Running Mates : A Couple Enters L.A. Marathon Together but Alone

In the late ‘70s, when jogging was a mystical experience, a jogger could instantly terminate a good party by blabbering about the loneliness of the long-distance runner. At the time, it was assumed that joggers ran alone because they were too boring to find a companion. But new evidence suggests that joggers were merely going through a phase.

Today’s Nuclear Age joggers run in packs. They are warm, gregarious human beings who enjoy the camaraderie and security of the group experience. They like to run long distances and talk to other people. And they don’t want to be lonely.

Michael and Louise Mandell are husband-and-wife joggers living in Sherman Oaks. For the past 10 years, they have been beating the sun to the jogging path and running six or seven days a week at Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Park. What’s kept them going throughout the aches and pains?

“It’s the social thing, not the running,” said Michael, a bearded dentist with a Studio City practice. “That’s what sustains it. We’ve started a lot of friendships with an interesting group of people.”

“We’re hooked,” Louise said.

Although the Mandells won’t be running with friends during Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon, they will resume interactive jogging next week in the park, holding endorphin-induced conversations ranging from politics to baby care, but not with each other. Nuclear Age jogging couples have his-and-her jogging packs and his-and-her jogging schedules.

To be in the office by 7:30 a.m., Michael takes the early jogging shift, arriving at the park at 5 o’clock. Joining him are a businessman, an IRS agent and an accountant. They take off together on the first of 16 laps around the half-mile path.

“In the middle of the winter, it’s cold and dark,” Michael said, trying to explain the looniness of the long-distance runner. “The four of us meet there, shadowy figures. We run and we talk and we never look each other in the eye. But we talk very freely. And then we part. It’s really strange.”

At 6:30 in the morning, Louise drives three miles to the park for a rendezvous with a physician, a movie director, a writer, a business executive, a corporate president and her brother-in-law, Fred Mandell. On their 14-lap journey through the jogging cosmos, they like to discuss world events, movies, child-rearing and who’s divorcing whom.

“We’re a real cross-section,” Louise said. “Michael Reagan used to jog with us. We told him he should get our opinions on things and report back to his father.”

Not only is Louise rubbing shoulders with Ben-Gay as well as celebrities, but jogging has enabled her to make the jump to the silver screen. The self-styled homemaker will appear as an extra in “Baby Boom,” the latest film by Charles Shyer (“Private Benjamin”). Shyer is the director in Louise’s jogging pack. A keen judge of jogging talent, he cast her and another member of the pack, business executive Marsha Charney, as joggers.

Occasionally, Michael’s pack and Louise’s pack get together with other packs and have an indoor party. Dressed normally, showered, coiffed and made up, the joggers turn back into people. “We had get-togethers where nobody recognized each other,” Michael said. “The standard comment, of course, was, ‘I didn’t know you with your clothes on.’ ”

The Mandells, it appears, have fun together, so why don’t they run together?

“We used to,” Louise said, “but he got better.”

At the L.A. Marathon, the Mandells will start off together but go their separate ways. When it comes to marathons, chivalry is dead. Michael has no remorse about leaving his wife to fend for herself amid a field of about 20,000.

“I’m not going to worry about her,” said Michael, who hopes to complete the asphalt course in 3 hours, 30 minutes--an hour ahead of Louise. “I know she ‘ll finish. I’m more worried about my right knee at the 17-mile mark.”

Waiting for Louise at the Coliseum finish line will be her husband, three children, in-laws and other assorted relatives. Then they’ll head over to Fred’s to soak the blisters in his hot tub and unwind before the entire 15-member entourage eats the night away at a Chinese restaurant.

The Mandells will each be running in their second marathon. Six years ago, Louise entered the previous incarnation of the L.A. Marathon that stretched from the Hollywood Bowl to the Pacific Ocean. A year ago, Michael ran while she drove the course. His most memorable experience during the race occurred when a woman left the crowd to massage the cramp out of his leg. What Louise remembers most about last year’s race was the traffic: It took her longer to drive the course than it did Michael to run it.

“I decided I’d see more of the race and make things easier if I ran this year,” she said.

The Mandells are excited about the marathon but they’re not fanatic. Although Michael got a cortisone shot for his bad leg (“I went into jogging to be healthy, and now I’m not,” he said), the couple are not going overboard. They won’t attend tonight’s carbo-loading dinner at Universal Studios, nor did they implement any scientific training techniques.

Louise even skipped her last day of practice for something more important in her life.

“I thought I’d go shopping,” she said.