November 13, 2009 | 2:55 pm

The Dodgers’ New Marathon

Posted by Jack Weiss

The Los Angeles Marathon is now nice.

After several years of low-level controversies which threatened to marginalize the event, the McCourt Group—yes, that McCourt Group—has turned around the L.A. Marathon, put it on a new route to success, and created a civic enterprise that will give L.A. something to cheer about on March 21.

The Marathon in the past had been dogged by the sort of tempests that gave oxygen only to cynics and exasperated folks who wanted to invest in local ventures.

First, there was the longstanding debate about who should pay for the City’s Marathon-related expenses (I participated in this debate for a time).

Next came the perennial issue of the Marathon’s route.  The Marathon traditionally finished at the L.A. Coliseum, was run on a Sunday, and was a closed loop.  That meant that runners would inevitably traverse, and sometimes trap, communities in South and Central L.A. that placed a premium on Sunday attendance at houses of worship.  The community’s religious leadership complained, sometimes mightily.

I’m not blaming any ministers for their reaction—the response would have been much the same if you sent 25,000 sweaty men and women in shorts and tights down Pico Boulevard on a Saturday morning.

Still, City leaders took these concerns a few miles too far, and the press piled on.  The result was that last year the Marathon was forced to run on a Monday in May instead of a Sunday in March.

The running community, both elite and amateur, protested.  Not only was L.A. too hot in May to produce competitive results, the date switch threw off thousands of runners whose training schedules had been geared toward March.

In stepped Frank McCourt, the owner of the Dodgers.  He purchased the Marathon and set about remaking the franchise with the goals of creating new value for the Dodgers and the City.

The result?  A new Marathon route announced last week that gives the race a complete makeover. L.A. Marathon Course Map  I first heard about the new route from friends who were so excited about it they were motivated to start training for their first marathon.

The race will start in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, swing past City and Disney Halls, and head north to Hollywood.  Runners will then pass by the Capitol Records building, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Sunset Strip, before heading through West Hollywood and Rodeo Drive on their way west.  The route will then head down L.A.’s greatest running street—San Vicente—and finish at the beach.

It’s a race from Dodger Stadium to the sea, through Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and Santa Monica.  Runners will be energized by the beauty and vitality of the course; tens of thousands of new fans will be energized that the race is going through their neighborhoods for the first time.

So let me come out and say something so politically incorrect that usually only Joe Hicks and David Lehrer would dare—the 2010 Marathon will emphasize the Westside and that’s a good thing.

The only commentary I could find on the new route in the L.A. Times was that the race was now—get this—too “nice.”  This Is An L.A. Marathon?  I was trying to understand this “eat your vegetables” perspective when I received my copy of the latest issue of Runners’ World.  The main theme of its rankings the world’s top marathons (including New York and Big Sur) and running cities (including Portland, San Francisco, and Boulder)?  That they’re nice.  Runners’ World

So if the local press is upset that things in town are becoming too nice, well, so be it.  The rest of the City and thousands of runners will be thanking the Dodgers organization next March.

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