Race Day in the Palisades

41ST ANNUAL PALISADES WILL ROGERS 5 & 1OK RUN

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

One of the most fun-filled days in Pacific Palisades begins with the Palisades Will Rogers 5 & 10K Run and this edition marks a new era.

Next Wednesday morning, the local Fourth of July race enters its fifth decade and director Brian Shea and his team have devoted hours on hours of preparation and coordination to ensure the event will again be a huge success.

Shea invited past champions back to relive their glory days for last year’s 40th anniversary and the result was one of the largest fields ever, with nearly 3,000 registered runners.   

Race day registration begins bright and early at 6:30 and ends at 8 a.m., 15 minutes before start time. The half-mile Kids’ Fun Run follows at: 9:30, also starting and ending at the Palisades Recreation Center entrance.

One of the most popular and challenging 10K courses in California, the route begins at the intersection of Alma Real and Toyopa, winds through the Huntington neighborhood, down Sunset Boulevard. and up the switchbacks at Will Rogers State Historic Park before returning up Sunset to the finish back at the Rec Center.

The official race starters will be co-honorary mayors Janice and Billy Crystal, who presented awards to the winners of the  Pacific Palisades Spelling Bee in February and threw the ceremonial first pitches to open the Pacific Palisades Baseball Association season in March.

“We’ve been here 39 years and what makes the Palisades great is the fact that you cheered umpires this morning… that never happens anyplace,” Crystal joked before tossing a sinker that caught the corner. An actor and  comedian, Crystal is best known for his roles in “Throw Momma from the Train,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “City Slickers.”

Singing the national anthem for the 5/10K will be native Palisadian Mikaela Hong, who attended St. Matthew’s Parish School and Harvard-Westlake High in Studio City. A recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in Marketing and Psychology, she has since returned to L.A. to pursue a career as a Marketing/PR Coordinator at Stanton & Company, a public relations and marketing agency that specializes in brands created for and by women. Having participated in the Palisades Will Rogers 5K as a child multiple times and as a member of an all-female a cappella group in college, Hong is excited to sing the national anthem and run the 10K.

Equally excited to sing the national anthem before the Fun Run is Barrett Eastman, a 12-year-old entering seventh grade at Corpus Christi School who has performed in over 15 musical theater plays. Her favorites are “The Sound of Music,” where she played Liesl Von Trapp at Corpus Christi this spring, and “Beauty and the Beast,” where she played Belle at Theatre Palisades last summer.

Steve Conforti and McKenna Porsche have provided the pace car—a sparkling 1962 Rolls Royer Silver Shadow—and behind the wheel once again will be IndyCar driver Townsend Bell, who moved to town in 2010 with his wife Heather and their sons Jaxon (now 15) and Jensen (12).

Hoping to make it a historic run is Mar Vista resident and Santa Monica Track Club member Tonny Okello, who has won the 10K four times in a row, including a 33:28 clocking last summer, and will try for a record fifth straight next Wednesday.

“I’ve been doing 60-70 miles a week, my health is good, I’m injury free and I will once again be part of Team Oceana,” he said.

As race day fast approaches, here’s a look back at the event that has become a perfect start of a patrotic day in the Palisades…   

     It all started in 1978, a year after Shea and fellow Ridge Runner Chris Carlson thought of the idea of a local road race while picknicking on San Vicente after running the now-defunct Brentwood 10K. “Wouldn’t it be great for the Palisades to have its own 10K before the [Fourth of July] parade?” they asked each other.

   Over the next 12 months, the Ridge Runners mapped out a course and fought through rolls of bureaucratic red tape—two City permits and one state permit—to get the event off and running.

     Fitting for a town like the Palisades, actor and comedian Walter Matthau was the official starter for the inaugural race, which was won by Drew Mearns, a University of Virginia law student who was interning for an  L.A. firm while living with his sister in the Palisades. Shea and Carlson called it “most successful” and with that a holiday tradition was born.

In 1979, David Greifinger broke the tape after placing ninth in the inaugural race. A 1975 Palisades High graduate, Greifinger made the state finals in the mile as a senior, then walked on at UCLA and ran there for four years. He went on to win the first Palisades Will Rogers 5K in 1986.

The sixth annual race in 1983  saw Russell Edmonds of Auckland, New Zealand, establish the still-standing course record of 29:46 while Katie Dunsmuir, who had just graduated from Pali High, repeated as the women’s champion in 35:09—still the fastest ever by a female. She went on to win four times in a row from 1992-95.

The 1995 race ushered in the Peter Gilmore era. Running in front of his hometown fans, the Palisadian-Post Cup Award winner and freshman-to-be at UC Berkeley won his first-ever 5K road race, finishing his jaunt through the Huntington neighborhood in 15:19, some 31 seconds ahead of runner-up Pete Kaplan from Newbury Park. That same year, Annetta Luevano set the women’s 5K record eight months after giving birth.

Turns out, Gilmore was just getting started. He would become “King of the 5K” by taking the title seven more times over the next 11 years, setting the 5K record of 14:10 in 2003.

Gilmore became among the country’s elite marathoners and last year, at the age of 40, he returned to his hometown race to win his age group.

As the event grew in prestige it attracted more high profile athletes. Pali High alumnus Steve Kerr, fresh off winning the NBA title with the Chicago Bulls, sounded the air horn to start the race in 1996 and former U.S. Olympic team member Joan Hansen-Lester won the women’s 5K while former Irish Olympic team member Marie Murphy won the 10K that year.

Heroism was on display at the 20th anniversary race in 1997, when 54-year-old Bob Heilemann suffered a cardiac arrest one block from the finish line but lived to tell about it thanks to the efforts of medical personnel at the scene.

A local locksmith and resident for 30 years, Heilemann had run the previous 19 Will Rogers races and was on his way to finishing when he suddenly collapsed making the turn from Toyopa Drive to Carey Street for the final 100 yards.He reportedly had no heartbeat for eight minutes, but Station 69 paramedic Dane Coyle led the effort to resuscitate him.

That same year, local girl Kara Barnard won the 5K for the first time—a foreshadowing of what was to come. She went on to win the 5K four more times and the 10K six times for a total of 11 victories—the most of any one so far. Barnard returned for the 40th anniversary race last year and finished second in the 10K behind Erika Aklufi, who first won it 11 years earlier.

A Loyola High runner won the 5K for the second straight time last year when Shane Bissell broke the tape in 16:25, which was 18 seconds slower than Palisadian Charlie Sherman’s winning time in 2016.

The reigning 5K champion is Regina Lopez, whose time of 17:54 was the fastest by a female since 2008. The 26-year-old from Alhambra was a multi-sport star at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Los Angeles before running track and cross country for two years at Oregon State and three more at Cal Poly Pomona.

Saint John’s Health Center will once again be the title sponsor for the race. Other sponsors are the Cynthia L. & William E. Simon, Jr. Foundation; The Agency; Farmers Insurance; Amalfi Estates; TRUECar; UnionBank; Caruso Affiliated; The Jordan Kaplan Family; 283 Sons of American Legion; Will Rogers Ranch Foundation; Santa Monica Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Group; PRN Ambulance and Kind. Net proceeds of the race go to the Palisades Will Rogers 5 & 10K Run Foundation, which donates to youth charities/activities with the help of the Palisades Optimist Club. This year’s donations will go to Movies in the Park, Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles, Palisades Americanism Parade Association, Palisades Village Green, Young Angels of America, Camp Country Jamboree, La Senora Research Institute, CLARE Foundation,  Corpus Christi School, Palisades Enrichment Programs, Paul Revere Middle School, Palisades High,  Lutheran Church Youth Program, Palisades-Malibu YMCA, Chamber of Commerce Teen Scholarship, Palisades Optimist Foundation, Inc. and Optimist Youth Home.

There will be parking along both sides of Temescal Canyon Road the morning of the race, with shuttles running to/from the start/finish line at the entrance to the Recreation Center.