Star Tribune
Minnesotan-led canoe team sets unofficial speed record on Mississippi River
Nearly 17 days after it left the Mississippi River headwaters in northern Minnesota, a canoe team of four intent on paddling the length of the river the fastest unofficially set the new Guinness world record overnight Friday when it reached the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana.
Covering more than 2,300 miles, the Mississippi Speed Record team was live on its Facebook page for the final push about 2:43 a.m. Saturday to mile marker zero on the river at Head of Passes. The team ran the river in 16 days, 20 hours and 16 minutes, besting the mark set in 2021 by another Minnesota-based team, MM Zero, in 17 days, 19 hours, 46 minutes.
“What an exciting 2 weeks this has been … Only seems like yesterday they started their adventure! If this doesn’t motivate the adventurer in each of us, not sure what will,” wrote one commenter among hundreds following along online.
“The team is very excited,” said Todd Foster, the team’s lead adviser, on Saturday morning.
Foster said the team “banked” time early in the attempt and that enabled the paddlers to get solid rest in spots — and even ride out bad weather if it materialized like in 2021.
Scott Miller of Minneapolis, who led the team, attempted the same feat with a different crew in 2021 and had to abort the adventure in a storm within about 150 miles of the finish.
After several hours of sleep Saturday, Miller said he was “tremendously satisfied.”
“We had so many supporters and helpers and people invested in this,” he added. “It sure is nice to finish the story in the way that we were hoping.”
Reached at a floating hotel in Venice, La., Miller said the most harrowing moment the last 16-plus days was at a lock and dam in Iowa early on when the team, waiting for a barge to exit in fast water, needed an assist from its safety boat back upstream for fear of heading over a dam.
Guinness World Records now will vet GPS data, photos, witness statements and more information to determine if the team’s mark stands, Foster said.
Miller was looking forward to celebrating the achievement with the team Saturday night in New Orleans. That the odyssey began in his home state to points far away gives it an extra relevance, he said.
“This is a celebration of the river that starts in Minnesota,” he added. “I love the epicness of the adventure.”
Two people from Minnetonka were killed late Friday afternoon when their GMC Suburban ran a stop sign and was struck by a GMC Yukon headed north on Hwy. 169 west of Palisade, Minn.
According to the State Patrol, Marlo Dean Baldwin, 92, and Elizabeth Jane Baldwin, 61, were dead at the scene. The driver of the Suburban, a 61-year-old Minnetonka man, was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.
The Suburban, pulling a trailer, was headed east on Grove Street/County Rd. 3 at about 5:15 p.m. when it failed to stop at Hwy. 169 and was struck by the northbound Yukon. The Yukon then struck two westbound vehicles stopped at the intersection.
Four people from Zimmerman, Minn., in the Yukon, including the driver, were taken to HCMC with life-threatening injuries, while two passengers were treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Three girls in the Yukon ranged in age from 11 to 15.
The drivers of the two vehicles struck by the Yukon were not injured, the State Patrol said. Road conditions were dry at the time of the accident, and alcohol was not believed to have been a factor. All involved in the accident were wearing a seat belt except for Elizabeth Baldwin.
Hill City police and the Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office assisted at the scene.
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
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