LaPlant Slower but Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Numbers don’t lie.

At least not when they pertain to Mark LaPlant’s pulse rate.

The 1983 graduate of Palmdale High noticed his heart rate was 20 to 30 beats per minute higher than normal Thursday morning when he was warming up for the Independence Day Classic 5K Run.

Because of his high rate of 150 beats per minute, LaPlant figured he might be in for a more-taxing race than usual, and he was right. His winning time of 15 minutes 56 seconds over the 5,000-meter course in neighborhoods surrounding Newhall Memorial Park was nearly a minute slower than his 15:03 first-place clocking last year.

“I wanted to run around 15 minutes again,” said LaPlant, 31. “I knew I wasn’t in the kind of shape that I was last year, but I still thought I had a chance. But once I started warming up, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. My heart rate was just too high. I was working harder than I should have been.”

Nonetheless, LaPlant won his second consecutive title by breaking away from Jed Colvin of Cal Lutheran shortly after the two-mile mark.

LaPlant, Colvin, 20, and Bill Lind, 28, led the field through the first mile in 5:04 and LaPlant and Colvin came through two miles in 10:02.

LaPlant opened a small lead on Colvin at 2 1/4 miles and widened it to 20 meters with a half-mile left.

“I don’t think I picked it up after two miles,” LaPlant said. “But I know we were running at a pace that was getting close to Jed’s best so he might have been getting tired.”

LaPlant appeared to intentionally back off the pace in the final stages of the race when victory was assured, but he said there was nothing voluntary about it.

“If anyone had come up on me down [the] last stretch, it would have been all over,” LaPlant said. “I was ready to walk at that point.”

Colvin placed second in 16:05 and said the heat--which was in the low 90s when the race began--led to slow times.

“It was hot out there,” he said. “I could have used a water bottle right from the start.”

Lind finished third in 16:45, followed by David Giangrande (16:51) and Canyon High cross-country Coach Dave DeLong (16:55).

Kirstin Kabo of UC Davis was the top women’s finisher, placing 34th overall with a time of 19:01.

Kabo, the runner-up in the 3,200 for Kennedy in the 1994 City Section track championships, easily turned back second-place Breanne Schweitzer of Saugus High, who clocked 20:04.

“I really didn’t know what to expect,” Kabo said. “I was kind of hoping to break [19 minutes], but I hadn’t raced since May so I just wanted to see where I was at.”

Schweitzer and Julie Harris of Canyon, who ran 11:17.59 and 10:46.48 in the 3,200 this year as juniors, had the credentials to challenge Kabo, but neither did.

Neither runner looked especially sharp compared to the end of the track season and each suffered side cramps during the race. Harris finished sixth in 21:09.

Kabo’s victory was her first since winning the 10,000 in the Northern California Athletic Conference championships in May and came as a pleasant surprise.

“I really wasn’t planning on [winning],” she said. “When I came out here, I didn’t know if I was going to go for time or to beat certain people, or a little bit of both.”