Kastor Takes His Show on the Road

For Vaughan Kastor of West Hills, Sunday’s fifth Heart Run was little more than a workout.

“This is all just training for track, sideline stuff for me,” said Kastor, a former NCAA Division II track All-American at Cal State Northridge.

If that’s true, then watch out when Kastor gets serious. Because for practice, he outdistanced a field of more than 600 starters to win the five-kilometer race in 16 minutes 2 seconds. John Quinn was second in 16:21.

Candice Kutrosky, 21, clocked 19:01 to handily win the women’s 5K competition over Chantal Plante (19:35). In the 10K, Kim Gallagher, a silver medalist at 800 meters in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, won the women’s division in 37:55 over Shirley Geerling (38:05). Richard Shelley, 28, won the men’s 10K in 31:41, 19 seconds ahead of Tommy Leon, 23.

Though Kastor, 23, says road racing is not his forte, his track credentials at Northridge and Chaminade High reflect his big-race experiences. A 1988 CSUN graduate, Kastor ran 1:49.21 to finish third in the NCAA Division II 800-meter final.

In his senior track season at Chaminade, Kastor won the Southern Section 1-A Division 800 title and he’s run a personal best of 1:48.47. But this spring he’s planning to step up to the 1,500 meters, which is why he found himself in Woodland Hills on Sunday morning.

“(Right now), I’m about as comfortable in the 1,500 as I am in these 5Ks, so I have to teach myself how to run (the 1,500),” he said. Winning, however, was not a serious consideration until Saturday night.

“When I saw (Buster Douglas) beat Tyson last night, that showed me that anything is possible,” said Kastor, who passed the first two miles in 4:52 and 4:50. “That even I can get up and run with the big boys.”

Race officials said 1,619 runners finished the two races, but an estimated 3,000 people, most unofficial entrants, ran the pavement course, which started on Owensmouth Avenue adjacent to the Warner Center and finished at the intersection of Owensmouth and Oxnard Street.