Los Angeles Marathon debrief
Plus: G is for Gravel, and I may be coming to a town near you!
Participation medals for an 18-mile marathon??
It’s perfect marathon weather in Los Angeles while I write this newsletter. It’s a sunny and clear morning settled in at 58°F/14°C. Yesterday hit 86°F/30°C, which is not even nice for walking the dog in.
The LA Marathon decided to give people an out at Mile 18, and it caused a stir online, didn’t it. Someone taking a medal after a massive run in diabolical heat doesn’t affect you. Neither does someone raising hundreds of dollars for charity, but that’s another matter.
Unless you’re trying to win the race, all the medals are participation trophies. They only mean something to you. It’s an incredibly special thing to be able to run 26.2 miles, but not to me. I know literally thousands of people who have completed marathons. To me, it’s normal.
It’s all about context, you see, so just let people do what’s best for them on the day. Focus on celebrating your own achievements, and you might be happier.
That photo finish
Nathan Martin, the high school coach and “Fastest US Born African American Marathoner” won the race in 2:11:18. It was a photo finish, beating Kenyan athlete, Michael Kimani Kimau by 0.18 sec.
The bit of the story that wasn’t immediately apparent happened just before the home straight, when Kimau was led off-course by the lead motorcycle for a brief moment. He was flanked by two civilians cheering on the course. It wasn’t great.
Clearer signage at a point where the course splits into two would’ve helped. Getting those fools off the course would’ve helped. It not being 75°F/25°C also would’ve helped his brain not be so fried.
It’ll be sad if the full story takes away from Nathan’s incredible 400m sprint finish, but if not for LAM’s logistical SNAFU, it’s very unlikely that his efforts would have resulted in the win.
“It feels like a Major.”
Los Angeles has always been the perfect place for all the brands to descend upon. We love buying stuff in this city because so little of the big stuff came from here. You can argue with me about this in the comments, but all the big brands come from Europe or NE or NW USA, and New York dictates the narrative on running culture, even if some elite athletes were born and/or trained in LA.
I wish the LA Marathon would focus on how difficult the race is rather than Oscars, Pop Tarts, and St. Patrick’s Day. With its hills, the course is more physically demanding than either New York or Boston, and the reason the early cutoff was at 18 miles was because that’s a moment on the course where runners see the finish line and then have to run another 8 miles. How demoralizing? In a race that relies on mental fortitude, even the strongest don’t survive.
About LA running culture, though
Last year, it took an out-of-towner in the shape of Oakland running store, Renegade Running to host panels and art exhibitions, and generally bring the city’s runners together. Otherwise, LA’s run clubs are reflective of LA’s reputation of being a collection of disparate and separate neighborhoods that you can travel between, but rarely mix.
This year, however, hometown heroes Koreatown Run Club celebrated their 10th anniversary in style with a weekend-long party. There was an unsanctioned race, panels, a cafe/store/wellness pop-up space where I was able to host a gathering of important run crew leaders as we discussed keeping our communities and ourselves safe and healthy.
And that’s the crux of it: in the truest spirit of Bridging The Gap, KRC’s Basecamp brought people together from all around the world. Nobody but KRC could’ve hosted that, and I hope they do it every year from now on.
G is for Gravel
You know that I espouse all running: road running, trail running and all running in-between. That’s it. I’m a runner. But gravel running is having a moment. The world is telling you to add another shoe to your rotation, but what is gravel running, and do you really need another shoe?
Gravel is for the runner who likes to get out into something more tree-lined than the city streets in which they live. It’s another arrow (running shoe) in the quiver (closet) for the runner that runs on some roads, but also on dirt paths and less technical trails. It’s versatile but specific. There isn’t a Gravel option on Strava, so it’s less about your mile time and measuring your vert. It’s more about getting that run in from home, from the office – running and exploring. You can still have self-imposed rules, but the parameters are blurred. To me, that sounds a lot like freedom.
When I lived in London’s suburbs, I didn’t join the run clubs that ran almost exclusively on city streets and through the parks. They ran at night, you see, when I was at rock shows and bars five nights a week. Back then, the nightclub was still my nightclub. Instead, my regular route took me from my front door along a mile of cement and asphalt until I got to my local river. There, the towpath was a mixture of mud, puddles, and occasionally some actual gravel.
I would have loved gravel running shoes for those near-daily river runs. Instead, I always made sure I chose a pair of running shoes with a grippy outsole. Options were limited back then.
Those runs, away from my laptop, are where I first learned to use running to untangle my thoughts. I’d grown up by that river, but running along it? I was learning how to navigate that terrain at speed. I was learning how my body felt under the purposeful duress of running. I was learning how best to use that hour of silence in between the heavy metal and hardcore records I listened to for work.
Those runs were where I did my best writing work. They still are.
Now, when I’m not running the streets near my house in car-centric Los Angeles, I often drive to Griffith Park and run through the dells and up compacted dirt ‘trails,’ which are as many as they are glorious. Slick, flat soles are no good on this terrain either, so I still look for shoes with a little more grip without anything expressly being called a lug.
With all that said, I think that gravel can more easily be swept into the periphery of the rapid expansion of trail running. The calming green expanse of nature is the goal, right? To surround yourself with the stuff that gets the creative juices flowing. The desire for creativity and discovery is maybe the purest human essence.
That’s where gravel thrives. It’s just running. Take a break and go have some fun with it.
What do you think about gravel running? Do you have space in your house for another pair of shoes in your rotation? Does a gravel shoe replace two pairs in your rotation? Do you understand what gravel running even is??
Running Sucks LIVE
The newsletter eats first, so I’ll tell you about two new live dates:
Wed 18 Mar - Milestone Running, San Diego
Sat 28 Mar - Brooklyn Running Co, NYC
These are the only two preview readings of This is Running and I’ll also be leading gravel runs with shoe demos of Salomon’s new Aero Glide 4 GRVL.
If you’re in San Diego or NYC, please come down! Full details of the rest of the tour will be on my IG in the next couple of days and then in the newsletter next Monday and beyond.
Wed 08 Apr - Launch party at Vroman’s, Pasadena - FREE TICKETS
My book, This is Running is release on 2nd April in the UK and April 7th in the US. Please pre-order it if you haven’t yet!
USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones
Canada - Amazon CA | Indigo
Thanks for reading
Raz x
FOLLOW ME - Instagram | Strava
You can read more about the book here, but expect a deep dive into the chapters over the next couple of weeks.
I think of gravel running as road running without the traffic, and I try to include some in nearly all of my runs (even the trail runs). The truth is that even if you're mainly a trailrunner, nearly all trail races include at least some gravel anyway. And bonus... you can spectate more freely on a gravel run (i.e. you can look at more than just the next 15 feet of trail without risking a fall). As for gravel shoes, I usually retire my worn-down trail shoes to that role and get some extra miles from them that way.
Are Gravel Running Shoes different from Road Running Shoes in the same way that Gravel Bikes are different from Road Bikes?
I'm guessing so