Star Tribune
Minnesota native Dakotah Lindwurm makes U.S. Olympic team in marathon
St. Francis native Dakotah Lindwurm became the first Minnesotan to make the U.S. team for this summer’s Paris Olympics, finishing third in the women’s marathon Saturday at the Olympic trials in Orlando, Fla.
Lindwurm, 28, prevailed in a gritty battle for third place and the final Olympic spot. Fiona O’Keeffe won the race in a Trials-record time of two hours, 22 minutes, 10 seconds, with American record holder Emily Sisson second in 2:22:42. Lindwurm pulled away from Caroline Rotich with about two miles left to finish in 2:25:31, wrapping up the last of the three available Olympic berths.
Conner Mantz won the men’s division in 2:09:05, with training partner and former Brigham Young teammate Clayton Young second in 2:09:06. Leonard Korir was third in 2:09:57.
Mantz and Young were named to the Olympic team, but Korir’s time did not achieve the standard he needed to make the team Saturday. He still could qualify for the Paris Games if the U.S. is awarded a third Olympic berth in the men’s marathon via the world rankings on May 5.
A two-time winner of Grandma’s Marathon, Lindwurm entered the race with a personal-best time of 2:24:40, earned with a 12th-place finish at last fall’s Chicago Marathon. She trains with the Minnesota Distance Elite club in the Twin Cities. After Saturday’s race, she could barely hold back tears as she was wrapped in an American flag.
“I was just calling on the Lord those last four miles,” Lindwurm said in a post-race interview with NBC. “I knew I had a little bit of a gap on (the fourth-place runner), and I was just praying to God that he could help me through.
“I just had this undeniable belief in myself. I knew I could carry this flag on my shoulders and represent this country. And here we are.”
Lindwurm was the goalie for her high school girls’ hockey team, a combined program with St. Francis and North Branch. She walked on to the track team at Northern State University in Aberdeen, S.D., and became a Division II all-America in the 10,000 meters and in cross-country. She finished her college career in 2017 and has been a professional runner since then, balancing that with a career as a paralegal.
Along with other members of Minnesota Distance Elite, Lindwurm had been living and training in Orlando for the past several weeks to acclimate to the weather, which was 61 degrees with 65% humidity at the start of the race. Saturday, she maintained position in a lead pack of 12 early in the race.
At the 12-mile mark, Lindwurm surged to the front of a 12-runner lead pack, with Minnesota Distance Elite teammate Annie Frisbie of Edina also in the group. O’Keeffe made her move near the halfway mark and began to pull away from the field in mile 20. Lindwurm settled back into the middle of the lead group, and her duel with Rotich began around mile 21.
As O’Keeffe and then Sisson separated from the pack, Lindwurm and Rotich ran neck and neck until mile 24. Lindwurm held an 11-second advantage on Rotich at mile 25 and maintained position through the final stretch.
O’Keeffe praised Lindwurm for running a “brave” race. NBC analyst Kara Goucher, a two-time Olympian who grew up in Duluth, was emotional as she watched Lindwurm cross the line in third.
“My little Minnesotan,” Goucher said. “Believing in herself, and willing herself onto that Olympic team.”
Frisbie finished 10th in 2:27:56,and Gabi Rooker of New Brighton was 19th in 2:31:25. The top Minnesotan in the men’s field was Reed Fischer, a Minnetonka native who finished ninth in 2:11:34.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
