Marathon #37: Grandma’s Marathon, Duluth, Minnesota

June 22, 2025 3 minute read

I just completed my 37th marathon, the 49th annual Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota!

Matt Coneybeare - Marathon 37 - Certificate

Grandma's Marathon is a very unique race. Between the 5k, half marathon, and marathon, there were over 30,000 runners that descend on this small town of 100,000 residents. It is a massive race for a city this size, and is a huge annual event for the city. I've never been to Duluth before, but is a really nice city that sits on the shores of Lake Superior. I got to finish a marathon in Minnesota, and cross off another state on my journey to running in all 50.

Sticking with the theme of hot marathons this year, the Duluth weather was very warm and very humid, with a heat advisory for the day bringing temperatures up to the high 80s with very high humidity. We started relatively later in the morning, at about 8:15am with a temperature of about 62℉ and 89% humidity, but by the time I finished, the temperature shot up to 80℉

Coming off a rolled-ankle injury from the Brooklyn Half 6 weeks ago, I did not have high expectations coming into this race. I had to take 3 weeks off from running to recover during the peak weeks of this marathon training cycle, and my longest training run was only 19 miles. To be honest, I was not sure I would finish this race, as I seemed to have been struggling with endurance on the longer runs lately. As a result, I set my goals relatively lower than normal.

C Goal: Finish
B Goal: sub 3:30:00
A Goal: sub 3:20:00
Stretch Goal: sub 3:15:00

Matt Coneybeare - Marathon 37 - Result Splits

The course was really nice running alongside Lake Superior the entire way. The cool early morning mist coming off the lake felt a rush of air conditioning to the face, and the views were really nice where I could see through the fog. The course is relatively flat, and I was able to keep a strong pace of about 6:45/mi for the first half, locking in a time of 1:28:35 over 13.1 miles. I felt like my old self, with a glimmer of hope that I might be able to sustain this pace for the whole race, resulting in my first sub-3 hour marathon since Boston in 2023.

After the halfway point, I decided to take a 30-second walking break to give myself a little breather before launching into the second half, but in hindsight that was a mistake. When I started running again, I was not able to get back into my groove, and I started to feel a little fatigued. Ultimately, the next 6 miles were run much slower than the first half, and I was seeing my time slip. The endurance fatigue I had worried about was starting to show, and I was not able to keep pushing as much as I would have liked to. Combine that with the rising heat in the latter half, and my pace dropped and dropped, getting as low as 8:30 on mile 22.

I lost about 10 minutes in the second half from walking, and just running a bit slower, ending up with a final time of 3:10:22 which is still a solid time, but not quite the sub-3 hour marathon I was hoping for in the early parts of the race. With my pre-race expectations set really low, I was able to hit my Stretch Goal and I am pleased to have done that, but I was a little disappointed after seeing how well I started the race off. I think I could have hit a sub-3 had I not been injured earlier this year and had been able to get some longer runs in during training.