Meet the Press

                   Tatyana Petrova

    Nuta Olaru

Laban and Fred

    Yours truly flanked by my new Kenyan friends

Today we hosted six of our elite athletes at a press conference here at the press center.  With our press guru Rich Perelman performing the MC duties, our elite runners spent an hour giving us their take on this year's LA Marathon.  Joining us from the Men's field were Laban Kipkemboi and Fred Mogaka from Kenya, and Tarika Jufar from Ethiopia.  On the Women's side we had Tatyana Petrova and Lyubov Morgunova from Russia alongside Nuta Olaru from Romania.  What struck me first was what a nice group of people they were.  Some spoke with translators and some spoke English, but they all conveyed their sense of respect for this race.  Fred and Laban went so far as to predict a course record if the weather was good!  We also released the exact separation time for The Challenge, which this year will be 16:57.  That's the time between the elite women's start and the men's start.  I'm more excited than ever to watch our elite field battle it out on the streets of LA!

Peter