The Los Angeles Marathon is an annual marathon held in Los Angeles, California since 1986.
It was inspired by the success of the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles. The race starts at about 8:15AM, and this year the marathon kicked off at Lankershim and Cahuenga near Universal Studios, and runs through Downtown Los Angeles, Koreatown, the Crenshaw district, and passes by the University of Southern California, as well as several other landmarks.
The course is 42.195 km - 26.2 miles (42.2 km) long.
There are more spectators that come out each year than any other marathon (over 1,000,000) and cheer on the 25,000+ runners by name, thanks to personalized bibs, which were introduced in 2003.
The 22nd Los Angeles Marathon, run on March 4, 2007, featured a new course that begins at Universal Studios Hollywood and runs through "globally recognizable landmarks" in the Los Angeles area.
For the first time, the race entered Boyle Heights on the East Side of Los Angeles, before heading back to the finish line downtown. The XXIII marathon took place on March 2, 2008.
On September 25, 2008, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt completed a deal to acquire operating rights to the Los Angeles Marathon. The basic course that will be used is the 2006 course, and the date for the XXIV Marathon was moved to May 25, 2009, Memorial Day.
The first-place male and female athletes are awarded a brand-new Honda Accord V6 sedan as well as $35,000. Starting in 2004, elite women have been given a headstart, in what is known as the Banco Popular Challenge, which awards $100,000 to the runner who crosses the finish line first.
Since 2005, the lead given to the women has been derived by the difference between the men's and women's course records. So far in its three-year history, the elite women have won the challenge two times, in 2004 by Tatyana Pozdnyakova, and in 2006 by Lidiya Grigoryeva, both Russians.