2006 LA Marathon Results

The weather was ideal for yesterday's LA Marathon. Temperature in Downtown LA was 53°F at 8:47am yesterday with clear skies and calm winds. This must have helped the runners. Both the men and women's course records were broken. A woman won the Battle-of-the-Sexes Challenge. Lidiya Grigoryeva of Russia broke the women's course record with a time of 2:25:10. She finished 16 seconds before the men's winner, Benson Cherono of Kenya. The race officials gave the elite women a lead of 16:46. This was based on the exact time difference between the men's and women's course records. Last year's differential was 15:50 which wasn't enough for last year's women's winner, Lyubov Denisov, to win the challenge (more, LA Times).

Later this week, I'll put together the stats for yesterday's marathon.

The 2006 L.A. Marathon

The 21st LA Marathon will be held this Sunday, March 19th. I did several posts last year on the race and included a bunch of stats. According to runningusa.org, the LA Marathon was the 4th largest marathon in the US in 2004 with a total of 19452 finishers. As expected, the New York City Marathon and the Chicago Marathon were one and two. I didn't know the Honolulu Marathon was number three with 22407 finishers.

One interesting aspect about the LA Marathon is the Battle-of-the-Sexes challenge in which the elite women compete with the elite men. The first man or woman who crosses the finish line wins. The men start between 15 and 20 minutes after the women. Last year's challenge bonus was $75K. This year it's $100K. (more prize info here).

The main problem with this challenge is determining the time of the head start for the women. The head start last year was 15 minutes and 50 seconds which was almost 5 minutes less than the year before. This greatly upset the women's winner, Lyubov Denisova, who broke the women's course record but lost to the male winner, Mark Saina.

According to this article, both Denisova and Saina will return to defend their titles and to compete for the $100K Challenge prize. Tomorrow the head start time should be announced.

One more interesting note about last year's marathon was the runner Tatiana Pozdnyakova. Last year she finished fifth in the overall women's division with a time of 2:31:05. The amazing thing was her age of 50. She just recently ran the Austin Marathon and finished with a time of 2:34:23.