A year after losing out in the second-closest finish in the history of the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon, Kenyan Macdonard Ondara vowed to return to Duluth and win the race that eluded him by six-tenths of a second.
Ondara did just that Saturday and with a very comfortable cushion, beating Japanese Olympian Suehiro Ishikawa by 29 seconds on a humid morning in Canal Park. He crossed the finish line of the 26th edition of the Bjorklund in 1 hour, 3 minutes and 33 seconds.
Ethiopian Simegn Abnet Yeshanbel won the women’s half-marathon by an even larger margin — 43 seconds — making the 13.1-mile run along the North Shore from the Talmadge River to Canal Park in 1:13:21.
“For last year, yeah it was discouraging because I had just wanted to win that race,” Ondara said of the 13.1-mile run. “I was feeling ready and I said I would come back and win it now. Today, I won it. I was ready.”
Ondara, who along with Yeshanbel took home $3,000 for winning, ran last year’s Bjorklund in 1:03.10. His personal best is 1:01:11 from the 2007 San Jose Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon.
Ondara was part of a pack of three at the finish a year ago. He lost to fellow Kenyan Shadrack Biwott while beating out Ben Payne of Colorado Spring, Colo., by just eight-hundredths of a second in a photo finish.
That race was run on a rainy morning with temperatures in the low 50s compared to this year’s race, which was run with temperatures in the low 60s and humidity hovering around 90 percent.
“Last year it was raining and my shoes were a little bit slippery,” Ondara said. “I was feeling ready to win the race, but we waited until (the final) 50 meters and those guys, they had a good kick.”
The 31-year-old Ondara who lives and trains year-round in Santa Fe, N.M., had no one within 50 meters of him Saturday. Neither Payne nor Biwott competed this time.
Ondara said he ran for about six miles with Jordan Chipangama, a 27-year-old from Zambia who finished 1:16 back in third after taking third in Grandma’s Marathon a year ago. Ondara said he never changed his pace or made a surge. He just maintained his present speed and Chipangama dropped back.
From there on out, Ondara was alone with his imagination.
“I was a little bit slower because I didn’t have somebody to push together. When you have two at a race … maybe you can push each other,” Ondara said. “I had to keep my rhythm the way I had with Jordan. I started imagining that I had somebody to run with.”
Ishikawa, 36, who will run the marathon for Japan at this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, said through an interpreter he thought he could have caught and possibly passed Ondara after nine miles, but was battling fatigue.
Ishikawa was using Saturday’s half-marathon as a training run prior to the Olympics in August. He spent the previous four months training in Boulder, Colo., and said Saturday’s weather was a good test prior to the Olympics.
“It’s a great pre-race, pre-Olympics race to prepare for the humidity,” Ishikawa said via an interpreter. “Temperature-wise it was a higher temperature in Boulder, but the humidity is a lot lower. This was a little harder.”
Ondara called Saturday morning’s weather perfect, though “a little bit humid.” As for the top two female runners, it seemed to bother them even less with runner-up Hellen Jemutai of Kenya even calling it “comfortable.”
Her only complaint after running in Duluth for the first time was the same as the two half-marathon victors — she lacked someone to push her.
Jemutai, 34, said she tried to keep pace with Yeshanbel, but that pace was “too high for me.”
“I decided to come up with my own pace,” Jemutai said. “This was my first time running Grandma’s half-marathon. I was happy with my time today.”
Yeshanbel, 30, said after passing Jemutai at the four-mile mark, she ended up running with one of the men’s half-marathoners for about 11 miles. She didn’t know the name of the runner, but through her interpreter wanted to thank him for pushing her.
While her time Saturday was off the 1:11:31 she ran in the Carlsbad Marathon in California in January, she called the Bjorklund a fast course.
“It was a fast race but I didn’t have many competitors running beside me,” Yeshanbel said through an interpreter. “It was a nice race. It was a nice speed. The race I ran in California there were some mountains. It was up and down. This place is very nice. It’s a nice race to run.”
- Of the 9,593 who started Saturday’s half-marathon, 7,919 finished, or 82.5 percent. There were 5,012 female finishers compared to 2,907 males.
- Duluth’s Mona Stockhecke, 32, was the top local and state finisher in the women’s half-marathon, finishing fourth overall at 1:16:29. The native of Hamburg, Germany, who researches climate change at the Large Lakes Observatory for the University of Minnesota Duluth, was 3:08 off the pace. For the men, Chaska’s Ben Sathre, 26, was the state’s top finisher, taking fifth in 1:05:18. The top local finisher was 26-year-old Scott Behling of Duluth, who placed 32nd in 1:11:39. Read more here
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