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Hustling for Glory at the L.A. Marathon Crash Race

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If you're planning on sleeping in this Sunday morning, you'll be missing out. By the time you're in your second sleep cycle, hundreds of cyclists will be gathered to compete in or watch the Wolfpack Hustle Marathon Crash Race - the largest urban-underground bike race in the world. Should you want to wake up and witness this for yourself, head to Tang's Dounts in Silver Lake, located on 4341 West Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles, early Sunday morning at 3am, March 18th.

Cunningly aligned with the civic planning of the annual L.A. Marathon course, which is closed off to vehicle traffic during the early hours of the morning in preparation for the foot race, the race realizes a cyclist dream with 26 miles of zero cars on Los Angeles streets. There are four race categories: Women's Fixed, Women's Geared, Men's Fixed, Men's Geared. L.A. cyclists do not allow their dreams to be deferred - as "this is a rain or shine, or earthquakes, or locusts, or nuclear holocaust event."

Here's Roadblock, one of the organizers of the event (and contributing writer for our One Ride at a Time column), describing how the event began:

The Marathon Crash Race began 3 years ago right after the L.A. Marathon decided to drop the bike tour portion of the event, which used to happen just before the Marathon runners hit the course. No one knows exactly why the bike tour was dropped, but one theory is that when the Marathon route changed from a circular route to a crosstown route Marathon organizers figured that bike riders were too wimpy to ride back to the start on the L.A. streets.<br> <br> So we decided to go in and do it regardless. This year we have more than 1200 confirmed people, who signed the pledge of safety and entered the Cinelli frame raffle.
If you're not the racing type, you can still show up and ride along, and have just as much fun as those racing. All bikers are welcome (with protection and lights of course)!

For more details, visit the Wolfpack Hustle event page here. And watch this video recounting last year's event:

View Wolfpack Hustle: 2012 Marathon Crash Race in a larger map

Top photo by Sarah Sitkin used under a Creative Commons license.

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