Kenyans Daniel Limo and Olga Kimaiyo were the men’s and women’s winners at the ASICS Los Angeles Marathon, Sun., March 15 in Los Angeles, Calif. – and since the race also served as the 2015 U.S. Marathon Championship, Jared Ward and Blake Russell emerged as the U.S. men’s and women’s champions for the year.

Limo was the overall men’s winner on Sunday in 2:10:35, Kimaiyo took the women’s race in 2:34:10, with Ward and Russell each finishing third overall as they ran 2:12:56 and 2:34:57 respectively.

If the times seem a tad slow for a race of this caliber, consider this: The so-called Stadium to the Sea run from Dodger Stadium near downtown L.A. to Santa Monica Pier on the beautiful blue Pacific started at 6:55 a.m., which was a big advantage considering the hot weather that would follow later in the day, but starting early is no help to running fast on an occasionally hilly course. The flat-as-a-table Berlin Marathon or Chicago Marathon type courses this is not!

A large group of Kenyan men dominated the men’s race from the gun as they went through the mile checkpoints for the first three miles in 4:42, 9:32 and 14:13!  The pace settled down somewhat after that, and the lead group had dwindled to a mere handful of runners when Kenyan Edwin Koech, 27, decided to roll the dice early as he ran a 4:39 mile split in the 17^th mile to separate himself from what was left of the lead pack. He led strongly for the next four miles, opening a lead of as much as 15 seconds at one point, but he slowed to a 5:21 split for the 21^st mile, which allowed Daniel Limo to catch him, and when Limo ran 5:03 for the 22^nd mile, he was well clear and on his way to victory, his first ever in the marathon, as his 2:10:35 gave him a margin of more than two minutes at the finish.

Kenya’s Lani Rutto, 25, also passed the fading Koech to finish second in 2:12:42, and Jared Ward, 26, of Provo, Utah closed hard to finish third overall in 2:12:56 and win his first U.S. national marathon title.

Koech would struggle home fourth in 2:13:35, losing three minutes over the final four miles.

Daniel Limo said after his victory: “The course was tough and the weather was not too difficult because it is almost like at home. I was still feeling strong the second half of the race. After 35K I could see the guys were struggling and I thought that maybe I could win it.”

A notable DNF in the race was Ryan Hall, who has run the best-ever American times in the half-marathon and the marathon and represented the U.S. in the marathon at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Running his first marathon since his disappointing 20^th-place finish in Boston last April, Hall separated himself early from the 33 other Americans seeking the U.S. national title and elected to go with the Kenyans in the lead group.

Hall lost contact with the Kenyans after five miles, and then was on his own until he was caught and passed by Jared Ward, Matt Llano of Flagstaff, Ariz., and Daniel Tapia of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., at 13 miles in the West Hollywood section of L.A. Shortly after he was passed, Hall stepped off the course, removed his bib, and officially dropped out of the race.

Tapia, who now trains under coach Andrew Kastor as a member of the ASICS Mammoth Track Club, led this tight little American trio for the next two miles, but then Ward went ahead and distanced himself from the group. Running in only his third marathon, he, in fact, would move all the way up to third place overall at the end, his 2:12:56 knocking more than two minutes off his previous personal best, which had been 2:14 flat. He won $25,000 for winning the U.S. national title and another $10,000 for finishing third overall.

“I just looked at the race I was in and tried to position myself well there and things just worked out well for me,” said Ward, who had been the runner-up at the U.S. Half-Marathon Championships in Houston this past January. “I wasn’t planning to move as early as I did, but I just felt good and a natural break happened and it ended up working out. I really credit coming through at the end to all the love from the people on the street.”

Llano, who, like Ward, is 26, finished as the second American in the race and the sixth-place finisher overall in 2:16:13, which was a personal best for him.

Tapia faded over the last five kilometers and was passed by Mike Morgan, 35, of Rochester Hills,  Mich., for third in the U.S. Championship race. Morgan ran 2:16:56, Tapia 2:17:14 as they finished seventh and eighth overall.

In the women’s race, the veteran Blake Russell, 39-year-old mother of two from Pacific Grove, Calif., hadn’t finished a marathon since the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where she was 27^th (the only American woman to finish the marathon in those Games). But she made a dramatic return to form in Los Angeles, winning her first U.S. national title in almost a decade as she ran 2:34:57 to finish third overall.

“The marathon has been a little bit of a love/hate thing for me since Beijing,” she explained after the race on Sunday. “But I haven’t been willing to give up. I’ve been so stubborn. I just always knew that it was in there. I pride myself on being the type of athlete who can rise to the occasion. That’s always my goal.”

Russell, who did not finish last year’s New York City Marathon, decided to change her approach dramatically this year leading up to the 2016 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. Among other things, she decided to act as her own coach and try some new things in training. Whatever she’s been doing, it seems to be working!

In fact, Russell was in the hunt to win the women’s race outright in L.A. until Kenya’s Olga Kimaiyo and Russia’s Natalya Puchkova began to pull away after 19 miles. The Kenyan would go on to win in 2:34:10, Puchkova finished second in 2:34:33 – with Russell another 24 seconds back.

“The weather was not very bad,” said Kimaiyo, who received $25,000 for her overall victory in the women’s race. “The course was complicated. It was hilly, then flat. I didn’t know I was going to win until Mile 25. I had a lot of pain in my leg and I was very tired, but I am happy to be the champion.”

Unlike the men’s race, which started out very fast, the women’s race was very much a wait-and-see affair. The lead pack, which included Americans Russell, Brianne Nelson, Sara Hall, Heather Lieberg, Becky Wade and Lauren Jimison, passed the halfway mark in 1:16:32 and it looked like no one wanted to take the lead.

Hall, Wade and Jimison began to fall out of the lead pack after 15 miles. Kimaiyo and Puchkova started to pull away after 19 miles. By 35 kilometers (21¾ miles), Russell had opened an 11-second lead on her closest American competitor, Brianne Nelson, and was chasing Kimaiyo and Puchkova; however, she wasn’t able to close the gap over the final four miles.

Heather Lieberg, 35, of Helena Mont., would ultimately finish as the second American in the race and fifth overall in 2:35:31. Brianne Nelson, 34, of Golden, Colo., was the third American and sixth overall in 2:36:06.

“Obviously it was a slow day today,” Blake Russell said after the race, “but it was more about tactics and trying to gut it out to the finish line. It was great to finally put it together and to know that my body can still hold together for 26.2 miles. I knew I was fit and if it had been ideal conditions, I know I could have gone under 2:30. This was definitely a confidence builder for me.”

Blake Russell, nee Phillips, is originally from North Carolina, has a Masters degree in Physical Therapy, and she’s not only excelled in the marathon, where she has a personal best of 2:29:10, set in Chicago in 2005, but also has been a track and cross-country champion many times over. She met her husband Jonathan Russell, an All-American runner at Wake Forest University, when they were competing at the NCAA Track Championships. They now live with their two children in the gorgeous picture-postcard community of Pacific Grove, Calif., on California’s Monterey coast.

There were 21,908 finishers in this year’s ASICS L.A. Marathon. The 2016 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials will be held in Los Angeles next February, but on a flat, more spectator friendly loop course, or so we’re told. 

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