Gene Niemi's Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Photos

 Marathon men's champ Elisha Barno had been runner-up the last three years in the Twin Cities race.  After finishing first for the fourth time at Grandma's in June of this year Barno finally got the "Minnesota double"

Sinke Biyadgilgn (#118) and Serkalem Abrha(#127)battle on Summit Avenue near the

James J Hill Mansion. Biyadgilgn finished first in 2:33:04. Abrha was 2nd  in 2:33:12

Sinke Biyadgilgn (#118) and Serkalem Abrha(#127)battle on Summit Avenue near the
James J Hill Mansion. Biyadgilgn finished first in 2:33:04. Abrha was 2nd  in 2:33:12

Math&Science Academy's Tierney Wolfgram Discovers a New Event

   Math&Science Acadamy's  Tierney Wolfgram
leads the field at the 8.5 mile mark
Photo by Gene Niemi

She finished 6th among the women. She is currently ranked first among the Class A MSHSL XC female runners.Women's top 10 results below:

Full race results are HERE

Bib	Age	Sex	Time	Diff
1    2	Sinke Biyadgilgn	118	23	F	2:33:04	+0:00
2	Serkalem Abrha	127	29	F	2:33:10	+0:06
3	Sarah Kiptoo	102	29	F	2:33:15	+0:11
4	Simegn Abnet Yeshanbel	108	32	F	2:38:16	+5:12
5	Jane Kibii	101	33	F	2:39:00	+5:56
6	Tierney Wolfgram	121	15	F	2:40:03	+6:59
7	Kerry Allen	114	30	F	2:41:33	+8:29
8	Heather Lieberg	104	39	F	2:42:04	+9:00
9	Sarah Horbol	106	32	F	2:42:58	+9:54
10	Elizabeth Frick	105	23	F	2:44:09	+11:05

Bib	Age	Sex	Time	Diff
1    2	Sinke Biyadgilgn	118	23	F	2:33:04	+0:00
2	Serkalem Abrha	127	29	F	2:33:10	+0:06
3	Sarah Kiptoo	102	29	F	2:33:15	+0:11
4	Simegn Abnet Yeshanbel	108	32	F	2:38:16	+5:12
5	Jane Kibii	101	33	F	2:39:00	+5:56
6	Tierney Wolfgram	121	15	F	2:40:03	+6:59
7	Kerry Allen	114	30	F	2:41:33	+8:29
8	Heather Lieberg	104	39	F	2:42:04	+9:00
9	Sarah Horbol	106	32	F	2:42:58	+9:54
10	Elizabeth Frick	105	23	F	2:44:09	+11:05

Gene Niemi's Marathon Photo Album: THE CONTENDERS

Dominic Ondoro in the final 
yards 
The leaders came through
the half marathon
 1:06:05 seconds,
then negative split the 
uphill second half 

                                               Despite being "under the weather,"
                                                 Kibii was  1rst Woman and 15th overall
                                                      Joe Moore finished 10th

  Joe Moore finished 10th

Conor Wells was 11th

                                                             Trent Lusignan was 16th
                                                          Full results are HERE

Gene Niemi's TC Marathon Album: The Crowd

Looking back at the finish and the Cathedral
Photo by Gene Niemi

The crowd welcomes the runners to the finish
Photo by Gene Niemi

                                       
                                                             Down the stretch they go!
                                                               Photo by Gene Niemi

TC 5K Results

TC 5K Results HERE

TCM 1988 Women's champion cleared of doping charges 29 years too late

Twin Cities Marathon 1988 Women's champion Ria Van Landeghem has been cleared of doping charges from almost 29 years ago HERE and HERE

Prior to the 1988 TCM Van Landeghem was told she had failed a drug test done in the Olympic lab in Seoul at the request of the Belgian Olympic Committee.  She was sent home and missed her chance to run in the Games.  She protested her innocence and was allowed by TCM organizers to run the marathon here.  She won in 2:28:11, a new course record for women.  Her record lasted until 1996 when Olga Appel set a new record of 2:27:59.

She never gave up on "clearing her name" of the doping charges however.  Nearly 29 years later the BOIC agreed with her and issued a press release absolving her.

Top Minnesota Men's Finishers

Top 5 Minnesota Finishers:

1. Jonathan Peterson             2:20:21
2. Jake Marotz                      2: 25:37
3: Rob Molke                        2:26:39
4. John Keane                       2:28:32
5. Jacob Olsen                       2:33:25

Jake Marotz
Photo by Gene Niemi

Rob Molke and Jonathan Peterson. Photo by Gene Niemi

Jonathan Peterson and Rob Molke finished 7th and 11th, respectively, in their first marathons on  Sunday.  Peterson said he was able to run low five minute pace early in the race, but that it may have been too fast as he struggled in the final miles.  "You feel so good early that you can go out too fast," Peterson said.Molke echoed those thoughts and said he was happy to have his first marathon was done, and he wasn't pleased with his time, but wasn't shattered by it either.  Overall, he said, it was a positive experience and he hopes to put the lessons he learned to good use when he does his next marathon.

Jane Kibee Uses the Hills to Triumph

Like the men's race, the 2016 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Women's race was decided during mile 21.  Up to that point last year's runner up Jane Kibii of Kenya controlled the race.  At 5K, said Kibii, the defending Medtronic TC Marathon women's champion Serkalem Abrha of Ethiopia began to  fall off the pace of the four leaders.

"I saw her dropping off so I picked up my speed," said Kibii.  "Last year I was sick, so I wasn't as strong, so when I saw (Abrha) falling off so early, I started to push.   Kipii took the lead from 2016 Grandma's champion Sarah Kiptoo and the two left Abrha behind with Kiptoo having some problems sticking to Kibii's surges.  "(Kiptoo) kept falling back," said Kibii, "but then she would catch back up."  

Jane Kibii and Sarah Kiptoo dueling on the River Road.
Photo by Gene Niemi

Kibii kept pushing, hoping that eventually Kiptoo would drop back and not catch back up again.  That point came in mile 21 where the series of hills in the last 10K of the race begins.

"(Kiptoo) told me she was not good at hills," said Kibii.  "Yes, I told her that," said Kiptoo with a smile.  "We have raced many times, but I haven't beaten her yet. Perhaps next time"  

"After 21 miles I know there were more hills, so I kept pushing it," said Kibii, who was hoping to break 2:30 because organizers of the bigger races, such as Chicago, Boston, and New York wouldn't consider you until you were running in the 2:20s.  Kibii came close, finishing in 2:30:01, so she knows breaking the 2:30 barrier is within reach.  She has one more opportunity this year as she is planning on running The Sacramento Marathon in December.

"I like running in Minnesota," said Kiptoo.  "I like this weather." Kiptoo was aiming to run 2:32 on Sunday and she finished in 2:32:18 in second place.  Kiptoo will be running one more marathon this year, she said, and hopefully will return to Grandma's in June to defend her title.

Top five Minnesota finishers:

1.  Kimberly Horner              2:51:16.

2.  Lindsey Pierret                 2:53:49

3.  Megan Smith                    2:55:26

4.  Alison Smyth                    2:56:39

5.  Carrie Donohue                2:58:29

Dominic "The Terminator" Ondoro Beats the Field and Phil Coppess' 31 Year Old Course Record

A new course record!!! #tcmarathon pic.twitter.com/uUrEaIGNSk

— TwinCities In Motion (@tcmarathon) October 9, 2016

Dominic Ondoro broke through the finish tape as the clock above him read 2:08:50 and kept on running through the finish chute as if he were going to keep going for another 26 miles.  In a comedic touch for a historic occasion several race officials ran after him to get him to appear in the media tent
for interviews and the USADA drug testing squad that was there to collect the athletes chosen to be drug tested.

When he was finally wrangled to the tent and sat down, the effort finally showed.  He stared down at his feet and attempted to absorb what he had just accomplished.  He was given a bottle of water.  he drank some and washed his hands.  The Terminator had just done what no other runner could do in the past 31 years.  He ran faster than Iowa's Phil Coppess's 1985 course record, which was done on a similar day.

Cool temperatures and bright sunlight greeted the runners as they took off from downtown Minneapolis.  Ondoro and his countryman/training partner Elisha Barno had spent the last few months preparing to do what they had missed by a little over a minute the year before.  The plan was to run around 4:55 a mile, which would have them at the finish in 2:08:54, plenty of cushion if something went wrong.

Ondoro already had practise in breaking the "unbreakable." Taking down records that others could not. Two years ago he broke Dick Beardsley's 33 year old Grandma's Marathon course record by 31 seconds in 2:09:06.  Last year Ondoro tried for a double going after Phil Coppess' Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon's then 30 year-old course record of  2:10:05. He missed that mark by one minute and 11 seconds with Barno right behind him in 2:11:39.

Dominic Ondoro breaks the tape to set a new course record
© Competitive Image, Inc.

This year he was taking no chances.  He and Barno, who had finished one, two in Grandma's in June prepped not only to repeat that feat at Twin Cities but also to increase the chance that one of them would also take down Coppess' record as well as take home the $25,000 course record bonus that was on offer for the first person to break it,

An early obstacle they faced was the cold temperatures at the start.  Barno said it took him awhile to begin to get feeling in his legs.  While the duo had settled on attempting to run each mile around four minutes and 55 seconds, the first half of the race was slightly slower than a 4:55 average.  They ripped through 13.1 miles in 1:05:02, which would have still broken the record if they kept up that pace for another half marathon, but the margin was razor thin and the second half of the course more suited for mountain goats than runners.

The Twin Cities course is not known for giving up "negative splits," when the leaders are able to run faster in the second half of the race as the first.  Not wanting to miss the chance again, Ondoro cranked up the pace and by mile 21 had dropped Barno.  Barno said his legs left him at that point as they began to climb the upgrades from along East Mississippi Blvd. to Summit Ave. By 21 miles, Ondoro had opened a five second gap that increased as the race went on.

Ondoro ran the last 13.1 miles in 1:03:49, 2:07:40 pace on the toughest parts of the course.  And his effort gave the TC Marathon folks something to talk about, which they did as the race announcer noted that this year the finish time for the men in St. Paul was faster than that of 2012 Olympic silver medallist in the marathon Abel Kirui had run this morning in the 2016 Bank of America Chicago Marathon.

When was the last time that happened?  1992.  That year Kenya's David Mungai won in 2:15:33 in the Twin Cities, while Brazil's Jose Cesar de Sousa triumphed in the Windy City in 2:16:14.

Men's Results HERE.

Bulletin: Dominic Ondoro Breaks Course record: Jane Kibii sets a PR to win the Woman's Race

You can call Dominic Ondoro "The Terminator."  The 28-year old Kenyan has broken both
Dick Beardsley's long standing Grandma's Marathon course record and now Phil Coppess' 1985 course record is gone as well.  Ondoro used a 1:03 last half to shatter Coppess' mark by over a minute in 2:08:51.

Both records had lasted for more than 30 years.  Kenya's Jane Kibii didn't break the women's course record, but did set a PR to move on top of the podium in 2:30:01 after finishing second last year.

Top Ten Finisher's results HERE

Sally Brent's Short, but Successful, Running Career

Sally Brent 

How far has the sport and the Twin Cities Marathon come in the last 34 years?  To shed some light on what it was like  in 1982 when the first TC Marathon was run, we interviewed the women's champion that year, Sally Brent.

Today is Sally Brent's birthday.  The first women's champion of the Twin Cities Marathon had thought of trying celebrate the occasion this year by running the race with her granddaughter, Ashlyn, who is a freshman at Colorado Mesa.  Ashlyn finished 139th in the Maroon DII race at the Roy Griak Invitational two weeks ago.

The effects of an auto accident that ended her competitive running career and the family business, a real estate company in Colorado that includes her husband, Rick, and several of their kids, postponed  that idea for another time.  "I'm just too busy(with the real estate business)," Brent said.  She also calls her running these days "jiggling," a sort of jogging that she does when she can, a far cry from the appetite for training that she had during her elite career.

Running still retains a special place in her life and her Twin Cities triumph is the best of her memories of her short time as a professional runner.  She went to  High School in Iowa pre Title IX where there were no sports for girls.  The only activity that resembled athletics was cheerleading, so she did that.  "I had no opportunity to compete in a sport,"  Brent chuckles when she recalls her habits in those days, which hardly predicted that she would ever run, let alone a marathon. "I was the one who drove three blocks to school," she says.

She became a "stay at home mom" with three kids and had no thoughts of any athletic pursuits. Her transformation began in 1979 when her husband and his cousin urged her to run with them.  Brent, who was 29 when she began running, finally agreed to try it to lose a little weight and "get me out of that funk," a low point in her life as a result of a miscarriage.  "I didn't even know how far a 10K was," she said.

"It felt so good to be in a sport," Brent said of her new lifestyle.  She met new friends, felt better about herself both physically and mentally, and in the race in Kansas City she was running with Rick and pushing the pace Rick told her: "If you feel that good, go run by yourself." .  She did and passed a lot of people.  When she finished she had no idea where she placed, just that it felt so good.  Not long after the race she got a letter in the mail that she thought was a solicitation from one of the race sponsors.  It was a note informing her that she had won her age group.

She not only loved the running, she was good at it.  Brent moved up in distance to a half marathon where a guy she passed told her: "You better slow down or you're not going to finish." She left him in her wake.   She continued to improve and moved to the marathon. "I couldn't believe that different world," Brent said of the racing, the people she met, the things she began to learn about herself and her talent.

"I didn't have a coach," so training was self experimentation.  Rick advised her to split up her workouts, do a run in the morning and another in the evening, but she liked doing the long runs, a pattern that she followed in racing.  If I'm going to train for a marathon why not run them to prepare for the next race.  Instead of doing short events, she kept running marathons, feeling that this was how you trained to improve.  As she placed better and better she finally got a coach, Rob Kinnunen, who told her she should break up her training: "Run five in the morning and five at night."

As her successes continued, Kinnunen asked her: "Would you like to run a race where you could win prize money?"  "I had no idea that you could do that, run and earn prize money,"  Brent said.  By the time she ran Twin Cities she had run 12 marathons.  She had placed well enough to get invitations to races with her expenses paid.  It was both seductive and rewarding.  For Twin Cities, Kinnunen told her she could probably place as high as fifth and earn $500. "I know he was trying to keep my expectations low, but felt I had potential," Brent said of the fifth place prediction. "He had some great tactics with coaching."

Kinnunen advised her  "to run easy the first half, so I could run the second half faster. It was a great strategy that I had never done before. It felt so good to start passing people the second half, where I ended up running negative splits... At 17.5 miles, I passed Sissel Gottenberg, from Sweden, who was supposed to win the race. That is when my husband first saw me on his bike and couldn't believe I was in first place. That, too, boosted my confidence and I knew nothing could stop me. I honestly never thought about the money at all until the race was over and my coach was jumping up and down."

She won the race by three minutes over runner up Kersti Jacobson of Denmark .  Her 2:43.50 was the fastest she would ever run the distance.  In a 12 month period in 1982-83, she ran nine marathons.  It was a stress level that ultimately her body couldn't handle.  She had a stress fracture and had to give up running while it healed.  "I realized that my best friend was taken away," she said of not being able to run.  Brent didn't stop training.  She started swimming instead.  Not just a few laps a session, but rather two hour "marathon" training sessions in the pool.

When she got healthy, her goal was to run a qualifying time for the 1984 Olympic Trials.  She needed a 2:50 to qualify but ran 2:51:50 in the Boston Marathon to miss the Trials.  She ran 2:50s and 2:48s in the marathon.  Won the Masters title in the Chicago Marathon, but soon realized that all her marathons were hard on her body.  She began to do more shorter distance races as she didn't want a recurrence of the stress fracture. She was  "very cautious as it was like losing a best friend when I couldn't run. I didn't want to risk that again as running was so important to me."

It was not a running injury that ended her competitive running career.  In 1990 she was riding with her son in their car when another driver ran a red light and "T-Boned" the car.  Brent had to have surgery on her jaw and later began to have issues with her back.  Running competitively was no longer an option. "It changed my life," said Brent of her running.  It gave her the discipline and confidence to know if she worked hard and dedicated herself to something, she could be successful.  She credits the lessons she learned in her short running career for allowing her to be successful.

"It taught me to set goals and enabled me to gain a confidence I never had' She said.  "Training taught me a great work ethic- the harder I worked the more success I experienced.   I later tried to instill that in our children, and encouraged them to follow their passions. I know it is the main reason I have a prosperous career in real estate now."  And then there's that run she wants to have with her daughter.  It didn't happen this year, but don't be surprised when she and  Ashlyn show up sometime soon on the starting line in Minneapolis. 

TC 5K Results

TC 5K Results HERE

5 #Gophers in the top 7 of today's #TC5k including @Hamza_Ali56's win at 14:47 - fastest time ever at the race by a Gopher. pic.twitter.com/Sf1cnMKufS

— Minnesota M CC/TF (@GopherMCCTF) October 9, 2016

TC 10K Results

TC 10K Results HERE(Note: the course was approximately three-tenths of a mile longer than 10K due to a course setup error.)

The first female #TC10k finisher, Laura Docherty! pic.twitter.com/HTzg3eVZc0

— TwinCities In Motion (@tcmarathon) October 8, 2016

St. Paul Pioneer Press's Richard Chinn Asks: "Is the Running Boom Over?"

St. Paul Pioneer Press's Richard Chinn Asks: "Is the Running Boom Over?"or Is There Just More to Choose From on the Running Calendar? HERE

Strib Look at Marathon Stats

Strib Look at Marathon Stats HERE

Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Weekend Begins on Friday

St. Paul resident Gwen Jorgensen, who won the Olympic women's triathlon gold medal in Rio this summer, headlines the 35^th anniversary Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Weekend kicking off Friday morning with the opening of the Health & Fitness Expo at the Saint Paul RiverCentre

Jorgensen, who plans to make her marathon debut later this fall in New York, will compete in the Medtronic TC 10 Mile, which hosts the USATF Men’s & Women’s 10 Mile Championships for the second straight year.

Other notable elite athletes competing on marathon weekend include defending Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon men’s and women’s champions Dominic Ondoro of Kenya and Serkalem Abrha of Ethiopia.  

The 27 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Charter Club members – 26 runners and one wheeler who have finished all 34 Twin Cities Marathons since 1982 will attempt to continue their streaks. 1992 Olympic men’s figure skating silver medalist Paul Wylie, as the honorary captain, will join the 2016 Global Hero team.  

Marathon Weekend kicks off at 11:00 a.m. on Friday with opening of the Health & Fitness Expo at Saint Paul RiverCentre. The expo, which runs through Saturday evening features more than 100 exhibitors, a full schedule of free presentations, and packet pick up for the weekend’s races.

30,000 people are expected to participate in running events held Saturday and Sunday. Saturday events at the Capitol grounds in St. Paul include a 10K and 5K.    

The Medtronic TC 10 Mile, known as the Shortcut to the Capitol^®, starts in downtown Minneapolis and kicks off the Sunday races at 6:53 a.m. The Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon follows at 7:55 a.m.
.

Olympic Gold Medalist @gwenjorgensen will run the #tc10mile this weekend. We look forward to watching her compete on Sunday morning! pic.twitter.com/HeJLQ1mBK6

— TwinCities In Motion (@tcmarathon) October 3, 2016

Kevin Castille's Redemption

New Yorker story on Masters champion Kevin Castille HERE

Story Behind Rick Kleyman's Acting Debut

The story behind the touching #tcmarathon pic of 2 runners helping another across finish line http://t.co/MGU3YeyiCF pic.twitter.com/gxJg81AywC

— MPR News (@MPRnews) October 6, 2015

First Timers Share the Experience

This is the final installment of our short stories on the high school standouts who did their first marathon at the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon.

McKenzie Merlander: Time: 3:01:57.  "Yeah, overall I’m happy with my race.  I wanted to run around 3 hours.  Obviously breaking that 3 hour mark would have been a little bit better but I’ll take it for my first marathon.  I think the hardest part was anticipating what I was going to feel like those last few miles of the race.  I knew the first part would feel easy so I tried to be a little more conservative early on, that’s why I had negative splits.  After mile 22, I definitely had to start digging. 

"One of the things I will remember is seeing my high school CC team handing out water.  I remember working the marathon as a high schooler, watching all the runners and wondering when I would run my first marathon. 

"I think I was pretty conservative with my training, so next time around I might try and adding a few more longer tempos or incorporating some harder pacing in my long runs. Glad to say I have one under my belt now.  I know I will do another one, but I need to let the soreness of this one wear off first :)"

Shannon Bergstedt: "Official time was 3:16:27. Pleasantly surprised with the time given the low (and slow) mileage leading up to the race. Really enjoyed the experience - beautiful course, perfect weather, lots of support from spectators along the way and especially from my family. I think they made it to six or seven different spots on the course, and my grandma was following along on her computer, constantly refreshing to get the live updates.   Calling my mom, etc.. "

A little sore now and quite tired, but overall a great first marathon experience. Look forward to doing another one (or many!) in the future."

Hannah Borowsky: Time: 3:29:45.  "Oh em geeee marathons are crazy! I was having the time of my life for the first 15 miles.  Amazing people cheering, hilarious signs, fun music, beautiful lakes... and then, I would say around mile 16, it became a medium amount of fun.... 

"Those last six miles were rough. My mom and I ran the first 23 miles together. It was amazing to run with my mom! That lady is TOUGH! I definitely didn't realize how much it was going to hurt at the end..... All in all, I would say it was a character-building experience. I'm glad to have experienced the Twin Cities in this way and feel so grateful to have gotten to do this with my mom even if she did kick my ass in the end :) "

Hanna Grinaker:  While my hope was to be toeing the line on Sunday, I, instead, biked the various points on the course with my boyfriend cheering on friends and family. I don't know if it was due to the fact that I wasn't able to compete, or if I was just that inspired by all of the runners, but it was an emotional day for me. The marathon is a distance I both respect and am humbled by, and one that I hope to tackle one day--once this hip heals up! To all those runners who competed on Sunday, Congrats! No matter how you finished or how well you think you did or did not do, you accomplished an impressive feat and should be so proud of yourselves!

Run for the Records

With near ideal weather conditions the top athletes in the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon and 10-Mile entertained thoughts of course records in the marathon and the equalizer bonus for the 10-Mile. Any man or woman who broke either Phil Coppess' 30 year old mark of 2:10:05 or Russian Zinaida Semenova's 14-year old women's course record of 2:26:51 would get $25,000 on top of the $10,000 winner's check(and an added bonus in the marathon of $2,500 if an American finished first).

The first runner off the starting line was the only one to take down a record.  In the 10-Mile, the women start first and the men took off about six and a half minutes after the women.  The first runner who crosses the finish line in front of the State Capitol wins their gender category and the "equalizer bonus."  Late entrant 2012 Olympian Molly Huddle bolted off the starting line determined not only to win the  race, but to make sure that none of the men starting later could make up the "handicap."

Molly Huddle said her strategy for winning the equalizer bonus was to get so far ahead
that the men chasing her could not see her on the horizon in front. Douse any incentive they
 might get from seeing her up ahead. Photo by Gene Niemi

Track fans who watched this year's 10,000 meters or the endless replays afterward of Huddle raising her arms in celebration of the bronze medal she was going to earn for placing third.  Huddle didn't realize that by slowing down with the premature celebration she allowed another American, Emily Infeld, to pass her to take away that medal.

Nobody was going to surprise Huddle on Sunday.  Huddle said after winning the race and the equalizer bonus that she thought running faster than Kara Goucher's course record of 53:16 would win the woman's race and the equalizer.  She also believed she was capable of running 52 minutes plus.  Her first miles were 5:15 and 5:10 up the steepest hill on the course.

She "negative split" the race running 26:01 for the first five miles and 25:43 for the second, averaging 5:11 per mile to break Goucher's record by a minute and 32 seconds with a time of 51:44.  That is the fastest 10 mile ever run by an American, but it won't count as an American  record because the TC 10-Mile course is laid out "point-to-point" going from a higher elevation to a lower one thus it is not "record eligible" because it has more downhill than uphill, which  means the performance could be deemed aided by the advantage given by the downhills.

The other hurdle to getting a record ratified is that the runner who ran a record eligible time must be drug tested soon after the race.  So, a testing crew was notified and was going to meet her at the airport to get a test done, just in case something was overlooked and further examination of the course reveals it to be record eligible and her time would replace Cathy O'Brien's record of 51:47 set in 1989.

There was no ambiguity in the men's or women's TC Marathon.  The only woman who had a fast enough PR to challenge Semenova's course record, Kenya's Sarah Kiptoo(2:26:31 PR), couldn't match or run faster than her best on Sunday and finished fourth in 2:35:25.  In front of her were two Ethiopians and a Kenyan, none of whom had broken two hours and 30 minutes for the marathon.

After the race, the woman's winner, Serkalem Abrha, from Ethiopia, sat on a chair in the press tent her head in her hands.  She wasn't weeping in disappointment, but with joy as not only had she won the three woman battle for first between her and runner-up Jane Kibii of Kenya, and Ethiopia's Simegn Abnet Yeshanbel, Abrha had run a personal best of 2:31:40, four seconds faster than Kibii and a minute four second gap to Yeshanbel. 

Yeshanbel could no longer keep up with Abrha and Kibii by mile 25 and lost all that time between her and the other two in the last 1.2 miles.  Kibii hung on until the final meters of the race despite a dodgy hamstring and late in the race, a pain radiating from the bottom of her left foot.  Kibii thought that the foot pain came from favoring her tight hamstring, and she felt she needed to wait until the very last strides of the race to make any effort toward passing Abrha.

By then Abrha had already started her kick and opened a gap that couldn't be closed.

In the men's marathon three Kenyans had run faster than Coppess' record:  The two  Grandma's champions, 2014 winner and course recordholder for Grandma's, Pius Dominic Ondoro, and his training partner, this year's Grandma's winner, Elisha Kiprop Barno, and Abraham Chelanga.  Neither Ondoro or Barno were willing to push the pace from the start out of fear that if they spent too much energy early in the race, they would pay for it later.

So the pace languished through the half marathon that the trio reached in 1:07:12.  Knowing that was 2:14 marathon pace, Ondoro went from running 5:04 miles to 4:52s. They maintained the 4:52 pace up the hills from the transition from the East River Blvd. to Summit Avenue. Chelanga was far back in the rear view mirror and when Ondoro cranked off a 4:36 for mile 23 he broke away from Barno and the race for first was over.

Despite a huge negative split on the second half of the race (1:04:04) and a 29 minute plus last 10K, Coppess' record survived another year. As Ondoro was resting after the race in the press tent he was asked if the delicate looking necklace with a crucifix on it was his good luck  charm.  "Yes, I am Catholic," thus his first two names, Pius Dominic.  Maybe he needs to say a few more prayers next year.   With their success at Grandma's and Twin Cities, both Ondoro and Barno spoke enthusiastically about running both Minnesota races again  and taking another shot at the record.