Twin Cities Marathon

This past weekend was the TC Marathon and other running events. Kyle and I ran in the 10K race on Saturday - I wrote about the technical parts here. There was also a 5K on Saturday, in addition to a lot of family events. Sunday was the big race and started with the 10 mile run 'the short cut to the Capitol' followed by the full 26.2 marathon.

All the races ended at the state capitol in St. Paul. The 5K & 10K both started and ended there, then the 10 mile and the marathon both started at the metrodome in Minneapolis and ended here.


The Twin Cities Marathon is called the most beautiful urban marathon in America!!! Almost gives you motivation to want to run it, doesn't it? Here is the map of the marathon course: (on the far left you can see the lakes, that middle lake - Lake Calhoun is my normal running lake. A few weeks ago Kyle and I did Calhoun & Isles to prepare for our 10K.


This is why they call the 10 mile the 'short cut to the Capitol':


And here are the 5K and 10K course maps:


We had a friend running the 10 mile, which started at 7:00. We knew he was in the second huddle starting at 7:10 or so so we figured he'd finish around 8:15... so we took our time getting up and heading over to St. Paul. Well it turns out he was farther ahead than we had thought. I dropped Kyle off to run up to the side line, while I frantically looked for parking. I was hoping to find free parking, but desperate times call for desperate measures and there just wasn't enough time, so I found parking ($10 yikes) and RAN up a super steep hill to make it to the side lines in time. Luckily he hadn't passed yet. As I'm on the phone with Kyle and Enoch's wife, Michelle, trying to figure out where he was. Luckily Michelle was getting text updates as to where Enoch was at times, this helped somewhat. Kyle was a little further ahead and I was about .2 from the finish line. Looking, camera in hand, hoping to see him before he passed. Then there he was! I screamed "ENOCH" and he turned his head... silly me didn't have my camera on then I frantically got it up to my eye to shoot a picture.


Yeah not the best... but at least I captured the moment, lol. I figured Kyle would be heading my way because he would have seen him before I did. I stood there for a bit and called Kyle, "did you see him" Kyle: "no, I'm still looking he hasn't gone by yet." me: "i just saw him, he's already finished" this was crushing to Kyle, but at least one of us got to hollar at him to cheer him to the finish. After the race we meet up with Michelle and Enoch at the end. Then we decided to head over into Minneapolis to watch the marathon. They had some friends in it and one of our church's lead pastors was also running in the race. We ended up going to around mile 17 and stood to cheer everyone on. Some people had their names on their shirts which made it easy for us to cheer them on, pretty fun.


Then we spotted Steve (our lead pastor at church)! I was on the other side of the trail, out of the sun, so I actually spotted him first. I am not sure how I recognized him, searching for someone in a race is like looking for waldo on a moving filmstrip... rather straining for the eyes. But we saw him and hollared!!!


It was a pretty fun weekend and full of many healthy hearts!!! Here are the stats from the races:
5K total finishing runners: 1734 (666 men, 1068 women) - Avg. Time 39.03
First Male: 15:26 First Female: 19:38

10K finishing total: 1349 (477 men, 872 women) - Avg. Time 1:01.13
First male: 32:11 First female: 37:12

10 Mile finishing total: 7017 (2706 men, 4311 women) - Avg. Time 1:35.33
I heard that 8000 started this race.
First male: 50:43 First female: 59:08

Marathon finishing total: 8212 (4818 men, 3394 women) - Avg. Time 4:15.35
I heard around 11,000 started this race.
First male: 2:14.02 First female: 2:27.24