Sunday, March 21st will be the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles Marathon. Because the route is completely different this year, going from Dodger Stadium all the way to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica (by the Santa Monica Pier), be prepared for a number of street closures, making traversing the city in a north/south direction incredibly difficult.

Basically, the route goes down Hollywood Boulevard to just west of Highland (so parts of the tourist's Hollywood Blvd. will be blocked off), then continues south to Sunset Blvd., and again continues west to the West Hollywood area where it travels down (around Doheny) to Beverly Hills' Burton Way, actually down Rodeo Drive (again, tourists beware!) to Wilshire Boulevard, then west again until Wilshire & Santa Monica cross at the west end of Beverly Hills/east end of Century City; then west along Santa Monica to Sepulveda, hiking back up to go through the V.A. grounds into Brentwood along San Vicente, all the down into Santa Monica, then south on Ocean to the finish line.

Streets will close at 6 a.m. and not reopen until the afternoon -- so the freeways around the area will be packed!

Good warning from Surfergirl. Here's the route map:

http://www.lamarathon.com/wp-content...cial%20map.pdf

Just bringing this back to the top in case anyone is coming to L.A. the weekend of March 20-21.

Thanks for the heads up. I live in the LA area but in a sense I'm coming to LA Sunday morning, driving from Orange to Thousand Oaks. Usually I take the direct route up the I-5 and the 101 through downtown LA and Hollywood and out to TO. But this time I think I'll stay on the I-5 past Griffith Park to the 101. And I'll time it so that I go by the Dodger Stadium area well after the race starts at 7:24, to give time for shuttle buses and private "drop-off" cars to clear out.

I have nothing against mega-marathons. Well, to be honest, although I try not to, I regard them with a little disdain. But this one is especially annoying to me because of the way it was instituted. As much as 15 years before this current Marathon was "inaugurated", there was a yearly Los Angeles Marathon operated by the City of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department. It occurred on a weekend in March and started and finished in Elysian Park at the Police Academy, which happened to be one of the sponsors. (The traffic control was incredible). But impact on traffic was minimal, because the route was mostly up Riverside drive through Griffith Park to a turnaround somewhere around Travel Town.

But, after the successful staging of the 1984 Olympic Marathon, some promoters came to the City with an idea for a Marathon patterned after the New York Marathon. which winds through the boroughs before finishing in Central Park. And the City bought it, with the prospect of revenue to the City And tourism dollars to the merchants. Then came the insult. They called it the FIRST LA Marathon! I was crushed, and so were many others I'm sure, because I had run the original LA Marathon 5 times over a period of years, starting in 1973. I can't find any reference to the original LA Marathon anywhere on the internet. All I have is a rather ragged t-shirt with a picture of someone in shorts holding up a torch. In big letters it says "LOS ANGELES MARATHON 1977".

Seems a lot of churches are upset as their members won't be able to get to Sunday services due to road closures. apparently, the older marathons were run on a holiday Monday.

Many churches have urged their members to do charitable service on Sunday in lieu of attending services. Hmmm. WWJD? He'd likely think this is a more productive way to spend a couple of hours every Sunday.

I think running through Griffith Park makes more sense than running through the streets of the city. I would rather run through nature than on concrete streets and disrupt the citizens. But then I don't see the point of a marathon anyway, I must be missing something.

dpdurand -- very interesting, I didn't know that! Of course in 1977 I was in my last quarter at UCLA and between studying and working, I didn't know much of anything that went on in L.A.

I will say that I remember going to see the first London Marathon when I was living there in 1981 -- had my trusty old movie camera back then (remember the ones without sound?!), and we took the Tube down to the center of London to be part of the festivities.

My husband has taken part in 2 L.A. marathons, so I'm not going to say anything negative about it, and I've taken part in a number of the Bike Tours that take place before the marathon (getting up at 4:30 a.m. was not fun) and I thoroughly enjoyed doing that, and based on the similar course, appreciated what runners must endure -- it's not something I could or would do.

Still, I rode my bike this morning up to the course (about 5 blocks to the north of me), and it was the first time I got to see the lead female and male runners. There was a lot of fanfare and festivity, with a stage and band playing at Westwood & Santa Monica. I kind of think in this economic climate, it's nice taking a break from the worries, and be able to clap and root people on to their personal best. Also, there were a number of L.A. students in green shirts -- kids in their pre-teens and young teens who have trained really hard to be part of this, and putting all that energy into it.