The unemployed training for the L.A. Marathon
Crossposted to darksumomo.
L.A. Times: Running from the recession
By Baxter Holmes
Your foot strikes the ground about 1,500 times when running a mile. It strikes the ground about 39,300 times when running 26.2 of them. That's called a marathon, for which you need both training and a routine.
For 10 years, Michael Ward had a routine: Up at 4 a.m., breakfast, catch the bus to work as an editor at an aviation newsletter, then leave at 6 p.m. and back to his one-bedroom, one-bathroom Santa Monica apartment.
But on May 1, 2009, when it was time to get up, Ward, 39, didn't. He had been laid off the day before. He lay in bed for hours, angry, scared.
His head told him he needed to be somewhere, that there was work to do.
Then it hit him: "There's nothing there."
He had to get out of the house. So he grabbed a pair of old sneakers and went to Clover Park near Santa Monica Municipal Airport. He took a step. Then he took about 3,000 more, running two miles, using a trash can as a lap marker.
He ran on adrenaline and the anger of being let go. He used long strides as he had when he was a sprinter at Servite High School in Anaheim.
When he finished, he wasn't tired, just hungry. He had skipped breakfast that morning. He came home and went through job ads. He wondered what to do.
On Sunday, Ward will be among 25,000 runners in the L.A. Marathon, many of them participating in their first marathon, just as he will be. But his story is not unfamiliar. He is part of a new group of marathoners: those who are unemployed and do distance running as a way to manage stress.
There are no direct statistics linking the two, but as job losses have reached historic highs, so too has marathon participation.
Running experts have found that during this recession, the number of new runners has surged, largely because it's cheaper than a gym membership.
It costs only a pair of shoes and time.
"It's a terrific sport for this economy," said Gary Smith, a marathon coach from Long Beach.
About 25 new marathons were founded in 2009, putting the total at more than 470 in the U.S. In 1999, there were about 320. This last year a record 465,000 people finished a marathon in the U.S., up about 10% from 2008. It was the biggest increase in more than 25 years.
The growth in marathon participation is not solely linked to the recession. There is the advancement of social networking, which makes it easier for people to train together and for race organizers to target specific groups.
But running coaches say during this recession, the unemployed have turned to marathons because they need a challenging goal that requires structure and offers control.
I have no idea if this is also happening in Detroit. Somehow, it doesn't strike me as a response the locals would take.