The LA Marathon is on Sunday, and come 3 a.m. hundreds of cyclists will descend upon Sunset Boulevard for a joy ride along the city’s dark and empty streets, closed for the thousands of runners slated to participate in the marathon just a few hours later.

What began as a renegade race in 2010 with a couple hundred group riders in a counterculture bike community became a law enforcement problem years later. Now, it is a relatively tame, city-sanctioned ride with a front-to-back police escort.

Don Ward, notorious L.A. bike activist known as ‘Roadblock’ and the ride’s original organizer, was looking for a way to arrange a race for his group Wolfpack Hustle nine years ago when he first held it, illegally, on the marathon course.

“In the early years we were just naive and stupid and lucky, and the police caught wind of it. A police officer took an interest in us and basically organized a rolling closure for the race, so the city sort of looked the other way,” he said.

That officer is now Sgt. Gordon Helper of the Central Division Bicycle Unit.

“We’ve never had a hardcore stance on just going out there and starting to arrest anyone,” he said about the race’s guerrilla days. “You can’t throw a rope around a hundred cyclists and arrest them all anyway, so we thought why don’t we just have a relationship with them.”

By 2014, as many as 4,000 riders were joining – “500 people really going for it and the rest party riders” from around the country and even abroad, according to Ward.

It came to a head when the Bureau of Street Services issued a warrant for Ward’s arrest and the mayor called him to City Hall. They reached a compromise: the Wolfpack Hustle Marathon Crash was to be a ride, not a race.

Since then the ride has gotten shorter, slower and fully sanctioned by the Los Angeles Police Department. A Facebook event for this weekend’s ride tells cyclists to meet at 3 a.m. for a 4 a.m. rollout from Tang’s Donuts flanked back and front by a police escort.

They have been strictly warned not to enter downtown, where folks in wheelchairs will kick off the marathon at 6:30.

Ward hasn’t organized the ride for the past couple years, leaving others from the L.A. bicycle community to step in.

“It was getting out of control so it was good that it became a ride. I mean, things rise and fall. If there’s a way to make it legally sanctioned that would be great.”

But the fact that it continues to draw hundreds of cyclists is a sign to Ward of a grass roots ache for L.A. to become a more bicycle-friendly city.

“I think people really want to ride bikes. This started out as a countercultural movement years ago with the group rides, and the city has begun to respond by hosting things like CicLAvia,” he said, floating the idea of a full marathon course for bikers in the future.

“City agencies facilitating bike rides wouldn’t have happened without organizing by many many people, and the culture is changing. But there’s still a long way to go.”