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Los Angeles Marathon date changed to Memorial Day, May 25, 2009; Heat Stroke and Overtraining now an issue
By admin | November 11, 2008
The new owners of the Los Angeles Marathon have changed the date again. They requested and got approval from the Los Angeles City Council to change the date from March 1, 2009 to Presidents Day Monday February 16, 2009.
Now the date has been changed again. This time to Memorial Day, Monday, May 25, 2009. The owners of the L.A. Marathon just sent out thousands of e-mails on Monday November 10, 2008 to past participants to notify them of the change.
This will cause the possibility and likelihood of overtraining which in turn means mild to severe running injuries for many.
When the new owners changed the date to February 14, 2009, they justified it by reportedly saying that the Editor of Runnersworld believes that the 6 month training program was two weeks longer than necessary and it was likely that runners would be overtraining. Assuming this to be true, that means the runners are now overtraining by 99 days. The typical training program by the LA Roadrunners, LA Leggers, Student Run LA and others generally involve a 6 month training program. This in effect would lengthen the training program to 9 months. Yes, lets do the math. March 1, to May 25 is 85 days longer. What a disaster. Nine months to prepare for a marathon?
A lot of runners will be injured and hurt from overtraining and may never make it to race day.
Instead of running in a cooler temperature, it will be much hotter as May 25, 2009 is near the start of summer. Higher chance of runners getting heat stroke for that date. Heat is always an issue in any race.
I say lets keep the original date of Sunday March 1, 2009. Its not too late.
If the new owners refuse to keep the original date, I would suggest starting the race earlier in the morning at 6:00 a.m.
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Topics: la marathon, guest-blogger |
