Video Game Exec Plays Polar Position

Here's one way to warm up for this Sunday's Los Angeles Marathon: run across Antarctica.

That's essentially what Pacific Palisades resident Laird Malamed did last month, running a 26.2-mile race on a continent very few of us will ever visit.

On the day of his return to the Palisades in early March, Malamed, a longtime executive at Activision who, until recently, oversaw the ultra-successful Guitar Hero video game series, discussed his experience running the Antarctica Marathon with Patch.

Some background on Malamed, whose mother, : He grew up in the Beverlywood area of West Los Angeles. At age 12 (circa 1980), Malamed got his first Apple computer on the condition that he learned  how to write a computer program. That set him on his way. 

Malamed majored in aerospace engineering at MIT, but became disenchanted with the space industry after pondering the Space Shuttle disaster. So he attended USC Film School. A couple of units short of graduating from the revered cinema campus, one of the school's most accomplished patrons, Star Wars creator George Lucas, hired him on a recommendation from Malamed's professor, Thom Holman, who had devised Lucas's game-changing THX sound system.

Living near San Francisco, Malamed worked as a sound editor on the Lucasfilms TV show, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. It was while living in the community of Lakespur that he met his physician wife, Rebecca, and her son, Justin Silverman, today 21 and a biophysics and physics double-major on the cusp of graduating from Johns Hopkins University.

After Young Indiana Jones, Malamed worked as a sound editor on Walker, Texas Ranger, Mad About You, and Party of Five through late 1994. The following year, he joined Activision and began supervising the Santa Monica-based video game company's production line.

In 2006, when Activision had acquired the company that created Guitar Hero, Malamed helped make the video game series one of the most successful home video game franchises of all time. Under Malamed's supervision, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, the first of the series totally created from start to finish and marketed by Activision, became the first console video game to break $1 billion in sales.

At the beginning of 2011, after a lackluster-selling last installment of Guitar Hero, Activision retired the brand after a six-year run. Today, Malamed is working on the upcoming Skylanders Spyro's Adventure. In February, the game was announced at Toy Fair, an event Malamed describes as “basically collectable toys meets video gaming. Inter-action figures!"

As the L.A. Marathon rapidly approaches, Malamed told Patch that he enjoyed the new route instituted last year, which spans from Dodger Stadium to Santa Monica. During the victory lap along San Vicente Boulevard in Santa Monica, "lots of people come out, they’re cheering you on," he said.

There's a certain comradery to the sport. In 2007, on Olympic Boulevard heading west, he was feeling like giving up with about 20 minutes to go when "a guy comes by and sort of taps me on the head or rubs my cap and says, 'Come on, you can do it,'" Malamed recalled. "That sort of moment encourages me."

Since the formation of the L.A. Marathon, there has been about 234 people who run every marathon, Malamed said.

"There used to be a marathon on Sunset/PCH to Hollywood," Malamed said. "I have to give them credit for making a really good course."

Malamed officially started running in 2006 as a way to stay healthy. He soon after fell in love with the sport. His initial jogs took him around his Palisades neighborhood, down Via de la Paz and around the Via de las Olas Bluffs. He gradually fanned out through the hills near Will Rogers State Park and Temescal Canyon, and he even runs what he called his "home run," a route from the Palisades to his first home in Cheviot Hills and back.

His first race was in the Palisades, the Will Rogers 5K Run on July 4, 2006. He's been running that race ever since, which he describes as "the perfect day," beginning with a race in the morning, the Americanism Parade midday, and the PaliHi concert and fireworks show at night.

In March 2007, Malamed ran his first L.A. Marathon. In all, he has completed a total of 12 marathons, including the Marine Corps Marathon (from the Pentagon back in a loop to the Iwo Jima Memorial), Boston, New York, the Lost Dutchman Marathon in Arizona, the Midnight Sun Marathon in Tromso (which begins at 8:30 p.m. and capitalizes on Norway's late sunlight), Casablanca, Australia, and the marathon in Nagano, Japan.

As in the last couple of years, Malamed is using his races — this year, both the Antarctica Marathon and the March 20 L.A. Marathon — as a catapult to support charities he believes in, he said.

The charities include Children International, which helps children in third world countries; Kids Alliance, which funds university scholarships and assistance for American children born without birth certificates who need to be integrated in society; and Call of Duty Endowment, Activision’s official charity — named after its most successful video game series — seeks to put money toward hiring young veterans.

In the past two years, Malamed has raised $17,000 and $12,000 in charity money, respectively, for his causes. For 2011, he has so far raised "around $8,000 right now for the two marathons...about half of where I’d like to be."

How Malamed decided to run the Antarctica Marathon has its roots in a self-published book he read called Running Seven Continents: Tales of Travel and the Marathon, by Clint Morrison, released in 1995, when the first Antarctica Marathon was launched. His reaction to Morrison's book: “That’s nuts! I want to do that!”

The Antarctica Marathon began with a journalist's jest. Thom Gilligan, founder of the Boston Marathon, had been expanding the world's running territories to include a Maui marathon. In 1994, the Marathon Tours and Travel founder was interviewed in a niche travel industry magazine, and the interviewer joked that Antarctica was the only continent left for Gilligan to start a marathon on. People affiliated with Marine expeditions to Antarctica that ran cruises going there had seen the interview and contacted Gilligan about creating one.

"He went down there," Malamed said, "looked at some sites on King George Island, and said, 'What the heck! Let’s try it!' The Wall Street Journal picked up on this and he got lots of publicity...It became a yearly event."

Fueling Malamed's own desires to run this year in Antarctica was his own long-gestating interest in all things Antarctica. "I’ve read about [explorer Sir Ernest] Shackleton…[and] Frank Hurley, who was the photographer on the Shackleton Expedition," he said.

The entire experience, overseen by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, ran just over a week and cost $7,000 per person. The price included lodging, food and transportation.

"The solo aspect is what I really like but there is a community aspect which was apparent on the Antarctica trip," said Malamed, who bonded with experienced runners of different professions from all over the world.

The first three days of Malamed's trip were spent in Buenos Aires. About 120 people joined this excursion. "Not much more than 100 people can congregate in a section of Antarctica at one time," Malamed explained, since the terrain represents "one of the most pristine areas in the world...you can’t take eggs or nuts because they may carry disease agents." About 98 people ran in the race.

Since few humans walk this part of the world, the animals are somewhat trusting, and the visitors did get close to penguins and other native creatures. However, Malamed was warned that "a seal can outrun you. They were actually joking, 'Find someone slower than you in the marathon and stay with them."

Passing through La Maire Channel, the group spotted Antarctic minke whales.

"I’m glad the running was sort of up front so then we can concentrate on the travel," Malamed said. "The run was the fourth day, the first day and a half is crossing the Drake Passage from Terra del Fuego to Antarctica [at 65 degrees of latitude]."

So how does one train for running in Antarctica?

"Running the Santa Monica Mountains really helps," Malamed said. While on a visit to "Fort Collins, Colorado, where my cousins live, for an annual Super Bowl party," Malamed said, "I bought some running gear and asked the shop owner, 'Where’s the coldest, windiest place I could run?' They said, 'Go to these farm roads by the Budweiser brewery, about 10 miles north of town,' and it was almost identical [to Antarctica's terrain]." Translated: a lot of wind and plenty of mud.

While it didn't snow during Malamed's stay, the temperature was in the 40s ("It's summer down there right now") and it "rained during part of the race...it was this huge mud field with 40 m.p.h. winds," he said. The wind velocity was an 8 (gale force conditions) out of 12.

Malamed traded his usual shorts and top for an undershirt, a shirt, a windbreaker, a pair of shorts over fleece running pants, and trail shoes.

"It got so muddy that, 21 miles in, I got my bag and changed shoes," he said. "The treads were filled with mud." At the finish line, they teased Malamed that his sneakers were too clean for him to have run the entire race in them.

Malamed ran the Antarctica run in four hours, 25 minutes, and 32 seconds (his slowest running time to date).

"This was the hardest one I've ever done," Malamed said of Antarctica, which even topped a 50-kilometer Ultra-Marathon he once completed. Malamed even blogged about the experience for school children.

This contest in endurance has prepared him well, not only for Sunday's crosstown race, but for April 10, when he will be in Washington State, just east of Seattle, to run an ultra-marathon.