about running I guess.
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