Los Angeles Marathon (2010 March 21)

Contents

1Summary
2Statistics
3Ken Bob's Stats:
4Story
5Who Ran Barefoot?
6Videos
7Running Barefoot Pre-Race Meetup
8Related Links
9Gallery

Todd, Alex, Julian, and Ken Bob

Summary

Nearly everyone I talked with about the Los Angeles Marathon was excited about the new “stadium to sea” course… me too. I really enjoyed all the landmarks, and, especially dipping my bare feet and legs in that cold salt water after running/walking 26.2 miles!

Statistics

Bib = 13047
26.20 Mile
hills (0-10): 5
City: Los Angeles
State: California
Unitied States of America

Ken Bob’s Stats:

06:09:55 (Ken Bob’s official time)
76 Barefoot 26.20 Mile races from 1998 to 2010/03/21
367 Barefoot races (any distance) from 1998 to 2010/03/21
Barefoot
Overall place: 16684
Gender place: 10636
Age division (age = 54) : 899

Story

Well, we certainly at the least, tied our previous record of 8 barefoot runners from start to finish in a single marathon… We’ll have to wait for confirmation from a few others, if they finished the whole course barefoot. Personally, I think it’s going to become a bit futile to try to keep track of all the barefoot runners in future races, especially these big city marathons with 10s of thousands of runners.

Also chatted with one woman at the expo, who has a titanium hip replacement (she wasn’t running the marathon). She said that it hurts when she wears shoes, but not when she goes barefoot!

Who Ran Barefoot?

Barefoot Ken McNeely #1459 (Redondo Beach, Califonia) 4:54:02
Barefoot Chris Runyan (Bellingham, Washington) 4:12:58
Barefoot Jim Nicar (Austin, Texas) 6:40:19
Barefoot Julian Romero (Los Angeles, California) 2:56:44
Barefoot Ken Bob Saxton (Huntington Beach, California) 6:09:55
Barefoot Alex Romero – AKA: Mongo Jones (Las Feliz, California) 3:20:40
Barefoot Todd Byers (Long Beach, California) 6:09:32
Mateo Frank (Redondo Beach, California) 6:31:52
Barefoot Mountain (Hacienda Heights, California) 6:12:59
Gershom Hernandez #13384 (San Diego, California) 5:09:23
Joe Seeley #16858 (Ventura, California) 3:51:58
Alex Arana # 17110 (Lake Elsinore California) 7:10:59 (caught barefoot in a photo)

etc.. (not sure how many other barefooters there, Mateo guessed about 15 total – we saw plenty taking off the shoes – not necessarily their socks)

Also lots of people trying to run barefoot while wearing Vibram Five-Fingers. I invited at least one to come to my workshop in Los Angeles next Saturday so that he might learn the importance of getting feedback from all those wonderfully sensitive nerve endings in our bare soles. And many more taking off their shoes and running in socks. Even one running with duct tape wrapped around her feet!

Videos

Running Barefoot Pre-Race Meetup

Meet for pictures, hand shaking, foot-comparison, well-wishing, and generally just wasting our time, before starting the marathon.

Parking Lot “L” (look for the big baseball with an “L” on it – see photo)

“L” is for Lost Our Shoes as in Lost-Our-Shoes (LOS) Angeles Marathon” (Detailed Parking Map). Just a short walk from the starting corrals (at least the slow paced corrals)

We’ll try to meet up at 6:15 to 6:30 AM, if that’s not too early for everyone… (should give some of the faster runners time to squeeze ahead of the crowd.