Running a Restaurant and a Marathon

Kathie Gordon, co-owner with her husband, Michael, of Trattoria Toscana in Brentwood, spends her days and evenings surrounded by hearty, homey Tuscan fare -- pasta, risotto, grilled fish and meats, chocolate tortes -- prepared by their partner, chef Agostino Sciandri. But the 43-year-old Gordon leads a double life of sorts on mornings, afternoons and weekends: The restaurateur has qualified for the Boston Marathon on Monday .

The very first time I started running was 1977. To be honest, I’m not sure why, other than an urge to attempt to do something about physical fitness. I had always battled with my weight as an adult. That probably was the focus more than anything.

I went to the Van Nuys High track early in the morning. I was working as an executive assistant to a CPA, whom I’m now married to, and I had to be at work at 8. I’d run a block and walk a block and pray I could walk the next day because I’d be so stiff. I went out there five days a week and just did as much as I could comfortably do. I ultimately got to where I could run two or three miles.

A few months later, something very traumatic in my life happened: My former husband remarried. And it totally threw me for a loop and I stopped running for two years. While I was working I was going nowhere. I had never gotten my college education and I decided to go school and that meant I couldn’t work a full-time job. I moved in as a boarder with a woman--here I was 32 years old--and I completely altered my life. It was sort of like a new me. With that thought in mind, I decided to do the other things I should be doing, like keeping myself fit, and I started running again.

My boyfriend at the time started running with me. So then I had a partner. He said we should run a race because he couldn’t just run four miles and do nothing more with it, so we started running 10-K races. We met other runners and started learning about coaches and track clubs. In 1979, we joined the San Fernando Valley Track Club and started doing serious training. I was coached by Laszlo Tabori, a well known, highly regarded coach, and started doing speed workouts on a quarter-mile track.

Within a matter of a few months, he took 10 minutes off my 10-K time. Just being in that group environment, the peer pressure was there to do marathons. A marathon is very mystical or magical. You hear that people are doing marathons, and it becomes accessible, and you think if they’re doing it you can do it. I ran my first marathon in Bakersfield in 3 hours and 46 minutes.

The challenge is so huge and so is the dedication that it takes. I feel so proud of myself that I’m able to run 26 miles. It takes five to six months to prepare, but I know I can do it and will do it.

It becomes a whole world unto itself. When the relationship with my boyfriend ended a year later I was worried that I would give up the running too, which seems like a female thing to do, but I loved running and it was a very important part of my life by then.

I am not a world-class runner or anything close. I’m much better than average. I ran the New York marathon in 1984, but I didn’t run another marathon again until last year. There were a lot of changes in my life, and the running gradually became less important to me. In the early years, running was my whole life because I didn’t have much else going on.

My life changed because of the running. It taught me about setting goals, about achieving, about being disciplined, about succeeding. These are all things I was never taught growing up. I began an evolutionary process within myself that brought me to a place where I knew what success was about and could translate it to other areas of my life. I became more focused on what I wanted in life: I wanted a husband because I’d been divorced for many years, and I wanted to find a career niche.

In 1981 when I went back to work for the CPAs I ended up being office manager and assistant to the managing partner, who was this wonderful fellow, Michael Gordon. We got married in 1987. But I knew I needed more than the office manager/secretary position in life, and I learned about this one-year management program at USC for women only. It ultimately led me to my ability to create a restaurant with my husband. Everything built on each other to give me a sense of self-confidence.

Our restaurant is a little over a year old, and it was taking so much away from me to feed people and nurture them, and to take care of the staff. There’s a huge sense of always giving to others. I said to myself that I have to give myself something. I think that’s what led me to try the marathon again. The running is something that I love, and it’s time just for me.

The Boston marathon became a dream for me. It is the most elite marathon of them all. I came reasonably close to qualifying in 1981, so it’s been a very elusive goal for me.