These co-workers go the distance

Showing off the hardware. From left, Ernestina Rhind, Salene Giron, Maria Duron, Sachi Hamai and Avianna Uribe.

Among the thousands of runners at the start of the L.A. Marathon in 2011 was a nervous but excited band of sisters. It was their first marathon, and at their side was their “mother hen,” veteran runner Sachi Hamai, more commonly known by her official title—executive officer of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Three of the women were on Hamai’s staff. The fourth worked for Supervisor Gloria Molina. For months, Hamai would lead them on pre-dawn runs of gradually increasing distances. Before they’d even hit the streets, she’d drive the route and strategically stash water bottles so the women wouldn’t have to carry them.

After one of their sessions edged above 13 miles, Hamai, who oversees the Board of Supervisors’ agenda, came clean with an agenda of her own. “We’re going to do a marathon,” she decreed. At the close of those morning training sessions, she began urging them to visualize what it would be like to cross the finish line into the joyous and proud embrace of family and friends

Hamai was so persistent that before the starting gun was fired on the morning of the 2011 marathon, Maria Duron of the executive office remembers thinking: “What am I doing here? Did I ever say yes?”  In the end, she’s forever grateful she never said no. “When we started training, I couldn’t even run a mile,” she says. “When we finished, I said, ‘We did it!’”

All five women did, in fact, finish the race, one of the most grueling in L.A. Marathon history, with rain coming down so hard that the streets were sometimes shin-deep in cold water. “I felt so horrible,” Hamai recalls. “I thought they’d never run with me again.”

She was happily wrong. Since then, the co-workers have logged countless more miles together in a ritual that the women say has created not only strong bodies, but strong bonds. “There’s a lot of chatter during our runs, but it’s not about work,” says Hamai, whose running shoes are always within arm’s reach, even when she’s at her desk. “We listen to each other about our personal lives. We push each other. If one of us says, ‘Let’s just get some coffee this morning,’ someone else will say, ‘Let’s get it after the run.’ ”

Come Sunday, 26,000 runners will once again lace up for the L.A. Marathon, a 26.2 mile journey of sweat and blisters from Dodger Stadium to Santa Monica. This time, though, the coach will be on the sidelines. “My mind is willing but my body isn’t,” Hamai says. Instead, she’ll be rooting for the sole member of the team to brave this year’s race—Avianna Uribe, operations director for Molina. “They’ll be there in spirit,” Uribe says of her training partners in the board’s executive office.

County exec Ryan Alsop

Still, Uribe will have company from a few other county colleagues along the route, including Ryan Alsop, assistant chief executive officer for intergovernmental and external affairs. This will be his fifth L.A. Marathon. But unlike the county women, he runs solo. “I’m an intense trainer and I like to be in my own head,” says the 42-year-old Alsop, whose fastest marathon time is 3 hours and 16 minutes.  Although the fleet-footed exec will be running alone—heavy metal music pulsing through his ear buds—he says he’ll be joined at the starting line by a first-timer, the county’s Sacramento lobbyist, Alan Fernandes, whom Alsop convinced to give it a shot.

Fernandes, a long time cyclist and modest runner, says he thought the L.A. Marathon would be a perfect way to get a street-level view of the county he represents.  “I’m using it as a sightseeing tour,” says the Northern California native. Fernandes is hoping he’ll be able to make that tour all the way from stadium to sea. His longest training run a few weeks back was 20 miles, he says, and that one “really kicked my butt.  Going another six miles is going to be pretty tough stuff.”

“I’m kind of nervous,” he admits, “but I’m going to try to be calm.”

Meanwhile, Hamai is going to try to stay optimistic about her future on the roads. “It’s sad because I almost feel like I might not be able to run that far again,” she says. Last year, she and Uribe ran two marathons—Los Angeles and Chicago—and a dozen half-marathons, all of which took a toll on her body. “I just need to back off,” she says.

But, apparently, not for too long.

The other morning, Hamai and her business-attired running crew—Uribe, Duron, Salene Giron and Ernestina Rhind—gathered in her office in the Hall of Administration to display their bounty of gleaming race medals for a county photographer. Hamai noted that the sign-up for the St. George Marathon in Utah—where she ran her first marathon in 1997—was beginning on April 1.

“You can bet I’ll be trying to get into that one,” she said, and then added with a sly smile: “And I’m going to get the other girls to sign-up, too.”

(To watch the race, consider taking Metro, which has nine stations along the course. And if you’re driving, watch out for street closures.)

In their matching Tinker Bell costumes for a half-marathon at Disneyland, from left: Hamai, Rhind, Uribe and Giron.

Updated: Avianna Uribe and Ryan Alsop finished the marathon in fine form. But Alan Fernandes, after months of training, was unable to make the trip to L.A. from Sacramento because he was sick. Hats off also to two other marathon finishers from the county workforce: Andrew Veis, assistant press deputy to Supervisor Don Knabe, and Mark Pestrella of the Department of Public Works.