In it for the ‘long run’
Each Monday and Thursday, at 5:45 a.m., LA Superior Court Judge Craig J. Mitchell meets his people in front of downtown’s Midnight Mission for a run through the gritty streets of downtown.
By “people,” I mean fellow members of the running club he founded in 2012, and the subject of the 2017 documentary “Skid Row Marathon.” Each year, he takes upwards of 50 people from the homeless missions and shelters of LA, flies them halfway across the world, and brings them to run an internationally recognized marathon.
The documentary profiles four runners — Rafael Cabrera, David Askew, Rebecca Hayes, and Ben Shirley — who end up getting clean, sober, off the streets, and into full, productive lives. During the course of the film, they run a marathon in Accra, Ghana, and another, bigger one in Rome.