2024 Race Recap Grambassador: Carrie R

Where do I begin? Grandma’s Marathon 2024- my comeback race- was a dream! One that I’ve worked toward for well over a year!

This race was that much more special, being a 2nd Year GRAMbassador and my first marathon back following a stress fracture in my heel.

I arrived in Duluth late Friday morning with a friend from California who came in to run the race. We immediately went to the Expo around 11am, got our bibs, wandered around for a bit, then enjoyed the Spaghetti Dinner (more like lunch around 1pm, which I’ve found works better for me the day before a race than a large dinner). Dinner that night was a sandwich at Grandma’s, which was perfect for us.

I stayed at the Suites Hotel at Waterfront Plaza with 3 friends, and that really added to the weekend experience! With so many running friends, fellow GRAMbassadors, running my first sub-4:40 in 9 YEARS (!!!!), once again experiencing the vast beauty of this course (rain or shine, though Mother Nature chose rain for race day), and living it up—I took away so many memories from this unforgettable weekend!

I was SO thankful during every single step of this race! Even when it hurt. Even when I wasn’t sure how it would play out. Even in the cold and rain. I decided to choose a different mantra for each mile to focus on and I made a video of each (I’m sure I’ll post that at some point). I missed a few here and there, but overall, this was a new and helpful tool to keep me checked in during the race.
It had been 16 years since I ran Grandma’s and the course was even more beautiful than I remembered. My always unintentional but relatively predictable MO when I run a marathon has been this: I run longer than number of hours I sleep the night before. This was only the 2nd of 17 marathons where I ran for LESS time than I slept the night before! That’s a huge win!

I started the race with what felt comfortable at 10:50ish pace and continued with that along with a 20-45 sec walk as needed every few miles. Since my healed stress fracture still had me anxious, I ran on the dirt on the roadside as much as I could. So much so that my friend asked if I’d turned the road race in to a trail race when I got back to our room.
The chilly wind and rain made for an interesting experience but I was thrilled to have the rain begin after we’d started the race. There’s not much worse than starting a race already soaked.

I really focused on enjoying the race and taking it all in. I worked so hard to get back out there, and it felt amazing to be able to do it! I didn’t have any sort of time goal, and didn’t even realize until the last 4-5 miles that I was in a good position to PR.

When I arrived at Mile 26, I was at the location where, just 1 year ago, I was a spectator (a very loud one, I might add), on the sidelines in a boot. At nearly the same spot where I was cheering for them last year I spotted 2 friends cheering their hearts out for me! I was close to tears (though none were shed, as I’m not a crier and also had zero energy left to expend) and this was such a huge boost to crush the finish.

I haven’t been able to say this in years, but this race went WELL!
I ran Grandma’s 2024, my 17th marathon (which was also the first post-stress fracture, the first post-3 kids sub-5 hour marathon, first sub-4:40 since 2015) in 4:39:12! This was an improvement of nearly an entire hour from Big Sur last April (14 months ago). I guess the stress fracture was beneficial to an extent.

After the race, we all thawed out, picked up pizza from Vitta Pizza and ate in our room. Later that evening, we celebrated with some cocktails at Vikre and dinner with friends.
Sunday morning, we got up late, enjoyed breakfast at the hotel, walked (or pseudo-waddled) around Canal Park to take some pictures with our medals, then made the obligatory stop at Tobie’s on the way home.

I had the best weekend with the best people running the best race.

Oh, and if you hadn’t guessed yet: I’ll be back next year!