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How the LA Marathon Came to be on a Monday...
It was the City Council and without their thinking caps, says the LA Weekly. The City owns the marathon and contracts it out to the McCourt Group (yes, the same McCourt who owns the Dodgers). "Everyone seemed happy — until the first 'pre-planning' meeting" at Councilman Tom LaBonge's office, wrote Tina Dupuy. "There, somebody thought to ask senior transportation engineer Aram Sahakian about the street logistics of holding the marathon on President’s Day, February 16. Incredibly, nobody on the vast staff of the 15-member Los Angeles City Council, which employs 320 personal assistants at an annual cost of about $20 million, had bothered to fully review that date with the transportation engineers before the council approved the deal. Instead, Sahakian tells L.A. Weekly, 'It was done verbally at a meeting.'" Good one, guys. Too many people work on President's Day, traffic would be severely impacted so it was moved to Memorial Day, which is traditionally hot. Luckily, this year runners got lucky with the weather. Next year, all signs point towards a colder Sunday date, but you never really know in LA.
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