One step at a time

SAUK CENTRE, Minn. — For the past four months, Ryan Meier has spent a lot of time travelling down country roads in western Stearns County.

However, Meier was not doing these travels via truck to check the neighborhood crops; he was doing it on foot in preparation to run Grandma’s Marathon. He accomplished the feat when he ran the marathon June 20 in Duluth, Minnesota.

“When I finished, it was emotional; all this training and work, and now it was all done,” Meier said. “It was a thrill.”

Prior to starting his marathon training, Ryan Meier had not run more than 3.2 miles, a 5K. While in training to run the Grandma’s Marathon, Meier logged 355 miles.

Meier and his father, Rod, milk 70 cows with a robot and farm 350 acres near Sauk Centre. Meier; his wife, Brittney; their daughter, Millie; and Meier’s cousin, Cori Schulte, participated in Grandma’s Marathon. Millie competed in the half marathon, while the others competed in the full marathon.

“My goal was right around four hours,” Meier said. “It’s more a mental challenge for me.”

All four also participated in the Grandma’s Challenge, which was running a 5K Friday, June 19, and either the half or full marathon on Saturday, June 20. Meier’s time for his 26.2-mile journey was four hours, 26 minutes and 10 seconds. This was Meier’s first marathon, but Brittney and Shulte have run the Grandma’s Marathon for the past few years.

“After watching Brittney run the marathon and seeing guys that are bigger and 10 years older run, I thought to myself, ‘What is my excuse?’” Meier said. “If they can do it, I can too.”

On race day, the Meiers and Schulte got up at 4:30 a.m. to get Millie on a bus that brought the half marathon runners to their starting line. Their race started at 6 a.m., while the full marathon started at 8 that morning. Then came the time for Meier, Brittney and Schulte to board their bus that brought them to the starting line in Two Harbors.

“On the bus ride, it was neat listening to these people talking about doing ultramarathons,” Meier said. “There all sorts of ages; some were in their 60s, and there was one guy in his 70s that has done all 50 of the Grandma’s Marathons.”

Meier said that, just prior to the start of the race, there were two jets that flew over the crowd at the starting line.

Since there were around 12,000 runners participating in the event, runners were organized by their pace. When signing up for Grandma’s Marathon last October, Meier put down 5:30 as his goal time, which all runners are required to enter to determine their start time. Meier was put in group C.

“Group A is the serious runners trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon,” Meier said. “There were a couple spots where there wasn’t anyone cheering you on, but most of the time, there are people watching (and) cheering you on.”

Meier carried a vest with energy gel-packs to give him the needed strength to keep going. There were water stations and first-aid tables along the route. At mile 20, Meier had to stop at a station to take some pain medication.

“Muscle-wise, I was fine, but my knees and my feet were killing me,” Meier said. “After taking some ibuprofen I was back to running good and was trying to make up ground I lost while stopping. Eventually, I was able to catch up to the 4:20 pacer.”

All runners wear a bib with their race number and a chip so family and friends of the runners can use the Grandma’s Marathon app to track where the runners are and see their estimated finish time. Meier said he received notifications when Millie finished since he was already at the starting line for his race and was not able to see her finish in person.

Millie and Schulte’s husband, Andy, and son, Devon, were waiting and cheering at the finish line for Meier, Brittney and Schulte.

“Marathons are different than other racing. You are happy when people finish, whether they are faster or slower than you, since you don’t know what their starting point was to get to this point,” Meier said. “Not everyone can win a marathon; it is more about building people up and accomplishing a goal than winning a race.”

To prepare for his first marathon, Meier used an app as a training coach and would run 6-20 miles, five days a week, while also tracking what he ate. In doing so, Meier lost 30 pounds.

“When I first started training and the app told me to do a one-mile warmup, I thought, ‘What one mile is just a warm up?’, then remembered that this is a marathon,” Meier said. “While training, I focused on trying to get into a good cadence. That’s what I struggled with at first; sometimes, I pushed too hard and would get shin splints.”

Meier would make time in between the farm work to run and admitted some days were harder than others.

“Some days, going for a run, my goal was to not walk or just to keep my heart rate above a certain point,” Meier said. “The app I had analyzes your run and tells you if you started out too strong or was a little slow and tells you what you need to do to get to your ideal pace.”

Growing up on a dairy farm, as well as being in the Army National Guards for 20 years, helped get Meier in the mindset of training and maintaining the routine of running on a regular basis.

“You have just have to do it and stick with it,” Meier said. “I think being in the guards helped quite a bit; you had to get up and do your routine. Just like in dairy farming, too, you have to get up each day and just do what needs to get done.”

Meier, Brittney, Millie and Schulte have already agreed that they will all be doing Grandma’s Marathon again in 2027.

“It was fulfilling,” Meier said.