Nadezhda Ilyina

Runner Nadezhda Ilyina of Russia sobs in agony after being disqualified from the L.A. Marathon despite finishing first. Country singer LeAnn Rimes cries as she accepts two Grammy Awards. Chinese President Jiang Zemin weeps during his eulogy to senior leader Deng Xiaoping. Any time one of our emotions crosses the intensity threshold, it can uncork a cascade of tears. Why do we cry?

Lornah Kiplagat experienced a breakthrough in last year's Los Angeles Marathon, but returned home to Kenya with a tainted victory. On Sunday, she finally--and joyously--got to break the tape. Kiplagat, 23, won the women's race in 2 hours, 34 minutes, 3 seconds and became only the second winner to defend a title in the Los Angeles Marathon's 13-year history.

The weather was perfect, the times were not--at least, not in the minds of the organizers of the 13th annual Los Angeles Marathon, who had hoped that a pack of elite runners in Sunday's race would shatter records and catapult the event into the top tier of the world's marathons. The pack ran fast, well ahead of more than 19,000 others celebrating a journey through the city's neighborhoods as well as the glorious views of snow-topped mountains on a cool, crisp spring morning.

It was all a bit bewildering. Santa Monica Boulevard, Virgil Avenue, Wilshire Boulevard. . . . Where was she and who were all of those people cheering while Lornah Kiplagat ran through a strange city in a strange country, feeling mighty strange, a year ago? It was a long way from Detmold, Germany, where she logged 180-190 kilometers a week in training on the roads. It was a longer way from Endoret, her village 400 kilometers from Nairobi in Kenya.

If this is March and she's in Los Angeles, it must be cold season for Lornah Kiplagat, the two-time defending women's champion in the L.A. Marathon. But as she sits for an interview in the coffee shop at a downtown hotel, sipping tea, Kiplagat is surprisingly clearheaded. Her eyes are not watery. Her throat is not scratchy. Her head is not pounding. "I'm doing fine," she says. If Kiplagat, 24, were superstitious, this might be unsettling.

He wanted to be a soccer player, because in Mexico soccer players can be heroes. But his ability was hardly heroic. "Ahhhh," says Alejandro Cruz, wiggling his right hand from thumb to little finger and back in the universal sign of mediocrity. Baseball? No. And then he saw the announcement on Mexico City television. A foot race. A marathon, actually, and he decided to run as a 17-year-old bandit, because he didn't know how to enter, might not have had the money if he had known.

Their Michael Jordans are Cosmas Ndeti, Kip Keino and Paul Tergat, countrymen who have been the best in the world at what they do, which is run over hill and dale . . . and over a lot more hills and dales. Running is part of the culture in Kenya, success breeding success in a way that has kept Kenyan men dominating long-distance racing for nearly two generations. That's why organizers knew exactly where to look to improve the field for this year's Los Angeles Marathon. Want a car? Call Detroit.

His memories are as warm as that summer's day, when he ran through the streets of Havana, accompanied by his family on their Chinese bicycles, and entered the stadium where 35,000 voices were yelling, "Cuba, Cuba, Cuba." The man and the country. A population that reveres its baseball players had fallen in love with a second baseman who couldn't field a ground ball. "I was like this," Alberto Cuba said, pantomiming a ball rolling through his legs into center field.

The Metropolitan Transit authority is tunneling under Hollywood Boulevard to run a subway, but better the Corps of Engineers is turned loose on the street. Level those hills. Smooth out the pavement, because it's the only way somebody is going to run a sub-2-hour 10-minute Los Angeles Marathon. Edition XIII on Sunday showed what happens when a legitimate elite field tackles the course.

Even El Nino cannot douse Southern California's ability to churn out an annual bounty of quirky stories. Here are some distinctly odd memories of 1997. Nuts Redux Richard Aller's return to work in August was welcomed as a great day for peanut lovers, not to mention Dodger fans. Aller is the veteran goober vendor whose sarcastic jibes and yells of "Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!" had echoed through the stadium since the day it opened in 1962.