In It for the Long Run : Growing Pains Aside, the L.A. Marathon Turns 10 Next Sunday

It was pouring, sheets of rain being pushed almost horizontal by a wind blowing so hard the pool furniture sounded like traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway at 5 p.m.

Inside the hotel, awards were being given and a pep talk administered in pomp that would the next day give way to circumstance: thousands running, hobbling, walking, wheeling their chairs 26 miles 385 yards from the Coliseum, through downtown, Chinatown, Koreatown, Hollywood, the Central City and back to the Coliseum along a course laid out by Olympic silver medalist Rod Dixon.

Runners like a little rain, but nobody wanted this--least of all Bill Burke and Marie Patrick, who had hung out their reputations, coerced a few sponsors and signed contracts promising to make the first City of Los Angeles Marathon a success.

They had worked in the 1984 Olympic Games and created the marathon to try to recapture its spirit. But more than a year of plans for the 1986 start seemed about to be undone by weather.

“And then, that night, the stars came out,” Patrick said. “And the next day, the sun was shining and we knew we would make it.”

Make it once, at least. The event had to carry the baggage of its predecessors, one-year wonders that produced irritated runners, vendors and a city that went unpaid and, once, a route so poorly monitored that the race leaders went off course.

Allan Steinfeld remembered. As a New York runner, he didn’t have much respect for Los Angeles.

He and the late Fred Lebow, godfather of the New York Marathon, met with Burke one winter night in 1985 in New York. Burke sought help and found skepticism.

“He told us he wanted to start a Los Angeles Marathon, and he seemed so eager, that Fred talked to him,” Steinfeld said. “He said, ‘Don’t expect people to come to watch your race because a marathon is boring to watch. They will go outside their homes to watch, though.’

“And Fred said, ‘I don’t know much about Los Angeles,’ and Bill said, ‘I don’t know anything about marathons.’ ”

Steinfeld and Lebow were suspicious of a marathon hoping to show a profit, but Burke won them over, and they came to Los Angeles to help.

A goal was set. Success for L.A. Marathon I meant 2,500 runners.

“We held a press conference at City Hall on Jan. 25, 1986, and proclaimed ourselves a success,” Patrick said.

Then 8,200 more runners signed up, and success became a nightmare.

Between the meeting in New York and March 9, 1986, the day Ric Sayre of Ashland, Ore., crossed the finish line as the first winner, in 2 hours 12 minutes 59 seconds, and after, when the rain returned and Burke, Patrick and a few friends found themselves picking up trash along the course in the wee hours of Monday morning, lessons were taught and learned.

Burke is a salesman, and he sold Olympic-style: official marathon automobile, gasoline, camera.

“One day, a guy called and said, ‘If nobody’s got the bibs, we’d like to buy them,’ ” Burke said. “I put the guy on hold and turned to Marie and said, ‘What’s a bib?’ ”

Told bibs carried the numbers pinned on the runners’ shirts, Burke sold them.

“I didn’t know much, but I learned fast,” he said. “I hung up and then I sold the back of the bib.”

For $5,000, a medical-services company got an ad that told runners where they could have their ailments treated. Of course, only the runners could see that ad, and they had to take off their bibs to do that.

Another company offered $125,000 if its president could shoot the cannon to start the race.

Told that was the mayor’s duty, the company offered more. Then more again, finally saying it would stock the hospitality tent if its president could shoot the cannon.

“We had no money and we sure could use theirs,” Burke said. “I told Marie in the elevator that if they had offered one more time, I would have told them they could shoot the mayor.”

The advertisers were wooed by Burke, who also dealt with City Hall in what has been a tangled and tenuous 10-year relationship. The contract has been rewritten several times, each increasingly favoring Los Angeles Marathon, Inc., which received in 1994, according to an audit completed Friday, about $250,600 in services, $76,775 of them free.

Patrick handled the logistics and occasionally tried to rein in her boss.

An admitted political animal, Burke calls himself an entrepreneur, says, “I can go through money pretty easily” and declares himself ego-driven. The husband of former Congresswoman and current county Supervisor Yvonne Braithwait, he acknowledges living in her shadow.

“You know when you go to a restaurant with somebody famous and the headwaiter looks past you and shakes their hand?” Burke said. “Well, now at least half of them shake my hand too.”

Burke and Patrick turned to Dixon of New Zealand to help with the runners. Having competed all over the world, he knew what they needed.

“I talk to runners at the races, at the start, and they will ask me, ‘What are you trying to run today?’ ” Dixon said. “I’ll tell them, ‘About 2:10,’ and they’ll say, ‘How can you run that fast?’

“Then I’ll ask them, ‘What are you trying to run?’ and they might say, ‘Oh, four hours.’ And I’ll say, ‘How can you run that long?’

“The idea is that we respect each other. We’re all runners in a race, each with a different goal--winning, finishing, a certain time.

“Every runner, from first to last, wants to feel the same, like he’s as much a part as the elite runners in front. I told Bill and Marie that, and I think that’s what they’ve tried to do in the L.A. Marathon.”

Running through the neighborhoods brings out thousands of spectators and has spawned parties, from the fireworks in Chinatown to the more sedate celebrations in tony Hancock Park to music of the Central City.

It all keeps runners going and brings some of them back. Every year, half of the field turns over, but 543 runners are “tenners,” having completed all nine of the L.A. Marathons and indicating that next Sunday they will do it again.

They meet and greet, often as socially motivated as the spectators.

They know what’s ahead.

“At Mile 1, I think, ‘Wow, I made it again,’ ” says Cliff Housego of Agoura. “At Mile 20, I think, ‘Why do I do this?’ ”

Juan Castaneda of South Gate runs with his wife, Laura, for a while, then takes off. After he finishes--his best time is 3:19:02--he runs back to catch up with Laura at about Mile 24 and finishes again with her.

Sometimes the socializing gets in the way.

“One year at the starting line, a stranger came up to me and asked what my goal was,” said Cy Baumann. “I said four hours was about it. He asked what my (10,000-meter) time was, and I said about 44 minutes.

“He paused and said, ‘(elite runner Jeff) Galloway says a 44-minute 10K run can generate a 3 1/2-hour marathon. Right then, the gun went off and we ran. I felt great, knew I should slow, but still felt great. I went off on a pace to give me 3 1/2 hours. I ended up walking from Hollywood to the finish. I’m still looking for that guy to beat him up.”

Some are compulsive.

Kevin Armstrong awakened late one Sunday, turned on the television and saw that the race had begun. He dressed quickly, raced for a bus and got to the starting line 2 hours 17 minutes late. He finished in a little over nine hours, but he was eligible to attend a celebration of tenners on Saturday at the Coliseum.

The race includes costumed runners, a 10-runner centipede, a group of women who run together, telling stories and drinking espresso at the 10-mile mark, hot chocolate at 16 miles. One tenner has worn the same shoes in every race, another the same T-shirt. Doug Hibbard wears his Chicago Cub baseball cap.

“My wife thinks marathoning and being a Cubs fan naturally go together, both requiring the ability to withstand long durations of pain,” he said.

They have run in 87-degree heat and, in 1988, they had to start twice, once when a balloon popped at the starting line and some runners--with an eye for the TV camera--led a surge that was halted a few yards down the street by police and race officials. They ran after earthquakes and past buildings burned out by the riots.

They run in what was proclaimed in 1986 a “People’s Race,” which meant there wasn’t enough money to afford the elite runners who lend such an event prestige.

Sayre had won the Long Beach Marathon five weeks before the first Los Angeles race, and he demanded--and got--$1,000 to show up at the Coliseum on March 9, 1986.

That was 10% of the elite runners’ budget. For next Sunday’s race, more than $250,000 has been committed, and, if times are fast enough, more than $500,000 will be paid elite runners.

But checks aside, each of the runners will get the same water from the same water stations, the same “goody bags” of whatever Burke, Patrick and marathon officials can coerce sponsors to give.

Each will have had what Dixon calls an adventure. Burke named him the race’s ambassador, a title that Dixon takes seriously, preaching the gospel of Los Angeles around the world.

“It’s the magic of L.A.” he said. “I’ve been to five Olympics, and Los Angeles was the best. And the race grew out of that.”

Next Sunday, it will have grown to be 10 years old.