A marathon trip

Years ago, my brother started volunteering at running races as a support guy and eventually turned it into a part-time gig. About 10 years ago, he started working on what is probably "The Big Show" of LA events which is the Los Angeles Marathon. After his first race there, he told me tales of how he helped setup the race in the middle of the night before the 7am start.

During those early hours of street closures, before 25,000 runners descend on LA to walk and run all day long on famous streets, he'd be setting up water stops and aid stations when he noticed there'd be a couple hundred bike riders cruising along the course and generally having a good time.

Sometimes they were fixed gear gangs racing from the start to the finish, sometimes they were roller skaters, and sometimes there was a mobile DJ party complete with fully lit up bikes and guys doing wheelies the entire way.

He knows I love to ride my bike in unusual places so every March he texts me, asking if I'm going to ride the marathon course with the "wolf pack" of other riders poaching the course. Every year I have a weak excuse even though I've always wanted to do this from the instant I first heard about it.

I sincerely love the Portland Bridge Pedal because they close all the freeways in the city for just one day and let thousands of people ride around and mostly I love it because I can stop at the top of huge road bridges with amazing views of Portland and leisurely take photos in places where it's impossible to normally stop and enjoy the view.

Last year I came close to making the trip down for the LA marathon but ultimately didn't. Then my introverted, sleep-loving friend Greg woke himself up in the middle of the night and rode the marathon course alone (with thousands of other riders) and said it was a blast and I was both insanely jealous and instantly regretted not going.

I finally commit

I'm busy with freelance work and projects but I've been kicking this can down the road for far too long. I started driving to LA on Thursday night from Oregon, eventually making it to my aunt's house in Ventura by Friday evening.

Saturday I lolygagged around, running errands and generally enjoying the LA sun. I took a nap and went to bed early knowing I had to wake up in the middle of the night.

A miscalculation

The year before, Greg said he rode it around 3am and it was crowded with thousands of riders, so we figured if we showed up around 2am, we'd have extra time to enjoy the vacant streets of LA. My brother did say the marathon staff got a bit nervous about bikes because they needed everyone off the course by 6AM, so going earlier sounded better.

Me, Greg, and Michael all found each other at the corner of Sunset and La Brea around 2.30AM, but the streets weren't closed yet. Greg even checked last year's photos and they were all taken around 3AM with miles of closed streets filled with happy riders.

We ended up chatting and shooting the breeze for about an hour before the tow trucks descended on long-forgotten parked cars left at curbs, then we started riding along the course.

At first, it looked like this:

After a couple miles, it was nearly 4AM and the streets still weren't completely closed so we decided to backtrack towards the start, hoping the street closures were further along up there. We knew the main "group" of riders was taking off from Dodger Stadium around 4:30AM with a police escort.

We eventually saw the approaching police escorts and wolf pack with about 200-300 riders, here's a smattering of them near the end of the group:

Riding past famous stuff, but it's a ghost town

The highlight of the whole ride was when we got to cruise up and down Sunset Boulevard with it completely closed down, just us three riding along on empty, open streets. Oh look! There's the Chateau Mormont where John Belushi died. There's the Roosevelt Hotel where I used to go see jazz concerts in the 1990s. There's where the old Tower Records shop was. There's the Pantages theater and the El Capitan theater.

For an hour or so we rode along the busiest streets of Los Angeles by ourselves and it was incredible.

Skateboarders and college film students, where the hell were you?!

At one point, we rode past the Sunset Car Wash which is pretty much the gnarliest, most well-known, hallowed skate spot in the world. It's a place that everyone in LA who skates knows about and has always wanted to session freely. People have broken bones at this spot multiple times and gotten hit by cars. You have to jump off a roof, do a gnarly trick, land on a steep bank, then ride out, all during a red/green light cycle that temporarily blocks traffic near the landing.

In 2019, after decades of people talking about it, Milton Martinez kickflipped it successfully, in the middle of a day during rush hour traffic in between traffic light changes.

We rode past it Sunday morning with no one around, no security yelling at anyone, and no car traffic. Skaters, where the heck were you Sunday morning?! Anything on Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard that you can't normally skate could have been sessioned for hours.

Same goes for every kid in the UCLA or USC film programs. Do you remember in Vanilla Sky when Tom Cruise walks through an empty Times Square as he realizes he might be the last person on earth? It was a lot like that.

Where were the filmmakers with their little guerrilla production crews? You could've shot scenes of someone walking down the middle of Sunset Boulevard completely alone. You can't pay LA enough to ever get that shot on a normal night but on marathon night, it was free for anyone to try filming.

Then there were eggs

We rode until about 5:30 when our bodies started to get freezing cold. We met up at a 24hr IHOP on the course near where we started, got some early breakfast alongside 30 motorcycle cops, then drove back. I slept for 3-4hrs that morning before I headed home.

Speed bump ahead

I drove our Ford Maverick pickup with my Canyon Grizl bike hanging off the tailgate, kind of like this generic product photo:

I got gas a couple hours into my trip north, was vaguely concerned about leaving my unlocked bike in the bed of the truck but fueled up, got snacks inside and saw the bike in the back on my way out. A few hours later, I pulled off the 5 freeway because I was getting drowsy/tired, saw there were no open rest areas for hundreds of miles (many in the Central Valley are closed right now for some reason), so I pulled to the side of a freeway onramp on some dirt under a nice shady tree to catch a quick nap.

I slept for about 30 minutes, woke up feeling great, then got back on the road. After a few miles it started raining hard so I looked in my rearview mirror to see how the bike was doing and it was gone.

I am pretty sure someone plucked the bike out of the bed of the truck while I was asleep in the drivers seat of my (thankfully) locked truck. I even have my front facing dashcam video of most of the nap before the USB port shut off, but reviewing the footage, I don't see anyone driving away with the bike.

If you see this bike for sale on any San Joaquin Valley craigslist or Facebook Marketplace sites, hit my contact link to email me any links to it. I have the serial number of the frame on my receipt from Canyon and would love to get my customized bike back.

Bonkers. But on the bright side, I guess I get to shop for a newer gravel bike now.

Tips for next year

I heard from my brother today that usually the LA streets are closed by 2AM but the city workers in charge of it were running 3-4 hours late prepping the course this year.

Even so, I'd probably suggest anyone wanting to jump on the giant party ride of the LA marathon shoots for getting near the start of it around 4AM on Sunday morning of the race. You'll find a pack of 200-300 riders that get a police escort in front and behind as they ride the course. If you want to stay away from them, take off before or shortly after them.

Every year the LA Marathon course changes. Some years it's a loop course, but sometimes it's a point-to-point ride like this one was. For the one-way rides, we picked a spot near the mid-point to park and ride up and down the course so we could fetch our cars after. In the end, we covered 10-15 miles (no idea because I lost my bike computer with the bike too) over a couple hours of riding.

It was fun, despite the weird setback on the way home, and I'm definitely doing this again in the future.

Oh, and definitely lock your bike up in the back of a truck, even if you're never going to leave your truck unattended.