I ran a marathon.

It was the first and only such endeavor of my life and momentarily I will impart, in glorious detail, the day's soaring highs and near-death lows.

But first, a word to my sponsors, meaning those of you who forked over the cash to help people with AIDS and HIV, and so I could get the training I needed to do this thing.

Thank you.

If you're a faithful follower of Run On, you know that my marathon journey began with a diminutive brochure packed with big promises.

Run a marathon even if you've never run before!, it said, and raise money for people with AIDS and HIV while you're at it.

I did, and I did.

In fact I outdid. I ran longer and faster than I ever have in my life and I raised plenty more than I was asked to.

Plus I blogged about it, providing a fleeting weekly diversion for lots of people who may have never run an inch in their lives (not unlike myself, before September) but who read blogs because you can do that without moving.

Which brings me back to the sponsor part. Because if you didn't sponsor me, guess what? You can still help people with AIDS and HIV. Lucky, lucky you.

AIDS Project Los Angeles, the beneficiary of my marathon run, is a key source of care and services for thousands of Los Angeles residents living with AIDS and HIV, many of whom subsist on $10,000 a year. Imagine what your life would be like living on $833.33 a month. Now imagine what it would be like to live on that and have AIDS.

And now our governor, in his infinite wisdom, is planning to eliminate funding for medication for 35,000 indigent Californians with AIDS and HIV. Yes, we're in a budget crisis, but really? Really?

APLA does great work. They're helping folks who are being hit hardest by our current economic meltdown. They might even send a contingent up to Sacramento to talk some sense into the governor. If they could afford it. But their funding is shrinking like everyone else's. That's where you come in.

Think of the diversion from real-life concerns this blog has provided you, the vicarious armchair thrill lo these many months. How much is that worth to you? A hundred bucks? Fifty?

Click here and give it directly to APLA.

Do it now. I'll wait for you. Go on. You'll be glad you did.

[Pause.]

Hey, thanks for doing that.

Now we can get on to the marathon part, titled "My Marathon in Neurochemistry: The Brain Candy that Fueled Me, Nearly Killed Me and Then Sent Me Over the Moon, A Completely Unscientific Account of What I Experienced and Why Based on Cursory Web Research (mostly from the Runner's World website), Inference and Intuition."

Running.

On my own two feet.

Just like coach promised.

And I feel very, very, very good.

And I really need a shower.

More later.

I could continue my weeks-long whining about my punk knee, for which I got a cortisone shot this morning from a fine orthopedist named David B. Golden, whose very name rings with promise, and whose impressive credentials include a stint as assistant team physician for the 2001 World Champion New England Patriots.

Dr. Golden is an expert in sports-related injuries, and while he didn't write the book on knee pain he did co-write a chapter - in the second edition of the Manual of Pain Management (chapter 17, between scroiliitis and foot pain).

He was reluctant to give me the shot. He warned me that it probably won't be all that effective in staving off the debilitating pain in my illiotibial band that has been causing me so much woe.

But I explained that this is a one-time deal, that I've been training since September, for fool's sake, and that I can't throw all that away because of some dang-blasted last-minute knee flare-up.

In a word, I begged.

He relented and administered the five minute procedure (a simple prick of a needle --less painful than getting your ears pierced) and I have the Band-Aid on my right knee to prove it.

Whether it will do the trick or not, I don't know. But I'm not going to spend this last pre-marathon blog posting going on about that.

I could go on about last-minute jitters, which one reader calls PMS--pre-marathon stress. Symptoms include sleeplessness, over sleeping, loss of appetite, overeating, and a vague sense of dread. But why dwell on the negative?

I could wax poetic about my final pre-marathon run, on the trail around the Silver Lake Reservoir. I was up and out by 5:30 a.m. - my LA Times hadn't even arrived (or maybe, I worried, they've gone so broke they've discontinued home delivery?) -- and the air smelled strangely, delightfully, of citronella and graham crackers.

The morning was cool and overcast, my legs and lungs were cooperating and I had the trail all to myself. Runner's nirvana.

I've been feeling a sense of calm all week - a type of calm that has come over me only three times in my life, once before I was married and then again in the days before the births of my two children.

It's a calm you have to talk yourself into after talking yourself down from a heightened sense of anxiety and fear. The choice is either to stay fearful and anxious or to remind yourself that you're heading toward something absolutely marvelous and completely of your own choosing and embrace a detached bliss.

But why go on about me? None of this would have been remotely possible without the superlative guidance of one Coach Scott Boliver, who made the 80-mile round-trip trek from his home in Brea to the training site in Griffith Park every Saturday morning from October to nearly June.

Scott is a prison psychologist who seems to spend every non-working moment of his life training marathoner wannna-bes. Our start time was 8 a.m., but Scott would routinely arrive two hours early to stake out our route, setting up mile markers for us along the way to help keep us from getting lost. He'd try to vary the route as much as possible and he'd hand out both maps and written directions. On the week of the pre-marathon 26-mile run, he got to the park so early that police took him for a hustler and bore down on him with bright lights and amplified commands.

As the runs got longer, he organized games like the Amazing Race and Runner's Poker to keep the runners engaged. Sometimes runners would groan about the games or choose not to participate, but they'd come around when they saw Scott (who paid out of his own pocket) taking the winning groups out to breakfast or bringing them special treats like popsicles and ice (which, like all cold things, are highly coveted on long runs).

He kept our brains occupied while pushing our bodies to do what we thought they could not. He once sent us up a very steep hill without any advance warning, but he heaped on the praise after we'd accomplished the task.

Each week he brought his posse with him. That included son Alec, a competitive swimmer on his high school team who refilled the runner's water bottles on the course, and his mom and dad, Pat and Ray Boliver, who every week spent their own money to stock a snack table halfway through the run loaded with pickles, peanut butter-coated crackers, peanuts, pretzels, Gatorade and the occasional home-made banana bread. On Easter weekend they brought coconut macaroons and mini brownie cupcakes topped with Jordan almonds.

Coach Scott exudes empathy. When runners would ask him about every little pinch and blister he'd take it all as seriously as the questioner required. He never talked about his own aches and woes. When the wildfires last fall came within a few feet of his home, he didn't mention it to the group and didn't miss a training.

The training for the LA marathon was supposed to end in March (and then February). According to that schedule, Scott and the other APLA coaches would have had a month or two off before they started training a new group of runners for the Disney Half Marathon this summer and the Maui Marathon in the fall.

When the LA Marathon got put off until Memorial Day, Coach Scott stayed on as our trainer, even though it meant he would be training three separate groups of runners for three separate marathons at once -- hundreds of whining, high-injury non-athletes just like me -- which he's been doing and which would have driven any normal person out of his mind my now. That's where being a psychologist comes in handy.

Scott is in his mid-40's and came to marathoning less than ten years ago -- fairly late in life. When he first started running he was morbidly obese - it took him more than nine hours to complete his first marathon. After losing more than 100 pounds he ran it in under five hours, and decided to start coaching.

When I first started training - and blogging about it - last fall, I got numerous emails from readers who told me how lucky I was to have Scott as my coach. Yeah right, I thought. Like I really need somebody to tell me how to run.

I've never had a coach before. Not a sports coach anyway. I've had writing coaches, and a friend's wife worked for a while as a life coach.

I never had any kind of organized P.E. at my inner-city elementary school, and I got enough flak from my meager attempts to learn double-dutch that I had no interest in ever attempting to join a team of any kind. I taught myself to ride a bike, my mother taught me to water ski and a girl named Donna who lived down the street showed me how to hula-hoop.

I weaseled my way out of all physical exercise in high school by playing flute in the band. In college we were all encouraged to coach one another (pity anyone who might have relied on me) and after that I pursued exercise of the non-coached variety (swimming, bicycling, yoga).

Before the marathon training, the closest I'd come to the coach experience was having an editor. The relationship is somewhat similar. You have to trust your editor completely, to follow his or her guidance and advice, even when you can't see how it's going to work. You do it because you share a common goal and because-- if you're lucky -- you like them.

I've had many editors, most of them adequate, some of them awful, a very few of them great. The makings of a great editor include smarts, empathy, wisdom, good judgment and the ability to manage people. A great editor, like a great coach, extracts from you your best possible self and your best possible work.

In a thousand small ways, Coach Scott has managed to do that. When I signed up to train I was a little grumpy and a little skeptical, an outsider observing and commenting on the process. Somewhere along the way I became a booster, a pace group leader, a true believer in the method.

This is my one and only marathon, and, as I've said before, the closest I'll ever get to a team sport. Scott Boliver is the one and only coach I'll ever have. Lucky me, I got the best.

Sure I'm still grumpy --and of late also gimpy -- but I'm in it to the end. Thanks, Coach.

For weeks, if not months, I've been wishing for the whole thing to get here already. As Coach Scott put it last Saturday: "You're trained longer than any group in AIDS Marathon history."

Yet now that it is finally about to arrive - a week from Monday, no less-- I feel completely unprepared.

The fear that worked so well for so long in motivating me to get out of bed every weekday morning at 5:30 to squeeze in a quick run ("If I don't get out of bed and get running, I'll never be able to run the marathon") has been overcome by a debilitating, fatalistic malaise.

"If I'm meant to run the marathon, I will run it," I tell myself as I turn off the alarm and pull the covers up to my chin. So my regular running routine is, um, a little off.

This circumstance has been brought on in no small part by the knee ailment I've been battling for the past few weeks, a common -- albeit uncommonly painful--condition caused by swelling of the illiotibial or IT band.

Last Saturday I ran ten miles with my pace group. I was running and chatting and feeling fine when the pain hit somewhere around mile nine. The last mile left me wondering how I am ever going to drag myself through the full 26.2.

To combat the (literally) crippling pain, I've been dutifully undertaking the stretches and exercises recommended to me by my orthopedist, which are pretty much the same old boring stretches you do in P.E. (Arms against the wall, feet flat, lean. Cross legs, bend at waist, hold. One leg back, one leg forward, lean. Yawn. Repeat.)

Just for fun, I've thrown in the stretches recommended by my co-runner (and co-IT band pain suffer), Rachel. Her physical therapist recommended that she position herself lengthwise atop a foam cylinder (like a hair roller on steroids) and move across the pained area multiple times daily.

Which I have, and which results in unnerving crunching sounds emanating from somewhere deep within the knee-thigh-hip region accompanied by evermore pain. But pain is weakness leaving the body, at least according to the Marines. If that's so, then weakness sounds like potato chips.

And which, look here, really are potato chips! Of which I've been eating more than I should as a palliative for what ails me, and which seem to have fallen under the roller. My chip consumption would horrify any serious runner (Ack! The saturated fat!) and will certainly only exacerbate my sluggish pace.

My co-runner Dwayne thinks all this roller/stretching stuff is nonsense and I should just get a cortisone shot and be done with it. "Get the shot and get back out there," he whispered as I limped toward the finish line. "That's what the pros do."

I'm calling the doc now.

You may recall that last fall I wrote about our my pace group's namesake, an Olympic marathoner from rural Mexico named German Silva whose claim to fame was his navigational confusion during a New York marathon.

While in the lead he strayed from the designated course, was forced to retrace his steps, and still managed to win. For at least the past decade and possibly longer, Silva's name has graced the pace group to which I was assigned last fall.

As the name "pace group" suggests, one is technically assigned based on one's running pace.

But over the course of these many months of training, I've come to believe that my running mates and I were assigned to the German Silvas we embodied the Silva spirit of stick-to-it-iveness.

Thus my invented explanation last weekend for the switch: as is customary in competitive sports when a team retires the number of a player so superlative that no other player can wear that number, so the trainers at AIDS Marathon deemed our pace group so exemplary that it was time to give the German Silva name a much-deserved rest.

The truth is not nearly as flattering to us. "The organization just thought it was time to honor some of the more recent runners," Coach Scott explained.

Oh. You mean it's not because of our extra months of training? It's not about our remarkable development as runners, and as a pace group?

"Nope."

I'll stick with my modified reality. Whatever the reason, our group is the last of the German Silvas, which means we have a legacy to uphold, or create.

There's no way I'll have the chance to get lost during the marathon by running so far ahead of everyone else, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that, with my bum knee, I may be so far behind the other 25,000-odd runners that I'll stray from the designated route. (Note to self: bring a map.)

Speaking of my bum knee, when I described my injury (searing pain that appeared around mile ten, originated on the outside of my right knee and traveled up to my hip, becoming progressively worse until it caused my knee to buckle), everyone I spoke to identified it as an inflamed illiotibial, or IT band.

It's one of the most common running injuries and there are numerous websites with suggestions for stretches and strengthening exercises to combat it.

But, just to be on the safe side, I went to see an orthopedist. The first thing I noticed in the doctor's office is that everyone who worked there looked like an athlete. I guess it makes sense that if you're active in sports you might get interested in sports medicine.

A nurse who looked like a basketball player took me to see an X-Ray technician (football) who took me to see a doctor (golf). When he saw my X-Ray he got very excited. "Take a look at this," he said to the internist at his side (swimming). He walked over to the examining table, picked up my leg as if it were a treasured nine iron. "Feel this," he said to the intern as he handed her my bent knee.

"The fibblabla and the tibblabla are mortocorturalbla and extendo malto bla bla bla," he said. That's not really what he said, but I hadn't thought to bring my notebook and that's what I remember.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means everything is perfect," he said. "Your joints are in perfect shape."

Wow.

The doctor assured me that running 26.2 miles in the excruciating pain caused by the inflammation of my IT band would do no permanent damage.

"So when my knee buckles that doesn't mean there's something terribly wrong?" I asked.

"Nope," he said. "That's just your body responding to the pain."

Oh, is that all?

"There is one thing to keep in mind," he said. "That buckling might cause you to fall down, and then you really could injure yourself."

Lovely. But now that I have the Silva legacy to uphold I'm going to have to stick it out, collapsing knee and all. Even if I wind up not only the last of the German Silvas, but the last of the LA marathoners.

No sooner had I turned off my laptop and laced up my track shoes but the running gods turned the full force of their considerable wrath upon me.

As you might recall, I was heading off for a 26-mile run last Saturday morning.

But at mile ten, a mighty, searing pain did strike my right knee and all but smote me as I jogged with my running crew down Burbank's shady lanes.

Here I'd been thinking I was immune to injury. I'd followed all the rules, getting (almost enough) sleep, eating (sort of) right, sticking to the prescribed running schedule. I was a textbook example of the hubris of the uninjured: injury wasn't possible.

To be fair, I'd suffered a similar debilitating ache during the 23-mile run. Not knowing any better, I continued, mile upon mile, barley limping across the finish line. But within hours after the run, the awful, raw feeling of a knee made of grated skin and bone disappeared and I experienced complete pain amnesia, not unlike what one encounters after childbirth (as the mother of two children, I know if what I speak).

So when the pain revisited me on Saturday I was taken completely by surprise. Once it settled in, however, the memory of the 23-mile run came back to me with alarming clarity and force.

I knew I would not drag myself through miles of pain again. And so I did something I have never once done during this entire epic six-month training. I stopped.

Before setting off without me, my running crew hugged me goodbye. "Don't feel bad," they told me. "Take care of yourself." Off they ran, feet in motion, while I stood there, feeling strange to be standing still.

To console myself I imagined how annoying it must have been to all the other runners that I never tripped or ached or quit. Finally I was getting my comeuppance.

Serves me right, I thought, as I sat in the shade at a water stop, waiting for Linda Francisco, the fundraising coach, to haul me back to the start line. You gripe, you pay. I thought back on what I wrote last week and realized I hadn't quit on running. Running had quit on me. It was like deciding to dump someone, only to have them beat you to the breakup.

Linda was happily photographing volunteers who had set up special themed water stops in celebration of this 26-mile lunacy. At one stop, moms in sombreros served shots of Gatorade. At another, with a car wash theme, several young ladies in cutoffs lounged around an authentically massive 70's-era boom box.

Back at the start line, still more volunteers were setting up the finish line, complete with a red carpet and balloon arc. Linda encouraged me to stick around and collect my medallion, but it seemed silly to take credit for a 26-mile run when I'd only made it to mile 11.

It was all of 10 a.m., giving me plenty of time to do all sorts of things I hadn't thought I'd have time for. I went to my son's soccer game, helped my daughter wrap a birthday present for a sleepover party and shopped for curtains for our living room.

I thought about running the entire time.

I'd look at the clock and think: "11 a.m. - they're at mile 18 by now--I hope Rachel's knee is holding up. Noon - it's still pretty cool out - I bet everyone is cruising right along. 12:30 - hmm - did Sandy bring sunscreen?" And on and on.

The degree of my disappointment surprised me. I had no idea how much I'd been looking forward to subjecting myself to endless hours of repetitive, high-impact motion. But I had.

So what of this mysterious pain? Both times it showed up around mile ten, a searing ache that grew in intensity as the miles mounted. I'm assured by many running veterans that I'm suffering the symptoms of an injured IT band, one of the most common running ailments and eminently treatable.

But when I showed up for my appointment with an orthopedist this morning, it turned out that an error had been made (those damn running gods!) and my appointment isn't until next week.

Good thing tomorrow's run is only eight miles.

I'm sick of running.

Sick of thinking about running, talking about running, writing about running.

I'm sick of Saturdays sunk into mile upon mile of concrete and searing knee pain followed by headaches and fatigue.

I'm sick of being an enthusiast and a booster and a jock. I want my lazy, lethargic self-absorbed life back. I want to drink beer on Friday nights and sleep in on Saturdays. A girl can only suck in her gut for so long.

In a little more than 12 hours I'm supposed to be setting off on my longest run yet--a 26.2-mile pre-marathon marathon. It makes sense, training-wise. For non-athletic, completely non-elite runners like me, running a full-on marathon-length run before the actual marathon helps build confidence and condition the body for the real marathon.

It also makes me exhausted just thinking about it.

It was just one of those nights
Just one of those fabulous flights
A trip to the moon on gossamer wings
It was one of those things

Today I went to my local running store and geared up for the big run. I bought some body glide to prevent chafing, some gooey goo to down for energy every hour or so and a "fuel belt" to transport the goo for the long haul.

I thought that being in the running store, with its walls covered in shirts and medals from runs conquered, would shake me out of my anti-run blahs. I even ran into another marathoner who was cheerfully chatting with the sales girl about various optimal clothing options.

"Getting ready for tomorrow," she asked me giddily

"Yeah," I said, trying not to look sulky.

"We're so slow we need a lot of fuel," she said, grabbing twenty or so packs of goo.

We are slow, aren't we? I thought to myself as I realized that tomorrow I am going to be running for six, maybe seven hours.

Why hadn't I thought this through from the start? I have a month to go until the actual marathon and it would be ridiculous to quit now, but somehow it also seems ridiculous to continue with this seemingly endless training when there are so many other things that need to be done, that I could be doing during those six hours.

I could be playing Legos with my son, or taking my daughter to the mall to buy earrings for her friend's birthday. Or organizing my desk. Or working in the garden. Or working on my book. Or having an actual conversation with my husband that isn't rushed by work or bed time or chores. Isn't that what weekends are for? Why am I spending all this time running around in the streets of greater Los Angeles?

I've already run 23 miles. Isn't that close enough?

If we'd thought a bit about the end of it
When we started jumpin' town
We'd have been aware that our love affair
Was too hot not to cool down

The two-month delay in the date of the marathon hasn't helped. I started training in late September, and I've kept my momentum up fairly well. It's only been in the past couple of weeks that I've begun to feel enough already.

If the marathon had happened in early March, as it has most years in the past, I'd already have slung my medallion over my bulletin board and moved on. A sweet October-to-March dalliance with the world of organized sports, or as close to it as I'll ever get.

Instead I'm feeling the weight of a million obligations as I set aside yet another Saturday for, um, running. My husband, who treated me like an Olympic hero for the first few months of my training and wanted to know the mileage I'd traversed on each long run, is now mainly interested in knowing what time I'll be home.

So good-bye, dear, good-bye and amen
Here's hopin' we'll meet now and then
It was great fun
But it was just one of those things

With apologies to Cole Porter

So when in the world am I supposed to run?

I've talked to runners who extol the virtues of running at odd hours. They dash out for a run during lunch, or right after work, or between dinner and bed time. But whenever I try to do that the run winds up getting squeezed out of my life by the need to do an interview or grade papers or meet a deadline or run to the market or pick up the kids. Before I know it two or three days have gone by and no running has happened.

The only way for me to get my daily run is to steal it from sleep, before dawn, when no one wants or needs anything from me. I'm up at 5:30 a.m. and on the track around the reservoir in Silver Lake by 5:45 - 6 at the latest.

It's quiet, the perfect time to meditate and work through story ideas and thorny book concepts, before the confining tightness of the day emerges. I've seen raccoons and egrets and heard woodpeckers. I've seen the entire basin socked in by fog, invisible just a few feet away. I've seen pinks and yellows in the sky, which hangs low and heavy before the sun pushes everything away.

By 6:30 I'm home and ready for the communal day, already having accomplished something and seen some things and had some peace.

That's the idealized version and it is a true account of my experience nearly all of the time. The other version, which comes upon me as suddenly as a stranger approaching in the dark, is one in which a stranger approaches in the dark, sending my heart racing and leaving me wondering about this foolhardy notion of running alone in the dark in Los Angeles.

So far, for me, strangers approaching in the dark are only on the way to their cars, or heading down the path, like me. But each time it happens I wonder.

What in the world makes me think this is safe? In my normal, non-running life I would never think of setting out on foot, alone, in the middle of the city, in the dark. I've somehow persuaded my brain that by donning running shoes and an AIDS Marathon cap I've created a protective bubble around myself, impermeable by unsavory types on the prowl.

It reminds me of the notion people get when they step into one of those crosswalks that don't have an accompanying traffic signal. A crosswalk is just a few lines painted on the asphalt, and yet pedestrians believe that those lines will protect them from the massive blocks of metal hurtling toward them. Sometimes people who walk in those crosswalks are hit by cars.

And sometimes women who run alone in the dark are attacked.

A Daily News story by Sue Doyle earlier this month described the ordeal of Emily McDivitt, a 33-year-old computer analyst who was out for a pre-dawn jog in the Valley when a stranger approached her in the dark, wrestled her to the ground and covered her mouth.

McDivitt recounted the attack for the Daily News:

"He clasped my mouth shut to the point of where I couldn't breathe. He had my nose," she said. "I thought I was going to die."

It was 5:45 a.m., and the blinds were still closed on the windows of tidy homes lining the 6200 block of Blucher Avenue.

Knowing attackers feed on fear, McDivitt tried to defuse the frenzy. She threw her hands up and stopped fighting him.

He took his hands off her mouth and said, "No scream," McDivitt recalled.

Then she threw a curveball... McDivitt began talking to her attacker, asking what his name was several times. The man never responded to McDivitt's questions. She was unsure if he understood English. He continued to grope her. And that's when she punched him across his face and grabbed his groin.

After he walked away, McDivitt scrambled to her feet and dashed home. She flung open her front door, screamed out for her husband David, 40, a retired Marine, and collapsed in the doorway from the draining surge of adrenaline. They called the police.

It turns out McDivitt had some martial arts training, which helped her fend off her attacker. She escaped with nothing more serious than a bruised hip. Still, she told the reporter, she felt lucky.

The story continues:

In 2007, there were 477 rapes reported in Los Angeles, 50 more than in New York that year despite its much bigger population, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report.

McDivitt reflects on that disturbing day and wonders if there was more she could have done. She thinks about what could have happened if her attacker had weapons or if wasn't alone.

"They tell you to run from your attacker," McDivitt said. "But I was running. He was running with me."

How often have I had that same thought? If I'm running already, how do I run away? So I continue worrying, and continue running.

Three Los Angeles City Council members made a motion this week to return the LA Marathon to a Sunday in March in 2010.

As those who have followed the soap opera "As the LA Marathon Turns" over the past two years know, the race was moved to a holiday Monday this year after the City Council caved in to a coalition of religious leaders. The church leaders complained that holding the race on Sunday - the day marathons are held in cities around the country - disrupted their services.

The drama continued to unfold as the organizers abruptly changed the date from mid-February to Memorial Day - May 25. A day that's far more likely to be blazingly hot than any day in February or March.

The City Council members who introduced the motion to return the race to a Sunday in March were responding to pleas from runners but also, more practically, to greatly reduced participation and the absence of network television coverage - both of which run counter to the city's interests in developing the race into a world-class marathon.

So religious leaders be damned - the City Council has finally come to its senses. I'm glad that City Council members Tom LaBonge and Janice Hahn introduced their motion - complete with comments about What Would Jesus Do if faced with a Sunday marathon - because I think they're acting in the best interests of the city and the race.

However, they aren't doing a thing for me. I'm not one of those dedicated souls who run the marathon year after year. This is it for me. This is my year. I won't be doing this again. I think running a marathon is insane. This belief, which was fairly fuzzy when I embarked on this adventure, became far more concrete on the day I completed my first 20-mile run. That was the day that my running bra and my skin melded together in the heat into a new substance that was neither animal nor vegetable.

I'm terrified about the prospect of running a marathon on a hot, smoggy day. Fortunately, future participants in the LA Marathon will be less likely to face this prospect if the race is held in March in years to come.

I know the city's religious leaders probably aren't happy about the bid to move the marathon back to a Sunday in March, but I hope they will turn the other cheek and pray for cool weather on Memorial Day. I think that's what Jesus would do.

Gaby grew up in Watts and she'd seen more than a few of her girlfriends get pregnant or fall prey to drug addiction. Her mother waited anxiously for the youngest of her six children to continue.

"Mom," Gaby told her solemnly, "I want to join the AIDS Walk."

Gaby's mom was delighted --and more than a little relieved. "She was like, 'Whew,'" Gaby recalled.

Nine years and as many AIDS walks later, Gaby is more committed than ever to fighting the spread of HIV and AIDS. She's run one marathon benefiting AIDS services and is now training for her second, which is where I met her last October when we were assigned to the same pace group to train for the LA Marathon on May 25.

In the months since I've been training with the AIDS Marathon program to raise money for AIDS Project Los Angeles I've been struck by the socioeconomic distance between those who run to raise money to help people with AIDS and those who are helped. Talking with Gaby reminded me of that distance.

In recent years the spread of AIDS has been relegated largely to poor communities of color. While there's a fair amount of ethnic diversity among the people training alongside me, most of us are either solidly middle class or members of the "privileged poor" - highly educated with limited financial means at least in part by choice (given access to college and grad school I chose to pursue journalism rather than some more lucrative profession, which would have been just about anything else).

Most of us have never been to Watts, let alone lived there. Gaby has never been on an airplane and works as the office manager at a company that sells corporate promotional products like pens and visors. She stopped her education after graduating from high school, though she's beginning to think about getting a college degree so she can become a counselor or social worker.

Appearance-wise, Gaby fits in easily with the rest of the Saturday morning crew --- tall and fit, with her long, dark hair pulled back in a braid for the run. But her sunglasses give her away-- "Watts" is inscribed in glittery gothic script across the arm. "My aunt gave me these," she said. "She told me, never be ashamed of where you're from. Be proud, and I am."

I knew someone close to Gaby had died of AIDS, but I didn't realize how deeply she identified with the cause until last month, when she showed up with an AIDS ribbon tattooed on the inside of her right forearm and her runner numbers - for the past marathon and the one coming up in May - permanently stenciled on her right wrist.

"I mainly did this for myself because I want to show what I feel," she said. "But also it's because when I'm out there trying to raise money, some people still look at me like this punk kid from Watts, like 'Sure, I know you're just gonna use this to pay rent.' View me as you want, but this is what I'm doing. I'm serious."

Fundraising is a serious issue. For the AIDS Walks, participants raise what they can - sometimes as little as a hundred dollars. Gaby usually manages to pull in $1,000 or so. But the marathon requirement is higher. Each participant must raise a minimum of $1,600 or pay it themselves. Today is the cutoff date to reach the minimum requirement.

Gaby has tapped all her usual contributors and has come up $600 short. Today she's transferring that sum to the AIDS Marathon program out of her savings to make up the difference. "It's going to tough," she said. "But we'll get through it."

If she can manage to raise it through pledges in the coming weeks, the program will return her savings to her.

Gaby is particularly pleased that APLA funds the Watts Health Foundation and a clinic at her alma mater, David Starr Jordan High School. "So many people rely on those services," she said. "I can see the benefit of it."

On Saturday, as we embarked on our 23-mile run -- our longest yet - I asked her to tell me her story. I wanted to know how this young woman from Watts became so attached to fighting the spread of AIDS.

"It might take a while," she said. We both laughed because we knew that in the context of a 23-mile run - which is what we were facing --the longer the story the better. Miles fall away and before you know it you're standing at Pat and Ray's snack table, downing banana bread, popsicles and pickle-topped peanut butter crackers.

Gaby first learned about AIDS when she was 7 or 8 years old. She'd heard the Queen song "We Will Rock You," and asked her older sister if she would take her to see the band in concert. Her sister told her she couldn't because Queen didn't exist any more -- Freddie Mercury had died of AIDS. "I asked her what caused AIDS and she said no one knew, but that if you got it you died," Gaby said. "That scared me, but then she told me kids didn't get it."

A couple of years later, Gaby's family learned that her uncle, Jesús Muro, had AIDS. Some members of the family worried that the illness might be contagious and they wanted Jesús to eat with different plates and utensils. But Gaby's mother would have none of it. "She told everybody to stop all that," Gaby said. "She told us to give him all of our love and support, to be positive with him." And so they did.

As Jesús' health deteriorated, the family moved him to a hospice nearby. Gaby would go and visit him with her mother, using her allowance to buy him chocolate or a card or some special treat. She was not allowed inside, but she would stand on the porch and peer in, staring at the other patients, many of whom were much worse off than her uncle, their bodies contorted and covered with lesions. "I would just stare at them," Gaby said. "I'd never seen anything like that."

One morning, the hospice informed Gaby's family that Jesús had only a couple more weeks to live. The news so upset Gaby's mother that she packed Jesus and her children into her car and drove eight hours to her sister's home in the town of San Luis in Sonora, Mexico, where she helped Jesus get settled. "Everybody agreed that we needed to have my uncle with the family," Gaby said. "He liked it there - he got to eat whatever he wanted and he was comfortable."

Nearly every weekend for the next two years, Gaby's family would travel to San Luis to visit Jesús. "It was like a big family reunion all the time," Gaby said. "I got to see people I otherwise wouldn't see, and we would all be there together, spending time, being a part of each other's lives."

For Gaby, her dying uncle became a symbol of family. When he died --peacefully, in his sleep - Gaby vowed to keep his memory alive.

She does it with the AIDS walks and with the marathons, and by telling the story of her uncle to her 11 nieces and nephews, especially the younger ones, whom she baby sits regularly. On a recent trip to the supermarket, one of her nephews rejected a product with a pink ribbon, telling her they "needed to find stuff with a red ribbon, to fight AIDS."

That's the end of the tale. I'm going to Gaby's pledge page on the AIDS Marathon website to make a donation right now. Won't you join me? Grab a credit card and click here.

I'll give Gaby the last word: "You don't have to be rich to help people. You just have to want to do it."

She's a former journalist for the Los Angeles Daily News, the Associated Press, and other publications. She does wicked standup at the Comedy Store. Contact her at andreacavanaugh@hotmail.com. Back next week.

That whimpering noise you may have heard on early Saturday mornings on the eastside is me getting up in the bleak predawn hours to train for the LA Marathon at Griffith Park.

"Why am I still doing this?" I groan to the lump under the blankets that is the dog. The lump has no answers.

That doesn't mean it's not a good question. I never expected to be getting up to run on a Saturday morning in late March. When I signed up to do this, the LA Marathon was scheduled for mid-February. Although I thought briefly about dropping out when the date was abruptly changed to Memorial Day, I'm still here. I'm just not sure why.

I like to tell people I'm training for the marathon to get material for my standup comedy routine. It's true -- there's something so inherently funny about a fat, 40-year-old ex-smoker attempting to run 26.2 miles that all I really have to do on stage is mention it and throw in some pained facial expressions, and I get cheap and easy laughs.

But that's not why I signed up. I agreed to participate in the AIDS Marathon last fall on a lark-- after all, if I'd given it any thought I would have rejected the idea as crazytalk -- for the same reason I took up standup comedy. I had just turned 40 and I felt like I was in a rut so deep that I couldn't even see the sky.

I also confess I was already looking forward to bragging about it -- until I found out how many people I know have already done it and never mention it. Turns out it's not that big a deal, at least in LA. My boss has done one. My boss's boss has run six. My neighbor ran one this year. It's possible that my Grandpa Joe ran one and neglected to tell me about it. About 20,000 people run the LA Marathon every year, and most of them are locals. I was starting to feel like the only person in Los Angeles who hasn't run a marathon.

My reasons for sticking with the program for the first couple of months run far deeper. Raising money to help Angelenos with HIV and AIDS is a cause that's close to my heart. Los Angeles has the second-greatest population of people living with HIV and AIDS in the United States. It's as easy to avert our eyes from this problem as it is any other social ill, but I've been confronted with its human face. For two years I cared for Kevin, my friend and neighbor in Hollywood, who contracted HIV from his first serious boyfriend in the early 80s and had been living with full-blown AIDS for an incredible 15 years when I first met him.

Blind and ravaged by constant pain, Kevin nevertheless tapped around Hollywood bravely with his white cane and Floyd, his Labrador retriever, even though he had been robbed numerous times on its mean streets. He has yet to succumb to the disease that stole his middle age. His sister calls him the Energizer Bunny -- every time it looks like he's reached the end of the road, he dips into a seemingly bottomless well of strength and finds a way to carry on.

I know many others affected by HIV and AIDS. I'm drawn to outcasts, including recovering junkies, and methamphetamine and gay sex go together like peanut butter and jelly. Unfortunately, when meth addicts take the brave step of getting clean, they're often left with the sad legacy of HIV.

Several people I know rely on AIDS Project Los Angeles to provide them with things that many of us take for granted, such as a bag of groceries or a visit to the dentist. As the economy continues its downhill slide, the number of people affected by HIV and AIDS who turn to APLA for help will likely increase.

But none of these reasons explain why I'm still crawling out of bed on predawn Saturdays to run with my compatriots. After all, I raised the $1,600 required of the participants a couple of months ago. I could easily stay in bed on Saturday mornings with a clean conscience and most of the world would be none the wiser.

However, I'll be out there pounding the pavement with the rest of my group tomorrow even though I'm dreading the prospect of running 23 miles. And I guess I know why. There's a certain stubborn satisfaction to be had from completing what you start. To crossing the finish line, even if you do it on your hands and knees. I'm doing it for Kevin and Mark and Gerry and the rest of my friends with HIV and AIDS, but I need to add one more name to the list. I'm also doing it for myself.

The “loop,” as the asphalt pathway that curves along the park’s circumference is called, runs 6.2 miles. Not quite the 10 miles the rest of my pace group would be doing in LA, and I briefly considered running it twice. Until I got out there and discovered the truth about running in Central Park.

I knew instantly this was going to be different. It was cold—somewhere in the mid-40’s— not technically freezing, but cold enough that my fingers and ears felt icy.

Yet all around me people were running and walking in shorts and tank tops. One man was shirtless. I passed a woman in a floral shift who was strolling and talking into her cell phone. “Compared to last week it’s practically tropical,” she reported cheerfully.

And then there was the spit. A huge gob of it smack dab in the middle of the path. Then another and another.

At first I thought it was an anomaly. Some poor, spit-laden soul with no saliva control. A victim of salivary Tourettes.

But then I heard a throat clear behind me, followed by the unmistakable hocking of a loogie. I ducked reflexively and watched as the gob landed just to my right.

I heard it again and again. I was surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of other runners, all of them, seemingly, spitting with abandon, transforming a day in the park into a massive, communal spit swap.

As if that weren’t enough, I saw two different people cover one nostril and blow out of the other one, letting the unencumbered fluid fly (Coach Scott later informed me that these are called "snot rockets" and are as rare in LA as they are disgusting).

I could not help but think of my seventh grade teacher, Sr. Rose, who lectured us long and hard about the horrors of spitting. She likened spitting to a sin, and I believed her. Who wants to walk around tracking someone else’s mouth goop on the bottom of their foot?

I was spat upon once, at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. I was in high school and had gone to see a production of Hamlet, with Aidan Quinn in the starring role. I had a great seat, right up front and when he spat on me in the midst of tackling some particularly calisthenic line, I took it as a compliment.

But marathoners and joggers are supposed to be running their legs, not their mouths, so what’s their excuse?

That night, while having dinner with a friend and his wife – longtime New Yorkers -- I described my ordeal.

Both looked at me blankly.

“And?” my friend said.

“And what?” I said. “Spitting and snotting all over the place. It’s vile.”

He deemed me a “princess” for my squeamishness. “What are you supposed to do,” he asked. “Carry tissue?”

“That wouldn’t work,” his wife agreed. “It would get all sweaty.”

“So it’s okay to do that?” I asked. “You guys do that?”

They nodded.

I know that indiscriminate spitting while running is not standard practice in California. I ran an 8K with thousands of other people – some of them serious runners -- and I didn’t see a single gob.

I remembered that my friend’s wife had grown up in Santa Barbara. I asked her she had ever spit or blown her nose into the street there.

She paused for a moment and giggled. “No. I wouldn’t do that.”

A time to think about the next marathon.

There we were, powering up for our post-20 mile recovery run, an easy 8-miler, when what should Coach Scott propose but that we all sign up for the Maui Marathon in September.

�The training starts in April,� he explained. �But the great thing is, you�re already training, so you just keep on with it and then after the LA Marathon, you just roll over to Maui training.�

Was it my imagination or did he linger on the word �Maui,� turning it into a rolling oli?

There I was, standing in the early morning cool of Griffith Park, imagining what Maui would be like in September, the month of back-to-school and my daughter�s birthday. The end of vacation and the return to seriousness, except for � Maui.

�Want to go to Maui?�

It was my friend Sara Stein, a much faster and more experienced runner than I. She grinned a little madly.

Two hot mamas on the loose in Maui. What could be more fun than that, I thought?

What I said was: �Do you want to tell my husband, or should I?�

That evening I went to the Maui Marathon website.

The Maui Marathon course is undoubtedly one of the most scenic marathon courses in the world. With over 17 miles of oceanfront running on what Conde Nast Traveler Magazine described as "The World's Best Island," the Maui Marathon is not just a race, it is a vacation in paradise.

Under the site�s runner feedback:

Just wanted to let you know that the Maui Marathon was my first marathon and I now know that I made an excellent choice. The race was well organized, support groups were great, expo was fun, carbo load was filling and announcers were entertaining. It was a challenging course for me and right after I finished I told my wife--not again. Within 48 hours, I change my mind. I will be back next year. Thanks again to everyone associated with the marathon, you all made my first marathon memorable.
Kevin J. Gorsek

The AIDS Project Los Angeles program provides training, airfare, hotel, marathon registration, the works.

All I�d have to do is raise another $3,600 by August� more than twice the sum required for the LA Marathon, in half the time.

And persuade my husband to take on childcare duties for another four months of Saturdays. And either skip off to Maui without my family or come up with the cash to bring them along.

And run another marathon.

Hmmm.

AIDS is the leading cause of death for all people ages 15 to 59 worldwide, he reminded us. In Los Angeles County, improved treatment means that some 60,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS, more than ever before, and APLA is a key care provider for those who are uninsured or otherwise unable to afford care. Over time those costs add up. There is no cure for AIDS, no vaccine, no magic pill. Only careful management day after day.

As my co-runners and I wound our way through LA, Burbank, Toluca Lake, Toluca Woods and Glendale (Coach Scott calls it the five-city tour) we had plenty of time to ponder the value of the work APLA does, and our role in making it possible. Each of us is required to raise a minimum of $1,600, about half of which goes to fundraising costs and half to the cause.

I also began wondering about the significant role fundraising plays in marathons. In 2006, marathons and other running and walking events brought in $714 million for charity, according to a USA Track & Field study dug up for me by Brian Lampaa, the media director for Running USA.

That figure was up nearly 9 percent over 2005 and showed a steady rise since the annual charity survey began in 2002. Unfortunately Track & Field does not seem to have kept up with the survey in 2007 and 2008, but Lampaa says that all indications show that running – and the accompanying fundraising – are holding up despite the economic meltdown.

In LA, about half the 20,000 runners who typically participate in the annual marathon are affiliated with one of the event’s 45 official fundraising groups.

The bigger causes, like AIDS and cancer, actually contract with separate, dedicated entities such as AIDS Marathon and Team in Training to conduct their marathon training and fundraising programs.

How did this marathon fundraising juggernaut begin? I put the question to Jeff Galloway, the run/walk guru upon whose method the AIDS Marathon training program is based.

Here’s his emailed response:

During the mid to late 70's a growing number of customers in my Phidippides store would talk about the charity they were "running for". This was the first running boom but the number of marathoners was still small compared with today. As I reflect, training for a marathon during this time period was a bit odd for a middle aged person, and was often questioned by spouses, co-workers and bosses as a mid-life crisis that wasn't necessarily good. By raising money for a cause, the judgement of others shifted to "Well at least that mid life crisis that Joe is having is helping ________ (Jerry's kids, or whatever).

Even as early as 1977, I was conducting marathon training groups in 20+ cities and would estimate that about 10% of the group members were fund raising. Only a few of our programs before 1985 singled out one charity. The London Marathon was the first to promote charity involvement in a big way--from the early days of their race. I remember a presentation at a race director's meeting in the mid 1980's that had many directors thinking that charity involvement was the way of the future. At that meeting many of the old school directors didn't want to deal with charities and felt that this would turn our sport into a circus.

But in the big cities, by the mid 80's, the shutting down of the streets was already bringing the circus to marathon events. Purist race directors kept trying, in vain, to bring the media focus back to the world class competitors at the front. But finishing the marathon was becoming one of those major accomplishments in life for CEO's, movie stars, and hundreds of thousands of average people. The growth created the need for more city services, more police, etc. and race directors were spending more time in meetings to secure the routes they wanted. Even the purists realized that listing the charities and total funds raised during their event, in a meeting with the mayor, would increase their chances of securing the best course for the skinny folks up front.

By the early 90's, most of the larger marathons were encouraging the charity groups (Joints in Motion, Team in Training), which increased the enrollment, forcing enrollment limits and lotteries for entry. A growing number of those in our Galloway training groups, starting in the early 90's would raise funds for charities because this was their only ticket to the race of their choice.

So it’s a symbiotic relationship.

I, for one, would not be running at all if it were not for the fundraising component.

That and the shiny red and yellow AIDS Marathon brochure that called to me when I took my kids to Baskin Robbins for ice cream last summer.

Run a marathon, it said, even if you’ve never run before. Off I ran and joined the circus.

Not a marathon, mind you. Not off the bat. A smaller, more manageable race, just to see what it’s all about.

Coach Scott thoughtfully steered his team of APLA trainees toward such a race—the Brea 8K, also called (by those of us in the know) the Coach Scott Classic.

I don’t like to compete in things I’m not good at, like sports. But I knew this day would come. I would have to put on my game face and lose gracefully.

As Coach Scott told us, the point was not to win, or to even try to win. The point was to get a sense of what a race feels like. To practice.

Coach Scott explained that he chose this race because Brea, which means tar in Spanish, is his home town. Since he schleps 80 miles round-trip to Griffith Park every Saturday to train us, he wanted us to come to his tar pit for once. Also, as he told us, “they have the best post-run food court of any race I’ve seen.”

After the race, local vendors set up shop and offer copious amounts of something edible. The theory being, I imagine, that ravenous runners will become lifelong patrons of whatever establishment is at hand.

On the morning of the race, which was hosted by the local mall, my co-runners and I regressed to deviant high-schooler behavior, trampling the landscaping as we scrambled up a hill to the start line while being scolded through a bullhorn by mall security.

The start line was more of an extended start area, with sections marked “6-minute mile” “7-minute mile” and on down. I led my pace group (there were six of us) to the back. Winning was not the point, right?

Coach Scott had advised us to employ a method he called a “negative split” which meant start slow and speed up gradually. This is counter-intuitive, because the impulse at the start of a race is to bolt. But he warned us that if we did this, even on a five-mile run, we would lose steam quickly and risk crashing before the finish.

That made sense, but once the race started, the block of “runners” in front of us was barely moving at all. It was not for lack of space. We were so far back that we were well removed from the crush of front-runners. Instead we were stuck behind the zombie shufflers.

We began working our way forward and got into a grove. Our regular pace is a 14-minute, 30-second mile. We were running at 13:30, which I thought was a decent clip until we were overtaken by kids, dogs, senior citizens and a man pushing a stroller.

We sped up a bit, to 13:00, made the loop and headed back toward the start line, increasing our speed with each passing mile.

I knew there were lots of people ahead of us, but as we approached the finish line I was surprised to see just how many. The post-race party was in full-swing, with food, giveaways and a live band belting out “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

So many runners had already hit the party that Jamba Juice was out of straws and Peet’s was out of cream and had started serving coffee in lemonade cups from Hot Dog On A Stick. Ralph’s, which had been providing bottled water, was closing up shop.

However, as Coach Scott promised, there was plenty of food: lasagna, spaghetti, tacos, pizza, Cinnabons and Thai chicken salad. There were grapes, oranges, bananas, carrot cakes, cookies and chocolate fondue. All this before 10 a.m.

“This is the most messed up food combination I’ve ever seen,” my co-runner Rachel said, regarding her extremely full plate. “I might have to puke.”

All I really wanted was a slice or three of banana-nut bread home-made by Ray and Pat Bolivar, Coach Scott’s parents. They’d baked it for our 18-mile run and it was the absolute perfect antidote to post-run hunger – carbs, protein, potassium and just sweet enough.

Scott himself was feeling pretty good. He’d persuaded 74 of us to register for the race as a team, and we’d won the Team Spirit trophy.

As for me, my final time was an hour and five seconds. That’s an average of about 12 minutes per mile, a full 2 ½ minutes ahead of my training pace. I came in 1,611th out of 2,304 runners.

I was 734th among 1,245 women, and 103rd among 157 women in my so-called “Master Class” of women, ages 40-44.

Not a winner, but not bad for a non-competitive non-runner.

*See my op-ed in the Sunday LA Times on the wrongheaded thinking that pushed the LA Marathon from early March to late May.