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Sports

Kevin Purcell Takes Second Place in Fourth of July Race

The Mar Vista resident is runner-up at the annual Palisades-Will Rogers 5/10K.

Kevin Purcell loves to run and one of his favorite races is the Palisades-Will Rogers 5/10K on the Fourth of July.  

Purcell won the 10K for the second time last year and was looking to defend his title Monday at the 34th annual race, considered one of the toughest 10K courses in California.

The 6.2-mile route takes runners east on Sunset Boulevard, up the the switchbacks of Will Rogers State Historic Park and back west on Sunset to the finish at the Palisades Recreation Center.

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Despite finishing second this year, there was a silver lining or the 35-year-old Mar Vista resident: Purcell beat last year's winning time by 22 seconds, finishing in 33:17. 

"I love this race and I've done well here over the years," said Purcell, who works as an analyst for Building & Safety for the City of Santa Monica. "I won last year, got second or third the year before and won the year before that, and I've always finished in the top three."

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Purcell won in 33:39 last year, a 31 second improvement over his winning time in 2008.

"I've run some marathons but I like 10Ks," said Purcell, who always runs with Fluffy Bunnies Track Club teammates and fellow two-time Palisades-Will Rogers 10K winners Tyson Sacco of Venice and David Olds of Los Angeles. Olds, in fact, was Purcell's high school track coach at Crossroads in Santa Monica.

The only man faster than Purcell on Monday was Ironman triathlete Jim Lubinski of Santa Monica, who ran a 5:15 minutes-per-mile pace to win in 32:35. 

"I trained right into this race," said Lubinski, 32, who ran a half marathon in one hour, 10 minutes last month in San Diego. "This was a good test of my speed and fitness. This is a tough course and I tried to push on the downhills to make up for the time lost going up the switchbacks."

Purcell likes to compete in an average of 10 races per year. He ran cross country at Drew University, a Division III liberal arts school in Madison, New Jersey, where he graduated in 2000.

He ran the Will Rogers course in 31:13 in 2006 but finished runner-up that year, 12 seconds behind Nike Team runner Kevin Koeper.

The Fluffy Bunnies is a Santa Monica-based track club sponsored by Nike and the team was well-represented again Monday. Purcell tracked Lubinski through the switchbacks and thought he night have a chance to catch him in the latter stages of the race.

"He got most of his lead in the first mile," Purcell said of Lubinski. "I tried to reel him in late but he's strong. I was hoping he would tire a little bit near the end but he didn't."

In just his fourth long-distance race, on March 12 in a time of 2:50:20.

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