Peterson, Berklein, O’Bryan, Conley Win 5/10K

The Fourth of July in Pacific Palisades was home to the 36th annual Palisades-Will Rogers 5/10K Run, sponsored by the Saint John’s Health Center.

Rocky Peterson and Flora Berklein christened the day by winning the 5K races before Brady O’Bryan and Laura Conley captured the 10K races.

On a warm, overcast morning, 2,779 registered runners took part in the two races, followed by the 18th aannual Kids’ Fun Run (one-half mile). All races began on Alma Real Drive at the Recreation Center.

Peterson, a 17-year-old from Thousand Oaks, ran 16:31, 22 seconds better than Jeffrey Tomlinson of Santa Monica. A track and cross-country runner at Westlake High School (specializing in the mile), Peterson will attend Cuesta Community College this fall. He had just learned about the race 24 hours earlier from his track teammate at Westlake, Ryan Finch, who has run the race for several years. Finch finished ninth overall at 17:44.

“Ryan asked me yesterday if I wanted to run a 5K, so I looked online, saw some pictures and everything looked really nice,” Peterson said. “Yesterday I had a pretty hard track workout. I’m really happy with this race, because I haven’t really started my training for next season yet.”