A fabled route for the long run

Sunday’s L.A. Marathon will blaze a new trail across the city, racing past some of the most storied real estate on the planet—Dodger Stadium, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, Hollywood & Vine, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the Sunset Strip, Rodeo Drive.

But to L.A.’s running cognoscenti, all that might as well be the low-rent district compared to the race’s closing stretch: San Vicente Boulevard to the ocean.

“A mecca,” says Gabriel Valenzuela, who has been running San Vicente for 25 of his 65 years. “It’s the pinnacle.”

Despite its legendary status among local runners, this slice of workout paradise, with its coral tree-studded center islands and easy-on-the-knees grass, is only now making its L.A. Marathon debut. With a sell-out crowd of 25,000 marathoners registered to take part this year, the allure of San Vicente—never a particularly well-guarded secret among the Westside’s fit and fabulous—is about to be shared with the world in a big way.

So you could forgive these running regulars for feeling a twinge of locals-only resentment at the coming invasion. But (and maybe this was just the endorphins talking) nearly everyone interviewed on a recent Saturday morning starts by saying the same thing: “I think it’s great!”

Or this, from Ken Carlson, running with his wife, Katrina, near the intersection of San Vicente and 7th Street in Santa Monica: “Bring it on! Civic pride!”.

In addition to providing an injection of that feel-good civic pride, the 26.2-mile marathon is guaranteed to deliver its share of you-can’t-get-there-from-here moments, so be prepared. Metro is warning of bus service disruptions in areas traversed by the route, and urging spectators to take the train to marathon viewing points. That information is here. Motorists, too, should check out street closures.

The 25th annual marathon, with its “Stadium to the Sea” route, also will force some alterations in long-cherished workout routines. “Every Saturday and Sunday, I drive out to Santa Monica to run” along San Vicente, says Jack Rosenfeld, 30, of Culver City. Not this Sunday. “I’ll be watching on TV, probably,” he says. (KTLA Channel 5 will be televising the marathon from 7 a.m. till 10 a.m. Sunday.)

For runners, the stretch brings together an almost magical combination of factors. Good air. A nice downhill grade toward the ocean. The grassy median. Those coral trees—gnarly roots notwithstanding. And long stretches uninterrupted by cross traffic.

“Everybody from the Westside who works out regularly knows this stretch,” says Mark Stofko of Hollywood, pausing briefly at the 7th Street light with fellow runner Andreas Deptolla.

San Vicente is the stuff of local legend in other ways, too. A 1980 Los Angeles city ordinance designated the Brentwood stretch a scenic corridor and created one of the city’s pioneering “specific plans” to protect and preserve the neighborhood’s character by limiting the scale of development.

The coral trees themselves, planted in the 1940s along what was once the Red Car corridor, were designated a city historic-cultural monument in 1976.

The “Kaffirbloom corals”—Los Angeles’ official trees—have endured various threats over the years, including a time in 1995 when 11 had to be chopped down, and dozens more appeared to be in danger, because of top-heaviness, according to the Los Angeles Times. (The problem was resolved by giving the luxuriant Brentwood trees a buzz cut.)

More well known than the boulevard’s running culture, at least for a time, was its role as a geographical footnote during the O.J. Simpson murder case. The restaurant Mezzaluna—where Nicole Simpson dined before she was murdered and where Ronald Goldman, also slain, was a waiter—was located on San Vicente. Now it’s a Peet’s Coffee & Tea—a popular stop for local runners and, even more, for the bicyclists who share the boulevard with them.

The 4.03-mile stretch of San Vicente that the marathoners will be pounding Sunday is part of a new route that, for the first time, will go through cities in addition to Los Angeles, including West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. The Santa Monica City Council’s approval was essential to making San Vicente the race’s portal to the Pacific. More than 3,000 people signed an online petition urging the council’s OK last summer.

The new route—along with the race’s new management under Frank McCourt, owner of the Dodgers—helped make this year’s race a sellout for the first time ever, according to Rich Perelman, spokesman for the event.

It certainly made a difference to Jennifer Perry.

Perry, executive director of the nonprofit Children’s Action Network, is a San Vicente regular who’s previously run marathons in New York, Paris and London—but not here at home, until now.

“The only reason I’m running is because they changed the route,” she says. (Another factor: her 50th birthday is Sunday, so why not?)

She hasn’t practiced running the overall new route—“I prefer to be surprised”—but seems delighted that she’ll be passing some personal landmarks along the way.

“I can stop at my coffee place,” Perry says. “It’s at Mile 22.”

At Palisades Park, where San Vicente meets Ocean Avenue, Perry and her sometime running companion, a two-year-old Boston terrier named Bailey Mae, are having a laid-back stroll Saturday morning, the heavy-duty marathon prep completed. It’s choice spot to kick back and take stock.

“To me,” Perry says, “this view of the ocean epitomizes L.A. It epitomizes why we live here.”

Nearby, Kristen Eager, a 21-year-old UCLA math major, is finishing her post-run stretching near the base of San Vicente, the Pacific sparkling behind her in the distance

“We should be showing this off for the marathon,” Eager says. “It’s beautiful.”

Posted 3/17/10