Ortiz Wins Best in Hemisphere : Marathon: He blows away field in 2:28:27. Davis wins women’s race.

Along the beach at Playa del Rey, the 48th Western Hemisphere Marathon became a Sunday morning parade, and Jose Ortiz was its drum major.

Ortiz, from Mexico and living in Gardena, ran with a group of three others for nine miles, then saw the group dwindle until he had only James Sheremeta for company at the halfway mark.

There, the race turned toward the beach and Ortiz turned up the pace, leaving Sheremeta in his wake and finding companionship only in four motorcycle officers, riding in front of the 724-runner field for the rest of the 26-mile 385-yard event.

Ortiz finished in 2 hours 28 minutes 27 seconds and was more than a mile ahead of Harry Harris at race’s end.

Lisa Davis led a parade of her own, spurring the pace at nine miles and leaving Judy Oman more than half a mile behind to win in 3:04:50.

Ortiz accomplished his goal. “I just wanted to keep up a 5:40 pace, and that wasn’t really a problem,” he said after winning his second Western Hemisphere race. He was the 1992 winner.

“I had run in Long Beach this year [in February] and hit the wall at 20 miles,” Ortiz said. “I was running with the leaders, but finished only about ninth or 10th and I wanted to do better.”

That he did, with the help of a friend, Jaime Ortiz, no relation.

Jaime Ortiz pushed the pace through 13 miles, then pulled off the course, his day as a self-appointed “rabbit” done only three weeks after running 2:30:54 in the Santa Clarita Marathon.

“I just wanted a training run,” he said. “Jose and I train together, and I just wanted to run with him.”

Sheremeta also stopped, at 21 1/2 miles, his day done in by a slow time and gimpy knee. He had run 2:32 a few weeks ago, fast enough to win the Sacramento Marathon, but a full 10 minutes slower than the qualifying time for the U.S. Olympic marathon trials, which are Feb. 17 in Charlotte.

His goal Sunday was to find that 10 minutes.

When Sheremeta, a San Diego artist, saw his time wasn’t going to be fast enough to qualify for Charlotte, he caught a bus back to the starting line.

The Western Hemisphere is billed as a “true marathon,” meaning there is no prize money. But by winning the women’s race, Davis gleaned an extra reward. At the finish line, she collapsed into the arms of her family, and her boss at the Culver City Recreation Department, which puts on the race, declared Davis had earned today off.

For only her second marathon, and her first since running a 3:03 at Long Beach in 1994, Davis put in only six weeks of training and has no idea of pace.

“Between Mile 11 and 13, I ran with [Oman]. Then I just dusted her,” Davis said.

“Between 12 and 13 she just speeded up, and I said, ‘That’s too fast for me,’ ” said Oman, who has run 28 marathons. Her goal also was to qualify for Boston, which she did.

Oman lives in Salt Lake City but grew up in Brookline, Mass., along the Boston Marathon route.

Third-place finisher Lorraine Gersitz, a 41-year-old librarian from Fullerton, ran 3:11:46 and wasn’t breathing hard at the end of what she called a “training run.”

“I’ve run more than 100 marathons and my race now is the ultra-marathon,” she said. “That’s 100 kilometers or 100 miles, so this isn’t so tough.”