Jorge Gonzaga and Sean Ramsey are running marathons to get ready to run a marathon.
By 4:30 a.m. one recent morning, 16-year-old Jorge was already dressed. He washed down a handful of cookies with a glass of milk and was standing in the driveway of his Highland Park home when Ramsey, his Dorsey High School teacher, pulled up to drive him to practice.
They greeted the dawn inside a 24-hour gym, where they pumped iron and did push-ups and leg-strengthening exercises, more preparation for Sunday's Los Angeles Marathon.
Neither the boy nor the teacher is likely to win the 26.2-mile race. Like many others, they will try make their statement merely by finishing. For Jorge, a novice runner who dropped more than 60 pounds training, it would be another sign of maturity. For Ramsey, who is completing his medical degree at UCLA in addition to teaching biology at Dorsey, it would be vindication for a work schedule that on some days has begun at 1 a.m. and ended at 7 p.m.
"In my life, so many people have pushed me," said Jorge, a 10th-grader at Dorsey's Police Academy magnet school. "When I'm running, I have to push myself. Nobody can do it for me."
Last fall, Ramsey announced plans to take a team of Dorsey students to run in the marathon. Fifty youngsters expressed interest. A dozen will make it to the starting line.
"So many students are afraid to run a 26-mile race," said the Bahamian-born Ramsey, who has finished the marathon six times. "They think it's impossible. Well, anything is possible with good preparation and hard work."
Dorsey's dozen will be among 2,000 Los Angeles students competing in the marathon through Students Run L.A., a program that encourages young people to train for the marathon.
"Student runners have changed eating habits, missed fewer days of school and [graduate] at a higher rate," said Marsha Charney, the group's executive director.
The program was started in the 1980s by a Boyle Heights continuation high school teacher who believed the discipline of running would help his students mature. Today's program encompasses all middle schools and high schools, with corporate sponsors picking up the tab for students' racing fees, uniforms and running shoes. But the message is the same.
"You learn how to keep going and keep going until you accomplish what you started," said Sandy Morales, a Dorsey ninth-grader who at first found it difficult to run a mile.
