Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon won by hometown heroes
Nick End, a Shorewood, Wisconsin, native wore bib No. 1 as the favorite to win the 34th Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon, and he ran up to his billing.
The 30-year-old broke out front to lead at mile one, extended the gap to two minutes near the halfway point and powered through 25-mph wind gusts to secure a solid victory over Connor Callahan, a former Marquette University runner. End finished in two hours, 27 minutes, 33 seconds -nearly two minutes ahead of Callahan, but well off the course record of 2:14:09, set in 1981, and his own personal best.
The women’s Lakefront Champion, Melissa Gacek, had more of an adventure.
The 38-year-old Kenosha native blamed soup she ate on Saturday for some stomach issues that forced her to make two stops in the portable toilets along the course.
“I’ve never felt like that before,” said Gacek, a veteran of 27 marathons, including two Olympic qualifiers. “It was, do I take a risk of not stopping, which could be worse. But I figured the people around me would appreciate me stopping and taking care of it, cleanly.”
The stops gave Jenny Zwagerman, 28, a chance to catch Gacek, but she never quite caught the veteran and finished about 48 seconds off the pace.
“I ran the best race I could run, so it doesn’t really matter what place I was in. I was just happy to be out here,” said Zwagerman, who moved to Shorewood in August and works at Community Memorial Hospital.
Gacek, who lives in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, reached the finish line in Veteran’s Park in 2:54:52.
Her mantra into the wind along the lakefront was “Run to my babies. Run to my babies,” and she celebrated the victory with hugs from her daughters, nine and three.
Both victors enjoyed the hometown atmosphere, returning as a prodigal son and daughter.
End, who raced at Carnegie Mellon University after his Shorewood High School days, still lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he started the online shoe fitting business Shoefitr.com.
“Just finishing a marathon is pretty challenging,” End said, while donning a winner’s jacket to fight the chill. “So it feels great to have everything come together and win in front of my family and friends. There were a lot of Shorewood High School kids out there cheering for me.”
His race played out beautifully, and the crowd cheered loudly for the local boy as he ran solo in an orange singlet on familiar streets.
“The wind the last two miles was really brutal,” he said. “I was just struggling to the finish.”
End plans to run the New York City Marathon in four months, then ponder his next shot at a win.
Gacek has more family plans: a climb to the top of Willis Tower, in Chicago, with her oldest daughter, on November 2.
Callahan, 23, has more distance running in his plans, but after he finishes his studies at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
“It’s a good starting point,” he said of his first marathon outing. “My goal was to break 2:30 and be in the top three, maybe win it if I had a chance. I pretty much hit all my goals, so I’m pretty excited about it.”
The excitement of the finish was about all that kept the 2,086 finishers going as they dug into a southwest wind that gained intensity after the 7:30 a.m. start time. The final two miles, in the open along the Milwaukee Lakefront, seemed to suck the life out of the late finishers.
The average finish time was 4:21:13, about five minutes slower than 2013 when 2,158 finished the race. The Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon is organized by the Badgerland Striders running club and is the largest marathon in the state without a concurrently run half marathon.
Find the full results here.
Tom Held writes The Active Pursult blog for silentsports.net.