Athletes Swim, Bike and Run While Cars Stop for LA Marathon

The 11th annual Kaiser Permanente L.A. Triathlon will be held Sunday morning, starting with an L-shaped swim off Venice Beach.

The professional triathlon athletes will begin their swim at 7:15 a.m., where Venice Boulevard dead-ends at the beach. They will be followed by elite amateurs, Olympic, collegiate and physically disabled participants.

The bike route starts at Venice Beach on Venice Boulevard and travels through the Fairfax District, Koreatown and downtown Los Angeles, and will finish at L.A. Live Nokia Plaza, in front of Staples Center, 777 Chick Hearn Court.

Streets along the race route, including a chunk of Olympic Boulevard, will be closed, and Metro bus service will be affected in downtown Los Angeles.

Detours will take place between 3:30 a.m. until the streets are reopened late this afternoon, said Jose Ubaldo of Metro.

Also, there will be a full closure downtown of the Metro Blue Line, but that had been planned earlier to accommodate construction work on the Expo Line, Ubaldo said.

A bus shuttle to cover the rail route was planned, but the stops downtown will be slightly changed because of the triathlon, he said.