Why the marathon wasn't today

Sara Catania hasn't been running fulltime to get ready for her first marathon — though she certainly has been running plenty (see Run On), and recently completed the first race of her life. She still found time to look into why the Los Angeles Marathon wasn't run today, and why it will be run on Memorial Day — "in my view a terrible day for a marathon in L.A.," she writes today in an L.A. Times opinion piece.

Only in L.A. has pressure from religious leaders caused a marathon to be bumped from Sunday.

Why? Is L.A. that much more religious than other American cities? Are churches here that much more powerful than those elsewhere?

Partly, the decision was a matter of politics. In most cities, marathons are put on entirely by private entities. Here, the event is staged by a private group, but the city owns the Los Angeles Marathon name and seal, which gives the City Council more control over the terms of marathon contracts than in most other municipalities. And when One LA, a local arm of the Industrial Areas Foundation, lent its considerable muscle to the church effort, helping disparate African American, Latino and Korean churches along the 26.2-mile marathon route present a united front at City Hall, politicians listened.

Church leaders -- including the Rev. Clyde W. Oden Jr. of Bryant Temple AME, Samuel Chu of Immanuel Presbyterian and Father Richard Martini at Transfiguration Church -- had long been unhappy with the drop in attendance caused by road closures on marathon day. Last September, when ownership of the event was sold to Frank McCourt, owner of the L.A. Dodgers, they persuaded the City Council to stipulate that the marathon would be run on a holiday Monday as a condition of the new license.

Also from LA Observed contributors: Adrienne Crew at Native Intelligence digs into the 1939 LAPD raid of a burlesque show on South Main Street, Jenny Burman has abandonment issues at Chicken Corner, and Veronique de Turenne finds an irresistible dinner invitation in Malibu.