In conjunction with city authorities, the new owners of the City of Los Angeles Marathon have decided to move the race from its traditional early March date to the Memorial Day holiday for 2009. According to a blog posted at the website of the Los Angeles Times newspaper, the May 25, 2009, date was adopted after a failed attempt to move the race to the Presidents' Day weekend in February. Early reaction is decidedly negative.
"This is ridiculous!," wrote one commenter on the Los Angeles Times blog. "Now LA residents have to battle street closures on a national holiday when people travel to visit family, friends and the beach. Worse still, LA taxpayers are going to pay 'holiday time' to City employees for the additional inconvenience!"
LA Marathon LLC, the event's new operations company which is funded by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, is satisfied with the new date. Russ Pillar, the president of the company, told the Times in a telephone interview: "We think the Memorial Day date does two things. "It lets us honor the city's wishes that we have the race on a holiday Monday, and it lets us create a better runner’s experience than we could have on President's Day."
A big concern with the new date will be potentially hot weather. "The March date was perfect with nice crisp weather and generally good air quality," wrote another commenter on the newspaper's blog. "Running in May has the potential to be very smoggy and hot. I won't be running again this year." Another wrote, "Memorial Day will be brutally hot. Runners are going to be hospitalized, assuming none die--which is a big assumption, considering that runners have died in March."
The City of Los Angeles Marathon is struggling to get back on its feet after several years under the management of Devine Sports. Devine sold the marathon earlier this year after having difficulty generating enough cash flow to pay both elite athletes and vendors.
The race has been held 23 times since its inception in 1986. It was held in the month of March for each of those runnings, usually on the first Sunday. The event records are 2:08:40 by Kenyan Benson Cherono and 2:25:10 by Russian Lidiya Grigoryeva, both set in 2006.
Know someone else who's interested in running and triathlon?
