First-Timers From Afar Win Bjorklund; Wheelers Drive Marathon Records; Irving 5Kers Come Up Short
Cold weather leads to hot times at 31st running of Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon
Two first-time visitors to the North Shore won men’s and women’s Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon while the Grandma’s Marathon wheelchair racers both set course records in the crisp, cool morning air June 18.
Kenyan Daniel Kemoi, who previously trained in Coon Rapids, won the 31st running of the half marathon race in 1:02:04. Runners praised the chilly 45-degree starting weather, and it helped Kemoi run a personal best by 23-seconds. None could keep his 4:44-minute-per-mile pace when he pulled away from the other elites after the first mile.
“[The weather] was perfect,” he said. “The course was nice; if there were some more people, maybe you could run a better time.”
A better time was run only once (legally) on the course: Meb Keflezighi ran 1:01:22 in the 2013 race in the course record. He had finished second to Mo Trafeh, who was later disqualified by a drug test. Keflezighi is the 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the marathon (among his many accolades).
Rosie Edwards, 33, won the women’s half in 1:12:45. Originally from Manchester, England, she came partially because she “heard great things about the city.”
“I was excited to commit to the race and experience the magic here,” she said in a pre-race conference. She currently trains in Scottsdale, Arizona, as she prepares for the 2022 European Athletic Championship Marathon in Munich two months from now.
Each of the winners received a check for $3,000.
In second place for the women, a 22-year-old runner who led the 2021 Twin Cities Marathon for several miles: Elena Hayday. The former U of M runner from Bloomington finished the half in 1:13:02 and netted $2 grand. She set a PR by more than a minute as she ran negative splits holding second place for the entire race. She now lives in Bethesda, Maryland, while continuing to study neuroscience.
Kelsey Bruce, 29, took third in 1:13:34 after coming in 11th last year’s full marathon.
“It’s hard not to come back,” she said. “I had fun in the build up for this race.” In January, the Brackettville, Texas, resident finished 23rd at the Houston Half Marathon in 1:13:58.
Kemoi trains in Kenya most often, where he lives with his wife and their four-year-old daughter, Precious Cheruto. He prepared for the Bjorklund at the Rift Valley altitude with 50 others. The training at their running camp included light gym work, morning long runs, and grueling 10K repeats on a track. He did come to Minnesota to train, but he would only say that things didn’t work out with the coach, so he went to Maryland. He arrived in Duluth last week while tapering for the race.
The night before the race, he said he ate a plate of spaghetti. Then in the early morning, near the Talmadge River, he lined up with the other elites, including Minnesota Distance Running’s Joel Reichow, Venezuela Luis Orta, and Chase Weaverling, who recently finished 16th at the US Cross Country Championships.
Kemoi said he had been recovering from a pulled calf muscle, but it didn’t bother him as he strove southeast toward Duluth’s Canal Park finish line on his own. He took no water or nutrition on the way.
Kiya Dandena ran the fourth-fastest time ever recorded in the 13.1 miles along gitchi-gami, 1:02:21, yet he came in second.
For Dandena, 33, it was a personal record as well. He trains among the Ponderosa Pines of Flagstaff, Arizona, and he might have felt at home among the White and Red Pines of the shore.
Nathan Martin, with the Great Lakes Running Club in Jackson, Michigan, finished third, one minute behind Dandena. Martin set a nearly seven-minute PR, though he said on his Instagram page afterward that he felt he could run even faster. Martin, 32, became the fastest American-born African-American marathoner in 2020 when he ran a 2:11:05 at the Marathon Project race.
The celebrations near the finish line were indicative of the big return to a full race weekend in Duluth this year. Twenty-one thousand total participants from 62 different countries registered for the three races. Representative flags from each participant country flew on the harborside of the canal, offering spectators and runners a moment of reflection on the wide-reaching draw of the race weekend that began in 1977 with just 110 men and six women.
The half marathon was first run in 1991 with 1,361 finishers. Thomas Plechter and Doris Windsand-Dausman won the inaugural race, in times 1:08:44 and 1:23:05, respectively. The course records were set during the years Bjorklund doubled as the USATF Half Marathon Championships.
For the women’s record, Olympian Kara Goucher (who was the 1993 AA High School cross-country champion for the Duluth East Greyhounds) rocketed to 1:09:46 in 2012. Goucher had run the fastest half marathon ever by an American woman at the 2007 Great North Run in England. The time of 1:06:57 wasn’t eligible for a record though (it was a downhill course).
nikki Long looks strong on course that comes up short
The racing started Friday night at the 28th running of the William A. Irving 5K. The weather was warmer for the shorter afternoon race, but it didn’t bother Flagstaff’s Jesse Chettle, who outkicked 20-year-old Mason Shea of River Falls, Wisconsin, to win by two seconds.
Chettle, 38, ran a 14:52 on the course that twisted around the Bayfront area and was about 80 meters short of a full 5,000 meters. Chettle suggested on his Strava post that the lead bike accidentally cut the course, leading to a happy group of runners celebrating personal best 5K times. Gabe Haberman, a 19-year-old from Golden Valley, finished third in 15:14.
Nikki Long, a forensic anthropologist in Cary, North Carolina, completely obliterated the course record for for the women. Long, 31, finished in 16:15, with a good lead ahead of the other 1,200 women finishers. The previous record was held by Katie McGee after she ran 17:11 in 1996. It was unclear whether her record would stand since the course was short. Though Long said on her Strava account that it was the “best run of my life,” yet since the bike took the runners the wrong way, the course record was a “coulda been.”
Lindsey Zimmer, 34, of St. Louis Park, took second in 17:10, and 28-year-old Emma Koenig of Minneapolis, a member of the Mill City Running team, took third in 17:34.
wheelers crush course records in historic Grandma's marathon race day
The wheelchair racers at Grandma’s Marathon June 18 were rocketing down the shore this year as both winners, Aaron Pike and Susannah Scaroni, set new course records while racing against a field of competitors from 13 different countries.
Both winners are familiar names for the fans of Grandma’s. Scaroni won the women’s race in 2014, 2018 and 2019, in which she set the previous course record and personal best of 1:30:42. In a massive breakthrough, the 31-year-old from Urbana, Illinois, flew down the course Saturday more than three minutes faster, winning in 1:27:31.
This was her second big race in just a few months. Scaroni also wheeled at Boston, where she finished second to Manuela Schär of Switzerland.
Jenna Fesemyer, 25, of Champaign, Illinois, was second in 1:33:50, and Noemi Alphonse, 26, of Port Louis, Mauritius, was third in 1:35:14. The island resident from the Indian Ocean also set a personal record—improving her previous best time by nearly 40 minutes.
Pike had also finished second at Boston this year. At Grandma’s though, he was ready to face Johnboy Smith of Britain (the 2021 winner), Rafael Botello Jimenez of Spain (the 2007 winner), and Patrick Monahan of Ireland (second in 2019).
The Champaign, Illinois, resident led from the start and put together 3:04-minute miles to careen into the record books with a time of 1:20:02. The time was a personal best for the Park Rapids native. Pike’s father was in the military, which took their family from their Hubbard County home around the world.
Saturday’s record-breaking times by the wheelers were echoed by the runners: both marathon winners, Dominic Ondoro and Dakotah Lindwurm, ran the second-fastest times ever on the course.