Asics Los Angeles Marathon (2014) – Part 7 (When Everything Made Aurora Cranky – Part 2 (Dogs And Spectators))

March 15, 2014

Picking up from yesterday –

And more things that I’m annoyed with… So, there was this man I saw a couple of times on the course (once I got slower and wasn’t in a sea that was quite so packed as before) who was walking his Dalmatian!

The guy didn’t have a race bib or anything. He just seemed to be some dude wandering around walking his dog.

Guess what, dog dude? A marathon is not the place to take your dog out for a stroll. I don’t even need to elaborate on that, because that sentence makes so much sense.

And, the guy took things from our aid stations! I saw him try to figure out what Gu was and try some… If non-runners are taking things from aid stations, this could be one of the reasons we don’t have any Gatorade!

Finally, as if I haven’t called out everyone already…

Spectators, I love you. I really love you. It means the world to me that you take time out of your day to fight closed streets, traffic, and all that jazz – and you make these sweet, wonderful signs supporting us.

So, I’m sorry to call you out, but when the sun starts shining brighter and brighter and parts of the field are getting slower and more thinned out… I understand that you want to be close enough to be able to give us high-5s and all that fun stuff.

And when the field isn’t as packed, it’s easy to start to sneak in closer and closer to us on the road so you can reach us and such…

However, when you come in too deep to the road, to the point where you’re sort of at the edge of the shade – do you realize that that takes away our shaded area?

We don’t have room to be in the precious, precious shade that we oh so desperately need, because you are there. And when there’s a big enough line of enough of you, you’re almost like a makeshift barricade. So it’s hard to run around you and basically we get pushed into the sun.

I love you. I’m just saying, share the shade if you can, please.

I’ll pick up with less cranky things tomorrow.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?