2023 Grandma’s Marathon, Duluth News-Tribune photo
If all the troubles in life and in the world today make you want to run, then run. Literally, run, walk, jog, roll, swim, or engage in any regular physical activity that boosts your heart rate and launches endorphins. Doing this is not an escape, but a way of coping with life by seeking good physical and mental health.
This past Saturday thousands of long-distance runners and their followers inundated Duluth on Minnesota’s north shore of Lake Superior for the 49th annual Grandma’s Marathon. They were focused on running, helping with, or watching, the 26.2-mile course along Highway 61 (yes, the same in Bob Dylan’s song), hugging the shore from Two Harbors to Duluth.
With years of fitness sports including marathons behind me, this year was the first time I watched a broadcast of Grandma’s Marathon from start to finish. It kicked off with a flyover of F-16s from the Duluth-based 148th Fighter Wing. While I missed that part of the broadcast, I experienced that from running in previous marathons. In the mob of runners behind the start line, if you aren’t pumped up enough already from adrenaline, the thundering jets will take care of that.
A day later and across the globe another group of jets were busy, too, dropping bombs on nuclear facilities in Iran. At least the marathoners could escape from those kind of thoughts for a bit. Something happens to your brain when you engage in exercise. Physical activity can redirect your thoughts from worries to something more creative. And in finishing a marathon, some would say a spiritual experience.
An office routine
During decades of office work I have been very fortunate to escape for noontime runs, usually about four miles. Defending against any supervisory consternation about extended lunch hours, I would claim that is when I did some of my best work. Many creative ideas and solutions emerge from the office fog enveloping the frontal lobe, or whatever area of your brain does that.
If you have not tried this and are able to do so, I highly recommend engaging in a daily routine of physical activity. Running is the best, both for body and mind. Using ear buds playing workout music or whatever you like is good; however, it may interfere with the creative thinking part.
The popularity of running got a big boost in the late 1970s with a book by James Fixx, The Complete Book of Running (1977). Once you become hooked and are searching for more advice, look up the training programs of Hal Higdon. First published in 1993, his book The Ultimate Marathon Training Guide is now (2020) in its fifth printing.
I have read and been inspired by both, the only difference being their lifespans. Higdon is now 94. Fixx died at 52 following a heart attack on a run due to heart disease from his previous very unhealthy lifestyle. I still remember the teasing from a supervisor about that.
Journey to Grandma’s
Another good book comes from Scott Keenan, founder and longtime director of Grandma’s Marathon. For an aspiring author such as myself it is encouraging to see the effort of Keenan to self-publish My Journey to Grandma’s Marathon – History and Heroes (2021). Its 196 pages are full of vignettes and statistics since 1977 when 150 runners started the first Grandma’s. Last Saturday they numbered 9,000, 18,000 if you include the 5k and half marathon events.
Keenan, who ran cross county at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, followed his vision with great perseverance to make it happen. He overcame great obstacles, including a highway department district engineer who did not favor closing a state highway just for a scraggly bunch of runners. Today, Keenan, who retired as race director in 2013, can take credit for an event now drawing 50,000 visitors, and generating nearly $40 million in business.
I finally got into the marathon action in 1979 at the third Grandma’s Marathon. By then it had grown to 1,290 runners. After months of training your goal is to simply finish. I still recall the exhilaration of crossing the finish line on Canal Park Drive. In subsequent marathons aiming for a new PR – personal record – some became a real struggle.
It all started with someone’s encouraging words. While I had begun a jogging routine after work, it never occurred to me that I could do a marathon. That was until Bill came along. A local leader in the community where I was the newspaper editor, he encouraged me to go for it. That is the key, encouragement from others. It really helps when you are struggling through the final miles of a marathon along a course lined with cheering spectators.
A community
That is another benefit of such events – you become part of a community, one that is upbeat, welcoming, and supportive. At many events the last person crossing the finish receives as much cheering, sometimes more, as the person finishing first. I have many running ‘friends’, often people who are very different and with little contact outside of events. Yet, you know them very well, their personalities and attitudes about life.
Social contact is sometimes the primary motivating factor. After many years you don’t need to keep score about the number of events, collect any more ribbons or medals, or set a new PR. The greatest benefit, apart from physical exercise, is the community connection that restores your faith in people, something in great need these days.
It helped greatly during an earlier time of national crisis. The organizers of a 10k run on Oct. 13, 2001, faced a question: With an almost unspeakable terrorist attack occurring on Sept. 11, 2001, do we follow the examples of other events and cancel? We decided to stay on course.
Among the organizers, I spoke to the runners assembled for the start: While we grieved for the victims of the Nine Eleven attack, we must continue, because ‘by keeping ourselves strong we are helping to keep our nation strong’. Much the same could be said again today, although the more recent terrorist attack Jan. 6, 2021, came from within our nation.
The spring following Nine Eleven we organized a new race, the Flags of Honor 5k, on the Saturday prior to Memorial Day. The start line sat below an array of American flags, many being casket flags of fallen soldiers. Still in the wake of Nine Eleven, it seemed to help bolster our community and our belief in a nation founded on ideals of democracy, equality, truth, rule of law, and respect for all.
The benefits of running and other fitness events go far deeper than individual finishing times and medals. Personal physical and mental health, community connections, and the common goal of a finishing line, if applied to a fractious nation, could create the best marathon ever.
