Tag Archives: Twin Cities

Give to the Max

Comments (0)

For 24 hours, starting at 8:00 am on November 17th, every donation made through www.GiveMN.org will be eligible to receive a portion of the $500,000 match. These funds were contributed by the Minneapolis Foundation, St. Paul Foundation and Bush Foundation. Also, generous funders are defraying donation processing fees on this site, so 100% of your gift goes straight to the organization!

In addition to the matching funds, the three nonprofits that receive the most individual donations will receive cash prizes: $5,000 for first prize, $2,500 for second, and $1,000 for third.

Over 36,000 organizations have a profile on the site. Thirty-two show up when I type “running” into the search engine though most of them aren’t running related or are too specific for my purposes. So I helped narrow it down for you.

Running Related

  • Minnesota Distance Running Association (MDRA) is my running family in Minneapolis.  It is one of the largest clubs in MN and does some great work.
  • Twin Cities Running Club (TC Running) they are a “rival” USATF team but it is all fun and games.
  • Team USA – MN is a post-collegiate training center and group for runners to be coached and supported while they strive to fulfill their athletic goals.
  • Bolder Options is a great youth mentoring program that connects youth and mentors through running (and biking) activities.  I would highly recommend volunteering as a mentor with Bolder Options.
  • MN Intercollegiate Athletic Conference contains 13 member colleges that support student athletes.
  • YWCA provides a variety of services to pretty much every population. They focus primarily on racial justice and empowering women and girls. In Minneapolis they also operate 3 fitness facilities. We are a member of the YWCA.
  • YMCA also provides a variety of services and operates a lot of fitness facilities around Minneapolis and the West Metro. Some of our friends work for the YMCA, though none of their facilities are conveniently located for us.

Below are 7 organizations that I have given to or would give to if I had more money! (in no particular order)

  • Longfellow United for Youth and Family have played a huge role on my work here in MN. LUYF is a coalition of community members and churches that provide a free tutoring program and strongly support the work of the Sanford Job Corps – one of my primary responsibilites at Sanford.
  • Elpis Enterprises has been another great partner for my work in MN. Elpis or Hope provides teenagers the opportunity to gain work-related skills and leadership through screen printing and other businesses. My first encouter with Elpis was with their bird feeder program. We bought kits and Paul brought out one of his employees and they helped my kids build 20 bird feeders in 1 hour!
  • Achieve Minneapolis is more or less a foundation that supports programs within the Minneapolis Public Schools. They provide grants for classrooms, teacher professional development, field trips, host career fairs, and much much more.
  • CommonBond Communities provides affordable housing and supportive services in the Twin Cities. I put CommonBond under youth development because I volunteered with them during the summer of my Americorps*VISTA service. I served as a program assistant in a summer program that combined fun and learning during the afternoons for children residents of the Seward Towers. They provide many more services to their residents.
  • World Relief helps refugees adjust to life in Minnesota and America. This is the umbrella organization for the English literacy site that Christy and I co-coordinate. They also provide job training, initial welcoming services, housing assistance and much more to refugees as they walk off the plane and into the sometimes harsh tundra of MN.
  • Minnesota Public Radio is a great news source for both local and national issues. They also have a rocking music station that plays a lot of local bands.
  • Second Harvest of the Heartland is a large food bank that is helping to end hunger in MN. It is affiliated with the national Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest Network) and does some great work here in the Twin Cities.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Twin Cities Marathon Pictoral Preview

Comments (0)

The Twin Cities Marathon course has been quite busy this summer, just like every summer (actually year round).  This is because the course takes in some of the coolest recreation spots in the metro – or at least Minneapolis.  Beginning in downtown Minneapolis the 26.2 mile course  makes a big circle before ending up in downtown St Paul.  Leaving the sports capital of Minnesota (the Metrodome) runners take in some amazing views before arriving at the state capital of Minnesota.  What a course.   Here’s last year’s course preview.

Below are 26 pictures from the course itself (though they don’t come from all 26 miles of the course).

A picture of the map…
The Hurbert H Humphrey Metrodome – aka staging area and starting line.
A random wall downtown along Hennepin Ave.  I know some of the symbols are Adrinka symbols of West Africa, but I don’t know their history here.
The Basillica of St Mary is on Hennepin as well. Don’t let the old architecture fool you, they are on Twitter.
This is WAC, the Walker Art Center.  On the right is the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.  I’ve heard tell that some people use it as a quick potty stop. (I don’t recommend it) Watch this hill.  If we ran on the sidewalks we’d actually get to run under the Walker.
TCM isn’t called “The Most Beautiful Urban Marathon in American” for nothing.  This is Lake of the Isles, the first among several lakes we’ll travel around.  We won’t run by the most expensive house in Minneapolis, but it is located on the Isles.
Here’s another shot of the Isles.
Dean Parkway going underneath the Midtown Greenway.
Lake #2 Lake Calhoun.  On the south end there will be a cool view of the downtown skyline with the lake in the foreground.
The third lake is Lake Harriet which has a cool band shell and yacht club.
Running under the Niollet Ave bridge (I think).   A local marching band stands under one of these bridges and plays.
The 7ft bronze rabbit at the intersection of Portland and Minnehaha Parkway.  I can’t figure out where it came from.
We run a long ways on this parkway. Here is wikipedia’s take on who Minnehaha was…
The Grand Rounds is a great way to see the major sites in the city. A road, trail system, and scenic destination itself, much of the marathon is actually run along the Grand Rounds.
West River Parkway has been under construction all summer, but it won’t affect the race.  This is where I started to fall apart during the 2008 marathon.
The Mississippi River is a national park.  This is crossing the Franklin Ave bridge.
A bad shot of the river!
This is now on East River Road getting ready to go under a rail bridge which will one day connect to the Greenway.
University of St Thomas sits atop a nice hill and is around the 21 mile mark!
A nice long look up Summit Ave. A nice long uphill. And is the longest remaining stretch of residential Victorian architecture in the United States.
Bridge crossing Ayd Mill Rd.
A cool church on the corner of Lexington Parkway and Summit Ave.
One of many cool houses. If you aren’t in complete agony, be sure to check them out! They are on both sides.
This is a great sign!! You are atop the hill and getting ready to turn left into the final stretch.  I always felt a little let down that we turn here instead of just going down the hill!
The Cathedral of St Paul. When you see the steeple it is almost over!
The Minnesota State Capital building and the finish line!!!  Congratulations you’ve finished.

[tags] Twin Cities Marathon, TCM, Marathon, Twin Cities [/tags]

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

100 Miles, 5 Days, 1 Goal

Comments (0)

Would you willing run 5 20 milers in a row? That is what local runner Rob Donahue decided to do this week.  His purpose – to raise awareness about Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Greater Twin Cities.  He has a more specific goal of inspiring 100 men to become “big brothers.”

100 Miles for 100 MENtors is focused on getting men to be more active in their communities, specifically by being mentors with Big Brothers and Big Sisters. I can speak from experience that it is harder to find positive male role models for young boys and they often need it the most.  I won’t go into a long tangent, but the need for male role models is much greater than is currently being filled.  Many organizations offer opportunities for both men and women to get involved in the life of  a child.  Most of the time they are encouraging fun things like playing games, going to the park, or other experiential opportunities.  I would encourage you to look in your area for some type of youth mentoring program.

Another great organization in the Twin Cities is Bolder Options.  They specifically use running and biking as the foundation of the mentoring relationship.

Back to Rob and his challenge.  You can follow his journey at the 100 miles for 100 MENtors blog.  Here is a link a short clip from local TV station WCCO about the challenge.

[tags] Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Mentors, Mentoring [/tags]

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

2009 Marathon Class #1

Comments (2)

The first “class” session of this year’s Fall Marathon Training program focused on three areas

1) Places to run in the Twin Cities Metro

2) Training Philosophy

3) Goal Setting

Where to Run in the Twin Cities Metro?

Of course I’ve written about great places to run, some of which Nathan included in his presentation:

Here are some links to the places he talked about:

Listen to the audio of Nathan’s presentation here. [audio:NathansRunningRoutes.mp3]

Marty and Mike talked about the training philosophy of this year’s class (I guess it varies slightly with each year’s coaches) and what we might expect.  Marty mentions that he isn’t a huge proponent of using lots of fancy terminology or wasting money on expensive tests for things like VO2 Max or Lactic Threshold.  He subscribes to  a more “old school” mentality of getting the miles in and alternating between hard and easy runs.  With a diverse group of athletes in the room, he said that we won’t work much on specific speed workouts but getting the long runs in and doing some hill training.  We are hitting the hills much earlier this year than last and knowing these guys we’ll be doing some long runs on hills as well.  Their goal, as stated later by Mike is to make sure we have fun and cross the finish line.

Feel free to listen to their sometimes humorous discussion here.

[audio:marty&miketrainingphilosophy.mp3]  For some reason I can’t get this to work.  Any suggestions? It is the same exact link as the one above…  You can scroll to the bottom and listen to the full audio – this section begins about 16 minutes in.

Mike continued the evening’s discussion with a talk about goal setting.  He used a simple pyramid diagram to show what the most important goals are.  The three main goals of a training program are to

1) Have fun/good experience in the training program

2) Get to the starting line healthy

3) Finish (this is then split into 3 subcategories)

a) Finish

b) Target Pace – Double your 1/2 marathon time and add 10 minutes (similar to McMillian Calculator)

c) Dream time – This is a stretch goal that you shouldn’t even think about on race day until after the 1/2 way point and really start going for it after 20 miles.

Listen the audio of Mike’s presentation here. [audio:mikegoalsetting.mp3]

You can listen the complete audio (about an hour long from this first session here)  [audio:July7MarathonTalk.mp3]

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

TC 10 or 26.2

Comments (0)

A few weeks ago I ran the TC 1 Mile race in Minneapolis which is hosted by the Twin Cities Marathon as part of their annual series of events.  Part of the deal is that every 1 mile runner is put into a drawing for a guaranteed TC 10 mile entry.

You see the 10 mile race takes place on the same morning of the marathon, but has a lottery entry system which caps at around 6,000 entrants.  To encourage runners to compete in  the 1 mile and the 10 mile they offer 1,000 guaranteed entries to the 10 mile race drawn at random from the 1 mile finishers.  This year only about 2,300 runners finished the 1 mile race which means almost 50% of the field received entry into the 10 mile.  Including me.

This was the e-mail I received on May 12:

Congratulations on being one of the 1,000 randomly drawn finishers to receive a guaranteed entry to the Medtronic TC 10 Mile! We’d like to offer a special ‘thank you’ for joining us on a beautiful May 7th evening for a great downtown race, and hope the excitement of two national championship races and a sub-four minute mile is still high.

Sadly, all TC Marathon, Inc entries are non-transferable, including this guarenteed entry.  Don’t worry, even with this entry you still get to pay the full $60 plus processing fees to race.

Even with this “great prize” I decided to get an e-mail that said this:

Congratulations! You are officially registered for the 28th annual Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon on October 4, 2009.

So I have officially registered for the 2009 Twin Cities Marathon, which is currently just over 75% full (pdf).

[tags] Twin Cities, Marathon, Twin Cities Marathon, 1 Mile, 10 Mile [/tags]

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]