The Los Angeles Times recent story on Antonio Villaraigosa’s active schedule included a picture of the LA Mayor running the 5K Run for Victims’ Rights 5k. They noted that his time of 22:58 was quicker than his LAPD body guard. This is indeed impressive unless of course you compare it to the running exploits of Sheriff Lee Baca.

Looking at the results of the Paramount 10k (6.2 miles), a race that Baca has done every year for the past 5 years, you can see that Baca has averaged a per mile pace of 6:34. Villaraigosa on the other hand was only able to average a per mile pace of 7:14 in a race that is half as long as the Paramount race. If Villaraigosa were to run a 10k and slow is pace only to around 7:30/mile (a conservative estimate) because of the longer distance, Baca would beat him by a about a mile.

I would also like to note that if you look at Antonio’s photograph in the Times piece he is seen sporting an iPod and earphones. While I was unable to secure the posted rules for this specific race, earphones and music players are banned in almost every organized running event in the country due to safety concerns, and under all circumstances it is considered bad form to wear them in a racing event. (Photo: Genaro Molina / LAT w/notations added).

tags: villaraigosa baca running

This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 8:01 am by Insider and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.