‘She uses vaseline, vaseline, vaseline’, you know, the famous Flaming Lips’ song, it takes its real signification (but not its vague sexual innuendo) when you run a marathon. Along the route, between the water/Gatorade stations, they hand out Vaseline-on-a-stick like the new candy, and after a few friction burns. you totally understand why.
First of all, this LA Marathon was fucking cold, it is always sunny and warm in this town except the day of the race, which started with a frigid temperature of 45ºF… fortunately it did not rain otherwise I don’t know if I had survived. It took me a few miles to be aware I still have feet, they were literally frozen.
They had announced 32 bands along the route, but the problem is that you can only hear a few seconds of them when you run, then, when you begin to hit the wall around mile 20, only your legs and feet matter, and Bruce Springsteen could have been playing that I wouldn't have noticed!
Still there were a few appropriate songs I remember, ‘Band on the Run’, 'I believe I can fly', the original soundtrack of Rocky, and… my mind is blank suddenly, but the music essentially reflected the different neighborhoods we ran through, Chinatown, the Mexican streets downtown, Koreatown… the funny thing is that, at one point, the Asian drums were mixing their beats with some Latino trumpets, and it did not sound so bad. As we were running through all the different areas, and it was funny to realize that the most heartfelt music was actually played in the poorest communities, I can’t remember much from Beverly Hills and Santa Monica,… except the cheerleaders, and West Hollywood had obviously some good-looking drag-queen ones.
And I forgot,… we always start the run with the very appropriate Randy Newman’s ‘I love LA’,… you really have to love this town to rundown this east-west 26.2-mile race. Still, nobody thinks about Belle and Sebastian’s ‘The Loneliness of a Middle (long) Distance Runner’, because at the end, this is what it is about, you with yourself for a long time.
I never take any music with me when I run marathons, it is simply too long and I want to avoid another friction around the ears, but I have enough music memorized to entertain myself… I was playing in my head the songs I have played on my iPod lately, from the Bad Brains, to Ceremony, Fucked up, Iggy and the Stooges. Queens of the Stone Age, Rage Against the Machine – a totally appropriate band when you are running on a treadmill. Sure, recently I was looking for music violent or dynamic enough to stimulate my training. Now that it is over, I suppose I can go back to the more mellow stuff? The Shins and Sharon Van Etten may be?
But what's left after a long run like this? Not the pain and suffering, rather the hundred of encouragements coming from complete strangers, the ‘you can do it’, ‘you’re almost there’, you are a rock star’,… really? Talking about rock stars, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers did run it as he tweeted ‘I ran the l.a. marathon today in 3 hours 41 minutes and 49 seconds. i'm gonna take a nap now. love to all’, and that’s a very fast time… for a Caucasian I mean, because it's just a promenade pace for a Kenyan! Also, Maroon 5’s James Valentine did it in 4:09. Too bad I never spot celebrities when I run, there are simply too many people.
This year, I also did not spot too many weirdos, as I remember seeing a guy dressed up like Elvis Presley and pulling a boom box on wheels a few years ago,… still I saw someone carrying a flag on a pole (why bothering honestly?) and another person carrying some golf clubs???? Wtf? But may be he had scheduled a golf party in Santa Monica. Also there was Jesus Christ walking in sandals all the way to the sea, may be an answer to all these countless and insane people carrying signs saying ‘Repent, Jesus saves’ or ‘Trust Jesus’ along the route. Beside, I gave the finger to one of them while passing ahead of a guy wearing a Black Flag t-shirt,… totally fitting!
But (and I am totally doing this next year if I ever run the marathon again) I saw a girl wearing a t-shirt advertising her music blog…. What about a rock nyc t-shirt seen by 26,000 people during over 4 hours? Yes, I will not forget about this and the vaseline.