Some forgo Puzzles’ chili-cheese fries. Others run a
minimum of four miles per day. And still others shave their hair
into mohawks.
Regardless of their preferred methods of preparation, at 8:30
a.m. this Sunday, while most students are still asleep, a select
group of UCLA students will be joining thousands of other runners
to begin what may be among the most grueling, challenging and
rewarding hours of their lives.
It is the beginning of the 19th annual Los Angeles Marathon, a
26.2-mile race starting from the corner of 5th and Figueroa
streets.
And it is the end of many months of training, dieting and
waiting in anticipation.
“If a person runs a marathon and completes it, it changes
his life,” said William Burke, one of the founding members of
the marathon. “It changes the way he looks at himself, and
the way people who are his friends, his family, and at his work
look at him too.”
This year organizers estimate that the marathon will have its
greatest turnout yet, as the number of runners registered has
already surpassed the 22,000 registered last year. This does not
include the number of runners expected to register at the
“Emerald Nuts Quality of Life Exposition” which started
Thursday and will run until Saturday.
Joining the ranks are numerous UCLA students who have been
training and working hard to prepare for the race on top of their
daily studies.
Two students, Leslie Choong, a first-year computer science and
engineering student, and Brandon Roe, a first-year civil
engineering student, have been training and growing their hair
since December.
Roe said he had always wanted to shave his head, and the
marathon presented the perfect opportunity.
“We stared our training in December, and we didn’t
cut our hair till last weekend,” Choong said. “We
figured since we were going to cut it all off eventually, why not
have mohawks for a week?”
Roe and Choong heard about the race through the Bruin Runners
club, which they joined soon after they started attending UCLA.
“I’ve always wanted to run a marathon,” Roe
said. “When I heard about the L.A. Marathon, we had people to
run with for practice and it sounded like it would be
good.”
Roe and Choong run nearly seven days per week, with short runs
of four or five miles on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, medium runs
on Tuesday and Thursday, culminating with a long run on Sunday
which peaked three weeks ago at 20 miles. Saturdays are reserved
for other non-running activities or timing workouts so they can
reach their goal to finish the marathon in under three hours.
“We saw some 75-year-old guy on television who ran a
sub-three-hour marathon, and we thought, “˜If he can do it, we
should be able to do it too,” Choong said. “It’s
a 6:52 (minutes per mile) pace.”
Amin Ramzan, a third-year political science student, also has
been training to run the marathon with Bruin Runners. He is seeking
to run the race in three hours and 10 minutes to qualify for the
Boston Marathon, held every year in April.
Ramzan ran the San Diego Rock “˜n’ Roll Marathon his
junior year in high school, but he said he wants to do much better
this Sunday, especially because he already knows what to expect
from the race.
“It is primarily mental,” Ramzan said. “The
first 10 to 15 miles are easy because you are surrounded with
20,000 or so other runners and it is nice and fun. But you get to
mile 20 and you hit the wall, and that is definitely the most
challenging part, when you have no glucose, no energy
left.”
Before the race, runners try to store up as much energy as
possible by eating high-carbohydrate diets such as pasta and rice.
The marathon organization offers a “Carbo Load Dinner”
for runners the night before the race, though participants
typically have to watch their diets much further in advance to be
healthy and ready for the rigorous run.
Kevin Bince, a second-year business economics student, has also
been training to run the marathon, and he said he’s been
watching his diet for the past couple of months.
“The diet is definitely the biggest challenge,”
Bince said. “I have to eat a lot of carbohydrates, but good
carbs like pasta and bread and no more deep fried food. Basically
everything at Puzzles is off limits.”
Bince started running seriously after he raced in the
“Emerald Nuts 5K Run/Walk” race last year, an event
that the L.A. Marathon organization also hosts.
“I hated running before, but I ended up liking
running,” Bince said. “You feel healthy, and after an
intense workout you feel a sense of accomplishment.”
Not only is the marathon rewarding for the runners, but it is
also beneficial to the city.
The L.A. Marathon was originally started by Burke soon after the
1984 Olympic Games, in order to bring back the sense of community
and unity that swept Los Angeles during the Games.
“It is the one day a year that L.A. becomes a neighborhood
““ everyone comes together with a common goal,” Burke
said. “We have never advertised for volunteers in the
race’s history, and we have never been short of volunteers.
People are starving for something to do good for the
city.”