DULUTH — To supplement his running career, 31-year-old Joel Reichow works about 25 hours a week selling shoes at Fleet Feet in Minneapolis. Inside the store where he has worked the past seven years is a poster of Grandma’s Marathon legends Dick Beardsley and Garry Bjorklund.
Reichow took a picture in front of the poster this week and posted it to Instagram ahead of his first full marathon along Minnesota’s North Shore.
He even cut his mustache as a tribute to them for the pic.
“Celebrating Grandma’s Marathon week with an epic throwback pic of Minnesota legends Dick Beardsley and Garry Bjorklund battling it out at Grandma’s in 1981!” Reichow posted on Instagram. “I’ve raced the Garry Bjorklund Half a few times, but this weekend will be my first time doing the full there! Hopefully, we can make some magic happen!”
The White Bear Lake resident sure did make some magic in his first attempt at running Grandma’s Marathon. He traversed the North Shore from Two Harbors to Canal Park in Duluth in 2 hours, 11 minutes, 58 seconds, to become just the fourth Minnesotan to win the men’s title in the state’s oldest and largest marathon.
Reichow is the first American to win the men’s marathon since Chris Raabe of Sauk Rapids, Minn., in 2009 and only the second American to win the men’s race in the last 30 years.
A member of Minnesota Distance Elite, Reichow is the first man or woman to win both the full and half marathons. He won the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon in 2023 and came in fourth a year ago in the 13.1-mile race.
Dakotah Popehn — an Olympian and two-time Grandma’s Marathon women’s champion — again fell just short of becoming the first to claim that honor Saturday when she took second in the Bjorklund to Annie Frisbie for the second consecutive summer.
“This was my goal. I wanted to chase it. Dream big,” Reichow said of winning Grandma’s on Saturday. “I knew there was a lot of good people. I just needed to play smart.
“I would have loved to chase the record (2:09:06), but it was a little muggy today. I think we were kind of on that pace early with the surges, but probably by 10K it was pretty obvious we weren’t going to chase that.”
Bjorklund and Beardsley both won Grandma’s Marathon twice between 1977-82, when five of the first six winners in Grandma’s Marathon history were Americans. Americans won 11 of the first 19 Grandma’s Marathons between 1977 and 1995, with Bjorklund winning the first in 1977.
Kenyans had won 10 straight Grandma’s Marathon men’s titles coming into the 49th running, and 38-year-old Sammy Rotich — who has finished in the top 10 twice, including second in 2022 — led the race at Lemon Drop Hill. Reichow reeled Rotich in on London Road and opened up what would finally be a 46-second difference at the finish line.
In addition to Rotich, Reichow bested two Grandma’s Marathon Hall of Famers — five-time champion Elisha Barno and two-time champ/event record holder Dominic Ondoro. Both failed to finish the race Saturday, with Ondoro dropping out late after being part of a large lead pack at the midway point.
“I knew it was going to be hard, I knew it was going to hurt, but I thought it was within my means,” Reichow said of winning Saturday. “You can’t race scared. You have to trust yourself.”
On the women’s side, Lilian Chebii of Kenya has run just two marathons in her life. The 31-year-old finished as runner-up in her first marathon in 2024, taking second at the Nairobi City Marathon in 2:28:29.
On Saturday in Duluth, she got a win in her second shot at the 26.2-mile distance, winning the Grandma’s Marathon women’s title in 2:25:14, beating the rest of the field by two minutes.
In the wheelchair division, Luis Francisco Sanclemente won his second consecutive Grandma’s Marathon in 1:26:02. Vanessa Cristina de Souza, a two-time Paralympian from Brazil, won the women’s wheelchair division in 1:39:55.
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