Ben Perka and Aden Dressler are training for their first marathons — and found the 51st annual Butler Road Race to be a nice stepping stone.

Freeport graduate Perka, 22, and Butler graduate Dressler, 24, finished first and second, respectively, in the 5-mile portion of Saturday’s BRR at Diamond Park.

Perka graduated from Geneva College in May. He was a distance runner there. Saturday marked his first Butler Road Race. He finished in 28 minutes, 20.62 seconds, less than two minutes in front of Dressler.

“I’m training to run a marathon and figured this would be a good step toward that,” Perka said. “It was a fun race. The hill (at the end) was challenging, but I was prepared for that.

“I did a lot of running at Harrison Hills Park in Natrona Heights to get ready for this.”

Perka plans to run in the Buffalo Creek Half-Marathon in the fall to continue his marathon preparation.

Saturday’s race took place in misty conditions. There was a steady rain earlier in the morning.

“Good day to run,” Perka said.

Dressler graduated from Washington & Jefferson College three years ago, setting the steeplechase record there. He is just now getting back into running and plans to compete in the Philadelphia Marathon in November, then the Pittsburgh Marathon next spring.

“I started training over the last month or two,” Dressler said. “It’s been a while ... I wasn’t sure how I’d do. This is encouraging.

“I ran this race back in 2017, 2018 ... A lot of runners from Butler used to come out for this. It’s a great community event. While you’re out on the course, you’re never sure when you might run into someone you know.”

One runner who really had fun with the 5-mile race was Cade Wheeler, a Butler graduate and former Golden Tornado volleyball player. Now 23, he ran Saturday’s race in a clown outfit, complete with orange hair, long tie and a vest.

That was his punishment for finishing last in his 10-person fantasy football league last fall.

“We had it set up so whoever finished last had to wear the clown outfit and run a 10K somewhere,” Wheeler said. “We eventually settled on this race. My (fantasy) team only won two or three games. I had to own up and do this.

“I’m not a runner at all. I was happy to finish.”

Wheeler placed 51st in the 5-Mile race.

Male 2K

Kam Wiley, 16, of Butler, won the male 2K portion of the BRR handily, beating out runner-up Ben McComas by just under 13 seconds. The winning time was 8 minutes, 6.93 seconds.

A sophomore on the Golden Tornado track team, Wiley ran the 100 and 200 meters in the spring.

“I’m a sprinter,” he said. “This was the race for me.”

While he was easily the top-finishing male in the race, Wiley was pushed to the finish line by a pair of young girls, Addison Portman and Julia Peterson. He beat them to the line by seconds.

“I’ll tell you, those two girls were fast,” Wiley said. “I ran behind them coming up the hill because I knew I could out-kick them in the end.

“This was my first-time ever doing this race. I’d love to do it again.”

There were approximately 190 runners registered overall for this year’s BRR.

Male, 5-Mile

top 10 finishers

1-Ben Perka (age 22, Freeport) 28:20.62, 2-Aden Dressler (24, West View) 30:11.86, 3-Parker Laughlin 26, Zelienople) 30:28.86, 4-Dom Pusteri (31, Butler), 5-Xavier Krause (32, Butler) 34:24.46, 6-Isaac Boring (21) 34:44.40, 7-Jaxon Lewellyn (Butler) 36:26.84, 8-Vern Morrow (63, Butler), 9-Michael Theuret (17, Rimersburg) 37:23.48, 10-Michale Grossman (55, Saxonburg) 37:31.61

2K

1-Kam Wiley (16, Butler) 8:06.93, 2-Ben McComas (11) 8:19.60, 3-Henry Dlugas (11, Butler) 8:56.19, 4-Zacchaeus Freeman (11, Butler) 9:35.16, 5-Tanner Leonard (11, Hilliards) 9:39.42, 6-Jameson Barkus (9, Cranberry Twp.) 9:44.13, 7-Eden Harmon (8) 9:46.81, 8-Brian Wiley (37, Butler), 9-David Miller (59, Saxonburg), 10:21.75, 10-Mathew Miller (11, Butler) 10:27.11