I met up with my good friend Billy yesterday to finish the course preview that we’ve been working on for a while. If you missed the other parts of the course preview you can find them here. Miles 6.2 to Mile 14, Mile 14 to Mile 20, Mile 20 to Mile 26.2.

This is pretty much hands down no questions asked the hardest part of the course. There are quite a few hills and it’s pretty tiring, but it’s also still at the beginning of the course, so I realize that I would still be feeling fresh and I’d rather this more bland part of the course be at the beginning than at the end. Now that I’ve ran the whole course, I’m really looking forward to the end of the race. I know what’s coming and I’m excited to have run the course and I think it will benefit me a lot.

We started off seeing this street randomly and had to take a picture! Marathon Street right off Sunset Blvd where the marathon route goes.

The first mile is actually inside Dodger Stadium, but since the Dodgers are incredibly lame, and I look like a troublemaker, they wouldn’t let us in to take the picture or run that part of the course. Boo-hoo. Oh well, we got kind of close, the closest I ever want to be at Dodger’s stadium.

Billy wanted to take a starting line picture and was devastated we couldn’t get into the area where the race actually started. I told him that I was not going to jail for this, so he would have to deal.

This is a hill that everyone will run up after the first mile. As I said before the area is pretty hilly. You are coming out of Dodger Stadium and run up a rather large hill then have a fairly large downhill after. I am not the biggest fan of the downhill since it hurts and there were some downhills to tackle on this section. We had gotten all the way down the downhill and Billy all of a sudden said, “Oh crap! The phones!”

He had taken our phones out and LEFT them on the transformer box back in front of the stadium. Him and I sprinted back over the hill and down the hill we just ran up only to find them perfectly fine. I about killed Billy.

Phewf. Safe and sound. Billy would have seriously died if that child was gone when we returned over the hill. Finally, we were off!

After mile 1 there wasn’t much going on the course to see. It’s an interesting area to say the least and let’s just say I’m glad that there will be huge pack running the LA Marathon during this part of the course.

There was a freeway overpass that we ran over and the snow on the mountains in the background was beautiful! I don’t know if there will be much snow come marathon day, but it was still pretty. It was pretty hot when Billy and I were running though, which was unexpected. I was scared I was going to be cold!

After another relatively large downhill we entered the entrance to Chinatown. It was a cool little area but you don’t run through it, just past the entrance.

Then we were already at mile 3 and I decided to climb up a fire hydrant and risk my life. Another area with not much going on.

As we were running down the streets we saw that there was a catering company and with catering company trucks in LA that means FILMING! I was so excited, but the only person we saw was a Justin Gurarini look-alike and some cameras. I still got super, super excited and had to do the whole tourist thing.

I thought this sign was pretty cool, it’s a bunch of ’sister cities’ of Los Angeles and showed how far away they are from Los Angeles.

Then, being a lame-o I had to take this picture in front of the huge, new Los Angeles Police Department building. Seeing this building also means you are starting up one of the largest and most daunting hills of the course. It’s a fairly long hill and once we got the top I was fairly winded. The top also holds a pretty cool feature of LA, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. On the way up to the top of the hill, you pass by this great lake of LA! Who knew that such a nice lake exists in Los Angeles?

Does anyone want to take a nice little dip in this beauty instead of finishing the marathon? Thought so! Keep running!

Here’s a video we took of how to text and run. :)

Here’s another video of us running up the hill and right as we are entering the Walt Disney Concert Hall area.

This is so a “I don’t even have words for this” moment. I told Billy that architecture normally doesn’t really do that much for me and I don’t notice much, but man, this building it simply amazing to look at. It is so cool to look at and I really was excited to get a more up close and personal look at it, since I’ve only seen it from the freeway since it was built.

Then mile 4 is right down the street from the concert hall. It was such a nice area once you are up that hill!

Mile 4 to Mile 5 was a whole lot of nothing as well. Just through some areas with a few more small hills. As I said before, this is the most hill-filled area of the course. Better here than at mile 20.

Finally we were approaching Sunset Blvd again and passed through Echo Park where there is actually a pretty lake in Los Angeles! It was such a nice day out, there were many people surrounding the lake and throughout Echo Park.

Somehow we lost the Mile 6 sign and so I just covered the .2 and made a little makeshift Mile 6 sign. It was at a busy intersection. It will be so different running the course without cars and being able to run in the street.

Right after the Mile 6 marker, I saw this pretty cool little fruit stand, since we were in a shady area there is no way I would be getting any fruit from this cart but I did find it to be funny and quirky so I had to take a picture.

Then we were back at the 10k mark! I was pretty happy to be done with the adventure for the day since it was pretty warm. I am ready to karate chop the LA Marathon! Though it’s by far the ‘hardest’ part of the course, I’m glad it’s in the beginning of the course and now that I’ve run the whole course I am glad that I will know what is coming with each section of the race.

Nothing like a post workout drink, like a…..

Slurpee!!! I was so thirsty and SO glad Slurpee was there to rescue me. I can’t wait to run the LA Marathon in 26 more days! I know that running the course for me was very helpful. Especially knowing what will come next and what points of the marathon I’m at and what parts I will struggle with will only be beneficial. Since this is a hill related post, check out the article I wrote about running hills on the Examiner. I love running hills and implementing them in your workouts helps out a ton when training!

Let’s do this LA Marathon! Tomorrow shall be a swell recap of my time in San Francisco!

xoxo

View Original Post at chicrunner.com

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• LA Marathon
• route