Molly Bookmyer, Shadrack Kimining win Twin Cities Marathon on blustery day

The Twin Cities Marathon returned on Sunday after a year away and provided a men’s race that approached a photo finish and a women’s race with a wire-to-wire winner.

Shadrack Kimining of Kenya held off fast-closing Eritrean runner Tesfu Tewelde by four seconds, running a time of 2 hours, 10 minutes, 17 seconds after he made his marathon debut in Houston in January.

Molly Bookmyer of Columbus, Ohio, turned the women’s race into a run in the park, leading from start to finish while beating the field by four-plus minutes with her personal-record-smashing time of 2:28:52.

Both did so on a chilly, blustery, overcast morning just perfect if runners had a tailwind, particularly after last year’s races were canceled because of excessive heat. Conditions also were ripe for personal records.

“Today was a beautiful day,” Bookmyer said. “The course was fabulous. The spectators were so loud. I just wanted to go out there from the gun and lead it. That’s what I did. A great day.”

She is the survivor of two brain surgeries nearly a decade ago, one to remove a benign tumor and the second to relieve a fluid buildup in her brain.

Now 33, Bookmyer is a changed runner from the teenager who was a walk-on athlete at Ohio State long ago.

“I’ve gotten a lot better since college,” she said. “I wasn’t very fast in college.”

Bookmyer was inspired to be better when her husband was diagnosed with cancer two years after her surgeries and not long after they married.

“I wanted to run a marathon to honor him and I did,” she said. “It was a way to get back into shape. I ran decently fast and that sparked my interest to run at a higher level.”

Bookmyer ran Sunday to honor her father-in-law, who died two weeks ago.

She competed in Grandma’s Marathon on the North Shore in June, seeking a better personal record than the 2:30:16 she ran in a third-place finish. She returned to Minnesota confident she’d get it this time after a summer of good work.

Sunday’s run was like those she does alone around Columbus. Her job as a supply-chain planner and the lack of other elite runners made running on her own more convenient, except when her husband, Eric, rides his bike alongside her.

“I’m used to running alone; it’s how I do all my long workouts,” Bookmyer said. “I do them alone. I’m used to it. Running with good people helps push you along, but I was prepared to go out here and race alone. If there were women running with me, I would have welcomed that. You never know what shape everybody is in, but I wanted to go out and lead from the beginning.”

Bookmyer and Kimining each received $10,000 for winning. Bookmyer gets an extra $4,000 as part of the marathon’s new Best of the Midwest initiative, which invited up-and-coming runners from eight Midwestern states.

That ignites the age-old question: Is Ohio the Midwest?

“I think we’re right on the edge,” she said.

Good enough, for an extra $4,000.

Kimining ran much of the race in a three-man lead group with fellow Kenyans Cosmas Kiplimo and Dominic Ondoro, a four-time TCM winner, most recently in 2019. Kiplimo finished third at Grandma’s Marathon in June and second at the Los Angeles Marathon in March.

“We came together to push the time,” Kimining said.

Kiplimo dropped away coming down the home stretch and Ondoro did, too, while Tewelde surged, seemingly from nowhere, in an unsuccessful attempt to catch Kimining at the finish. Tewelde finished fifth in the Los Angeles Marathon.

“I hear that guy coming so then I increase my speed through to the finish,” Kimining said.

Former Montana State runner Matthew Richtman closed fast, too, and finished fourth, 28 seconds behind Kimining. He’s from Elburn, Ill., and is eligible for some extra cash as part of that Best in Midwest program.

“I have a lot of family around here and it’s close to home, too,” he said.

Richtman called the day “perfect” with weather conditions that stayed windy but with a sky that turned brilliantly blue as the first marathon finishers crossed the finish line.

“You couldn’t ask for anything better,” Richtman said. “It was exactly how we wanted it.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Molly Bookmyer’s name.