Yesterday, the 22nd LA Marathon was held...I always enjoy watching the race, and I raced it myself three times in the 1990's. LA has not quite the tradition of Boston, where their 22nd marathon was held in 1919.

As for yesterday's LA Marathon, I was very proud to see the results turned in by the women of the local "Beach Cities" (for non-locals, that usually means the cities of Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach).

Up against world-class runners, the women from the Beach Cities held their own, taking four of the top 27 female spots. The top finisher from the Beach Cities was my old running "nemesis," Nathalie Higley of Redondo Beach. Yesterday, Nathalie finished fifth in 2:51 (about nine minutes faster than my best-ever marathon time), with only four of the nine "elite" women starters beating her, she was also the first non-seeded women's finisher. She finished 38th overall, out of a total field of about 25,000 runners. The elite starters get to have their own start, while Nathalie had to start with the masses.

For years, I dueled against Nathalie in the Manhattan Beach 10K, a race that she often wins the women's division of. The funny thing is she probably has no idea who I am, but I (and a few other guys who shared the same (sad but true) goal of trying to beat the first woman finisher) would always try to beat her...she is a well-known crowd favorite in Manhattan Beach, so throughout the race, you have people yelling "Go Nathalie!" while the rest of us wanna-be's got treated like the hangers-on that we were. (i.e., ignored by the crowd).

For a few years in a row, Nathalie beat me, with her margin of victory maybe ranging from 10 seconds to a minute and twenty seconds. She was always gracious in the finish area, being friendly as could be to the guys who beat her as well as the ones who didn't (like me). While she surely doesn't know who I am specifically, she absolutely knows that many men are trying to not finish behind her, and she thrives on that competition. Of course, I was usually gasping for air after the finish, and could barely say anything other than, "Great race, Nathalie!"

A couple years ago, I finally beat her...another guy and I flew by her with 50 yards to go, racing each other, flat out for the finish line. At the finish, I just nipped the guy next to me, and five seconds later, he said, "well, at least we beat the first woman." But not so fast...while we had beaten Nathalie, there was another woman who was probably 30 seconds ahead of all of us.

And as long as I am on this topic, I should say that one year in the late 1980's, I think 1988, I had gotten seeded (to start at the front) of the SF Bay-to-Breakers. During the first two miles, I stayed right with running legends Joan Benoit, Ingrid Kristiansen, and Lisa Martin (Joan won the LA Olympic Marathon in 1984, and Ingrid had won the NYC and Boston Marathons). We turned in a blistering two-mile pace, I think it was something like 9:10, and then we hit the Hayes street hill. I was gasping like I was short one lung, and the women had the slightly-labored breathing of serious competitive runners in a 12K. As they say in running parlance, they "dropped me" at the bottom of the hill, and to this day, I swear I heard Joan Benoit chuckle or giggle as she passed me and heard me gasping.

That's all I have on the "Jay pathetically racing female runners" category.