Oh, they can tell us that the first day of summer is on a certain specified date in Duluth. But we know better. We know that summer doesn’t officially start until Grandma’s Marathon runs its annual shot sometime in mid-June.
It happens this weekend, as runners take over the city’s many hotels and restaurants, leaving the bars to revelers while finishing their training plan for the race. After it’s over, amid the sore, aching muscles, blisters, and icepacks, we can start talking seriously about baseball, warm and sunny days, traveling plans, fishing, and just enjoying our Northeastern Minnesota non-winter.
As for Grandma’s Marathon itself, there will be a new focal point this year, when the annual classic runs its 26.2-mile journey down Hwy. 61, from Two Harbors to Canal Park. Gone forever is the recounting of the wonderful story of Dick Beardsley’s record run, back in the formative years of Grandma’s, and how remarkable it is that the record could stand up all these years.

Beardsley held off Garry Bjorklund to win the 1981 marathon at 2:09:36, record time, but at a time early enough in the event’s history that it seemed as though records would be set and reset with almost annual regularity. But year after year, 33 times, that record withstoodd the bids of the best runners in the world. Hired guns, mainly, brought in from exotic African nations like Kenya or Nigeria.

There are always a group of about 20 of them – lean, black men, slim and completely devoid of what we in the U.S. call “body fat” – and they usually run in a cluster, out in front of the more common runners who are somewhere between serious and recreational.

But last year, Dominic Ondoro led just such a group and then broke away, running freely and easily up Lemon Drop Hill and onward down London Road and onto Superior Street, where he simply ran away from the field. He hit the finish line in a time of 2:09:06. Two hours, nine minutes, and six seconds. That was 31 seconds faster than Beardsley’s 33-year-old record, the one that had withstood all manner of challenge.

This year, when they line up on Hwy. 61 just west of Two Harbors, there will be that group of African runners up front. The elite runners, they’re called. They will set a strong pace, and probably pull away from the field.

Maybe one of them will break the 1-year-old record Dominic Ondoro. Maybe Ondoro will break his own record himself, because he’s making a return trip to defend his title.

NBA Ends, Too

The NBA playoffs also ended with an appropriate championship for the Golden State Warriors, who won impressively 105-97 Tuesday night in Cleveland, overcoming the fantastic display of basketball talent by LeBron James to take the series in six games.

James scored more points, grabbed more rebounds, and fed more assists than it seemed could be humanly possible, and even though it wasn’t enough to lead the injury-hit Cavaliers against the skilled and balanced Warriors, James pretty much established that he is the greatest player to ever play NBA basketball.

Strong words indeed, but James wound up playing guard, center, strong forward, shooting forward, and whatever else you can dream up to call a position. If he made a mistake, it might have been out of exhaustion. In a couple of games, he drove and twisted his way inside to score and also stepped back to drill long outside shots, but then, in the closing minutes, he would force outside shots and almost forget to drive and take Warrior defenders inside.

In the end, though, while James put his name up there with Michael Jordan and all the rest of the game’s superstars, Stephen Curry showed his brilliance as a deadly shooter and floor general and guided Golden State to the championship.

Stanley Cup Has Familiar Winner, and No Loser

The Chicago Blackhawks won; in reality, nobody lost.
The Blackhawks battled the Tampa Bay Lightning through one of the fastest and cleanest Stanley Cup Playoff finals in the history of the sport, and captured the Cup with a brilliantly played 2-0 triumphs in Game 6 in Chicago, taking the Cup four games to two.
We knew the Blackhawks were a powerhouse team, so winning their third Cup in the last six years was not a huge surprise to Minnesota hockey fans, who have grown weary of seeing the Blackhawks ending the Minnesota Wild seasons in earlier rounds. The speed, style and grace displayed by the Blackhawks through the semifinal victory over Anaheim and the final against the Lightning proved, conclusively, that the Wild and their fans can hold their heads high, and all the media accusations that the Wild need major changes to compete with the likes of the Blackhawks are overdone, at best.
It was gratifying to hear star players like Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith talk about how much it took to get through every round, and they even named Minnesota as a team that battled them evenly, despite the 4-0 sweep administered by Chicago.
Quite possibly the most impressive thing that came out of the finals is worldwide respect for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Tampa Bay is enormously skilled, and greatly poised for being the youngest team to make the 16-team playoff field.
We knew only too well how good Toews, Keith, Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa and the rest of the Blackhawks could be. We had no idea that these upstart Lightning had amazingly skilled players in their Triplet Line, with Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat, plus outstanding support from Steven Stamkos, former UMD star J.T. Brown, and several others. Ben Bishop proved to be a superstar in goal for the Lightning, while the defense was led by Victor Hedman, former UMD star Jason Garrison, and former Denver Hobey Baker star Matt Carle.
Through the first five games, neither team ever led by more than one goal. In Game 6, in Chicago, the Blackhawks got a goal from Duncan Keith, and a one-timer from Patrick Kane, his first of the finals, and won 2-0.
The series lived up to the hype, which doesn’t always happen. The Blackhawks may have been slightly the better team, but Tampa Bay was slightly quicker than the very-quick Blackhawks, and I felt Bishop had a slight edge on Chicago goaltender Corey Crawford.
As the final series sped to its conclusion, top guns like Stamkos, Tyler Johnson, Toews, Kane, and Hossa, all had trouble scoring. At that level, with such skill and such close checking, nobody could find an extra step of opening, so it becomes almost expected that the top players would neutralize the top players on the other side.
When the final game ended, only then did we learn that the mysterious “lower body” injury to Tampa Bay goalie Bishop was actually a torn groin muscle. He missed one game, then came back. Can we imagine how much pain he must have gone through every time he had to make a quick move or a sprawling, splitting save?
We saw the Triplets Line get defused a bit when Kucherov went hard to the crease for a loose puck, tripped over Crawford, and landed with his neck stricking the left goal pipe. He missed the rest of that game and the next game. He came back and played well, and when it was over we found out that if Johnson was having trouble playing his usual inspirational game on the Triplets Line and maintaining his overall playoff scoring lead, it was because he had suffered a broken wrist early in the series – and kept on playing.
For UMD fans, of course, we had Game 5 start with the Tampa Bay staring unit including J.T. Brown at wing and Garrison on defense. Impressive, for the two former Bulldogs to get the start in a huge Stanley Cup final game. The old axiom is that good teams should win the majority of their games at home, but truly great teams prove their merit by winning on the road. By winning the Cup, the Blackhawks finished 9-2 at home through the playoffs. Tampa Bay was 6-7 at home, but established an amazing 8-5 record on the road while facing Detroit, Montreal, New York’s Rangers, and the Blackhawks.
Chicago’s Duncan Keith won the Conn Smyth Trophy as Most Valuable Player throughout the whole playoff. And as if to show perfect dramatic timing, road construction in Chicago blocked the path for the caretaker of the Stanley Cup to get Lord Stanley’s magnificent trophy to United Center for the final. It finally arrived, we’re told, only after Chicago police were summoned and gave the trophy a police escort that reached speeds of (allegedly) 100 miles per hour. As the Blackhawks were waiting, and most of the 22,000-plus fans were standing and chanting, here came the two guys, carrying the Cup, out to center ice.
It’s always a fantastic ceremony, watching the two intensely competitive teams line up and shake hands, then the MVP gets the trophy, and then, finally, the Cup itself shows up and is carried aloft around the rink by each member of the winning team. It never gets old, and rarely was it so fitting as this time, by the Blackhawks.