Rojo calls LA Marathon a "minor- league race" in LA Times

Marathon is life wrote:

Any marathon where the course record is 2:06 is D-1 equivalent.

Which compares quite favorably with the New York marathon.

dunes runner wrote:

wejo wrote:

I had no idea the LA Marathon was this weekend until now.

You should pay more attention to these things, and post more about RUNNING on this website.

As it is, way too much blab about drugs is bad for running and gives the wrong message.

Jos Hermens? Which running manager are you?

Hold up wrote:

Jos Hermens? Which running manager are you?

I'm not big pharma, and it's disgusting how much they're promoted on this website.

Hold up wrote:

dunes runner wrote:

You should pay more attention to these things, and post more about RUNNING on this website.

As it is, way too much blab about drugs is bad for running and gives the wrong message.

Jos Hermens? Which running manager are you?

dunes runner wrote:

Hold up wrote:

Jos Hermens? Which running manager are you?

I'm not big pharma, and it's disgusting how much they're promoted on this website.

You said, "As it is, way too much blab about drugs is bad for running and gives the wrong message".

Hate to say it but he is kinda right. I’ve run it a few times and flew in for the marathon. It gets a good number of participants and it’s very cool course. Great vibes. But more people in my area talk about theisual Boston, NYC, Chicago marathons and even CIM way more than LA and we are 8 hour drive from LA.

real twinbro rivalry. wrote:

rojo just upset that someone named Weldon wins it

Winner winner chicken dinner!!!

Women race is about to start and the men race after that. Livestream here:

https://ktla.com/on-air/live-streaming/

Marathon is life wrote:

Baby_Thon wrote:

Should have said it’s a d2 race

Any marathon where the course record is 2:06 is D-1 equivalent.

That was an aberration. Today they are slower than 2:15 pace at 10k .

2nd largest ball of twine wrote:

Why has LA become a 2nd/3rd Tier competitive marathon? The city?, the race organization? bad luck?

Every city wants to believe their marathon is the next big thing. Usually the home fans are optimistically delusional.

It's privately owned - that's why. The grandest races in the world are non-profits. Very simple.

I thought the writer was writing a column on the decline of the race - not a race preview. But what I told him is, "Races that are for profit aren't going to have big elite fields." If I owned a race and the goal was to make money, then I wouldn't probably even bother with pros myself. I know this - I certainly would't bother with 100k only.

I told them - either do one gender for 100k or save the money and once very five years have a big elite field or go American prize m oeny only. But having 50k per gender and attracting a bunch of B or C level non-American pros doesn't make much sense.

LA had $100k in prize money (50k per gender last year). A source told me you'd need to spend at least 400k in prize money appearance fees, per diem, etc to put on a "good race" and at laest a million to put on a "great" marathon.

Tyler McCandless in the lead group

The LA marathon is always in the top six with participation numbers every year for US marathons. Its in the top 60 in the world in running event participation.

It’s embraced by the city , has good sponsors , televised regionally and is good for the sport.

What it shows is that you don’t have to have a super elite athlete race to put on a good event that has good numbers.

Great, so now I won't have to hear about all these minor league runners stinking it up all over the world. I look forward to never seeing another article about some minor league US runner on this website.

Oh, is one of your aunts vacationing abroad so you got 1 international hit?

Oh wow, the LA times guy emailed you instead of wejo to ask about a minor league marathon? It must be because you are the minor league brojo.

rojo wrote:

LA had $100k in prize money (50k per gender last year). A source told me you'd need to spend at least 400k in prize money appearance fees, per diem, etc to put on a "good race" and at laest a million to put on a "great" marathon.

Stop pretending to be a journalist.

LAM blows wrote:

Ridelled with a bad history from the owner stealing from it, being charged with tax evasion, the whole Peter Fonseca incident, McCourt (maybe the most hated man in LA) buying it, the worst TV coverage (it’s unwatchable)...

What's the Fonseca incident?

Can we call Weldon Kirui "Wiki"?

"weki"

rojo wrote:

LA had $100k in prize money (50k per gender last year). A source told me you'd need to spend at least 400k in prize money appearance fees, per diem, etc to put on a "good race" and at laest a million to put on a "great" marathon.

You can't very well do that unless you are a (ahem..chortle...giggle) "non-profit"

So what! wrote:

The LA marathon is always in the top six with participation numbers every year for US marathons. Its in the top 60 in the world in running event participation.

It’s embraced by the city , has good sponsors , televised regionally and is good for the sport.

What it shows is that you don’t have to have a super elite athlete race to put on a good event that has good numbers.

Watching live and it was somewhat an interesting finish. So even if it is not sub 2:10 the race can be exciting. But leave it to let’s run to dump on something that they don’t have interest. A few years ago I happened to be in the area and did the race for fun not as a goal race and it was much better than expected. Interesting course, good support on course and from the crowds so what if the top guys are not going crazy fast. A race like this could encourage second tier guys to mix it up but when the “running press” make negative statements expect further declines in the actual race and marathoning.

LetsRun.com wrote:

Fair or foul?

“I think L.A. has gone up and down,” said Robert Johnson, co-founder of LetsRun.com, an influential web site that covers elite running. “It’s definitely, at this stage, a minor-league race.”

It's a completely fair assessment. Calling it anything else is seeing things thru rose tinted glasses. It's not a knock on the race, but there are a dozen marathons out there that routinely get more competitive fields. Look at the winning times - it's very much the minors. It's still professional level running, but nowhere near Toronto, an average Japanese elite marathon, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, Dubai, and all of those others high caliber non-Major marathons.

So what! wrote:

The LA marathon is always in the top six with participation numbers every year for US marathons. Its in the top 60 in the world in running event participation.

It’s embraced by the city , has good sponsors , televised regionally and is good for the sport.

What it shows is that you don’t have to have a super elite athlete race to put on a good event that has good numbers.

Top 60 in the world so it would be a mid pack finisher in the Olympics Marathon. With around 20,000 finishers I wouldn't call it minor league. It's not top tier because it is often poorly organized. The last couple of years they haven't exceeded 20,000 finishers. The most they had was in 2015 with nearly almost 22,000 finishers, but the last person finished in over 9 hours. If they had a 6 hour cutoff (like Houston) then they would have only 12,500 finishers. Just because a lot of people run it doesn't make it a good marathon. Houston isn't that great because it's run in conjunction with a half marathon.

In my opinion, Chicago, New York and Boston are much better organized US mega-marathons (over 10,000 finishers).