LOS ANGELES — A year ago Kenya’s Elisha Barno waited until the 25th mile to make his move in the Los Angeles Marathon, blowing the race wide open with a 4-minute, 40-second mile.
Barno, 32, promises he and training partner Dominic Ondoro will follow a much more aggressive race plan for Sunday morning’s 33rd version of the race.
“We are going to push the pace and look for a very good time,” Barno said.
A race inspired by the 1984 Olympic Games is now the fourth largest marathon in the U.S., 10th biggest in the world with runners from all 50 states and 65 nations, 24,000 plus. Unable to compete with spring marathon giants like London or Boston in terms of finances or prestige—top Americans Galen Rupp, Shalane Flanagan, Jordan Hasay are all headed to Beantown in April—the real star of the Los Angeles race is a course that starts at Dodgers Stadium winds through Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills before finishing at the Santa Monica pier.
“A backstage pass” to Los Angeles, said Tracey Russell, chief executive of the Conqur Endurance Group, which is putting on the race.
The field will also include 144 legacy runners who have raced in all prior 32 versions of the race. Among the legacy athletes is Johnnie Jameson, 70, who ran the first two LA Marathons backwards and another while dribbling a basketball the whole way.
The men’s race features that last three champions with 2015 winner Daniel Limo and 2016 winner Weldon Kirui, both of Kenya, joining Barno on the starting line at Chavez Ravine Sunday morning. Hellen Jepkurgat, another Kenyan, also returns to defend her title.
Jepkurgat, who followed a similar race plan in 2017 to Barno’s, breaking the race open with a move in the 23rd mile, will likely find a familiar face in the lead pack. Jane Kibbii was second to Japkurgat in Los Angeles last year but then turned the tables at the Twin Cities Marathon last fall.
Barno and Ondoro prepared for Los Angeles with an elite training group of a dozen runners in Eldoret, a city of 289,000 built on a plateau 7,000-feet above sea level and the Rift Valley, the epicenter of Kenya’s global distance running dynasty.
Barno grew up poor in Eldoret quitting school as a teenager to help support his family by working a series of temporary jobs before joining the local industry—distance running– at 20, encouraged by his former next door neighbor Yobe Ondieki, the former World 5,000 meter champion and the first man to break 27 minutes in the 10,000.
“He was neighbor since I was young,” Barno told the Southern California News Group last year, smiling, holding his hand hip high. “Yobes said ‘run, run, you will make a lot of money. It will change your life.’”
After winning last year’s Los Angeles race, Barno won his third consecutive Grandma’s Marathon (in Duluth, Minnesota) in June and finished second to Ondoro at Twin Cities last fall. Barno ran a personal best 2 hours, 9 minutes, 32 seconds for a solid third place finish at the Houston Marathon in January. A year ago Barno spent the weeks leading up to the Los Angeles race in Santa Fe. This year he returned to Eldoret after Houston. And while the Houston race was just nine weeks ago, Barno promised he will be at full strength Sunday.
“I’m fully recovered,” he said.