Clinton’s Kazery has record-breaking win in Run Thru History

Published 8:46 pm Saturday, March 5, 2016

Peter Kazery separated from the pack in the early stages of the 37th annual Run Thru History and never looked back.

There was no reason to. No one was behind him.

The 24-year-old Clinton resident dominated a field of more than 300 runners on Saturday, beating runner-up Brent Watson by more than five minutes to win the 10-kilometer run through the Vicksburg National Military Park.

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Kazery had a nearly three-minute lead by the halfway point of the race and was never challenged. He finished with a time of 34 minutes, 14 seconds. Watson was second in 39:15. Kazery’s margin of victory was the largest in the race’s history.

“There wasn’t anybody there. I just ran off of effort,” Kazery said. “It’s one of those things where, when there’s no competition you have to run against yourself.”

Kazery won the race on his first attempt, but brought the trophy back to his family. His younger brother William won the Run Thru History in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

William is now a track and cross country runner at West Alabama, like his older brother Peter before him.

“He crushed this course,” Peter Kazery said of his brother. “The only reason I never ran it was because I was in college and it falls during track season.”

While the Kazery brothers have dominated the men’s races this decade, Keri White-Frazier has a been doing the same on the women’s side for this entire century.

White-Frazier clocked a time of 42:14 on Saturday to win the women’s championship for the 10th time. She won her first Run Thru History when she was a senior at Vicksburg High School in 2001 and has kicked the dynasty into another gear recently. Saturday’s victory was her fourth in a row and she finished sixth overall.

“I ran here in high school. It just brings back memories of running with friends. It’s a happy homecoming,” said White-Frazier, who now lives in Birmingham.

The 33-year-old said she feels like she’s entering her running prime and has a lot left in the tank to continue dominating her hometown race.

“They say a woman’s prime for running is in her 30s, so I’m going to take advantage of that,” she said. “I’ve got at least 10 more. I’m always going to come back as long as there’s not a schedule conflict.”

Once again playing the bridesmaid to White-Frazier was Vicksburg resident Kristi Hall. Hall finished second to White-Frazier for the fourth year in a row, and turned in her eighth runner-up performance in the Run Thru History. She finished with a time of 43:14 to place ninth overall — her third consecutive year to be in the top 10 overall.

Hall has never won the event, but has taken her perpetual second-place status with good humor.

“We chatted and exchanged pleasantries,” Hall said, referring to a prerace conversation with White-Frazier. “Then we hit a couple of good hills and she bounded up them. I couldn’t find the speed on those uphills. That mile up hill ate me alive.”

In the 5K race walk, Forest resident Larry Robinson also continued his Run Thru History dynasty by winning the overall title for the fourth consecutive year. Robinson clocked a time of 29:24 to beat Barbara Duplichain by nearly two minutes.

Duplichain won the women’s championship for the 13th time, and second year in a row, with a time of 31:14.

“They told me I had the race when I started. But I knew the hills were coming. I’m not too good on the hills,” Robinson said with a laugh. “This is the one I practice the hardest for, because I know the hills are coming. Everything else is flat, but nothing’s like Vicksburg.”

Bo Broome won the children’s 1-mile fun run with a time of 6:27. Maggie Roberson won a sprint to the finish line and edged Gloria Hall by .46 seconds for the girls’ title. Roberson won in 7 minutes, 26.46 seconds. Hall’s official time was 7:26.92.

A total of 736 people — 303 in the 10K run, 326 in the 5K walk, and 107 in the children’s 1-mile fun run — participated in the race, which featured a redesigned course for the first time in its history.

The new course was entirely contained within the Vicksburg National Military Park and featured more hills than the old one. The first half of the course covered the northern part of the Military Park, and the last three miles went through the southern loop.

The old course was often considered one of the toughest in Mississippi, but many runners felt the new layout was even more difficult.

“It felt like you had two times as much up. Sometimes, those were uphill both ways. It was like running in an M.C. Escher painting,” Hall said, referring to the artist whose works often include a number of inverted staircases. “We saw a whole different side of the park. Until two weeks ago, I had never run with the traffic.”

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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