Running for office

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is an accomplished runner

BY STEVE BRANDT

Join a group run from the Mill City Running’s store on E. Hennepin Avenue, and every month or two, you might spy a slight figure slip into the group as it passes his doorway a mere block away.

“He just pops out of the door and joins the run,” said Windom Park neighborhood runner Doron Clark. “When he jumps in, he’s just another person.”

He might mention running in college, but not that he was All Big East. Or he might talk marathoning without dropping that he once ranked tenth in the nation.

“If you’re listening, you know, ‘Hey this guy knows how to train,” Clark said.

That’s Jacob Frey. Sure he’s the mayor of Minneapolis, but his running group may be more impressed that he notched a 2:16:44 PR in the Pan American Games and competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials.

He’s also the most recent winner of the MDRA’s Pat Lanin Award for Distinguished Service, bestowed at its January annual meeting.

But Frey didn’t meet immediate success as a young runner. He was still in grade school when he tackled a kid’s triathlon. He held his own through the swim and the bike ride. When the running leg started, he started passing older kids--until he was directed off course. His shot at a win vanished.

“I remember crying when I was coming in, knowing I wasn’t going to win my age group” he recalled.

But the experience helped nurse a love for speed afoot. He’d run occasionally with his father, Christopher. His father would circle their cul-de-sac at the end of the run for young Jacob to catch up.

But the smaller Frey covertly upped his training. After two or three weeks, they ran again. This time, the smaller Frey was first to the newspaper box where the winner always scooped up that day’s daily as a trophy.

That formula of working harder than his competition was one secret to Frey’s rise to national class marathoner. It also served him well as he balanced law school at Villanova with a

Minneapolis Mayor jacob frey is pictured during the 2019 downtown run around with mile in my shoes. Submitted photo

burgeoning pro running career. And when he moved to Minneapolis to practice law and entered DFL politics. And finally when he acted on his undergraduate major in government from William and Mary College, unseating a wellknown northeast Minneapolis incumbent for City Council, and then, four years later knocking off another incumbent to win the mayor’s post.

His political ambitions were assisted by friendships he made as a local runner, and as co-founder of a 5K race that raised money to defeat the proposed state constitutional amendment against same sex marriage.

Jeff Metzdorff, Mill City’s co-owner, recalled first meeting Frey when the future politico helped a friend shop for running shoes. Also a former collegiate runner, Metzdorff vaguely recalled Frey’s career as a national class marathoner. He let Frey put a campaign sign in the store window a few months later.

“The thing about Jacob is that he’s still a running geek,” Metzdorff said. Frey is up on shoe technology and tracks how his competitive peers are faring. He exulted when former teammate Des Linden won the 2018 Boston Marathon. “He’s still fairly connected to the running scene.”

Frey had the advantage of facing tough competition early. He ran plenty as a soccer and basketball player but had an epiphany in the latter sport shortly before starting high school. Dribbling up court against a local basketball powerhouse, he lost the ball to a kid who dunked on him. He recalled thinking, “I will never be able to do that.”

He’d set the mile record for his middle school in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. So, he shifted his intensity to high school cross country and then track. “If anything, I was way overzealous way too quickly. I was always prone to overtraining,” he said. “I could train both long and hard.”

But his misfortune was to grow up not far from Alan Webb, the future American mile re

cord holder, who proved Frey’s nemesis in high school competition. Frey cheered for Webb at swim meets, hoping that his rival would devote his competitive future to that sport “rather than stealing championships from me!”

Instead, Webb became the first American high schooler to break the four minute mark in the indoor mile and cracked legend Jim Ryun’s longstanding high school mile mark. Frey moved up to the 3200 meter distance, notching a state championship 9:17. At powerhouse William and Mary College, he was Colonial Athletic Association 5,000 meter champion for two years and named All Big East. After college, he used his middle distance speed base to move up to longer road races, joining Michigan based Hansons-Brooks Distance Project for 18 months. He qualified for Team USA, a goal he’d set in grade school, and an emotional high that still resonates. “There’s that extra special tingle when you wear that USA singlet,” he recalled.

He competed into law school, falling in love with the Twin Cities at the 2006 Twin Cities Marathon, where he ran a 2:20. He placed fourth in the Pan Am in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 and raced his marathon PR in the Austin International Marathon in 2008. He and Webb logged miles together on the Washington and Old Dominion trail.

But as he entered his final year of law school, Frey recognized that his chances of making the Olympic marathon team were slim, and retired from competitive running. He was hired by a Minneapolis law firm and soon entered politics.

That’s where he attracted the attention of Rick Recker, who first met Frey at Grandma’s Marathon and later became his constituent. The perennial MDRA board member, who created the distinguished service award, was impressed by Frey’s ideas for protecting Minneapolis pedestrians, and by extension, runners. He was also aware of Frey’s role in helping to found The Big Gay Race. The latter role grew out of growing up around gay friends of his parents, both former modern dancers.

Frey’s relationship with running has transitioned over time away from the intensity of a marathoner. “It’s about persistence every single day that’s not always comfortable.,” he said. “Nothing compares to achieving something you didn’t think was possible because you put a lot of hard work into it.”

He’s learned to relax and savor his typical route looping the Stone Arch and Broadway bridges: “Now it’s less about competition and more about physical well-being.”

Jacob Frey gives a speech before a run with a local non-profit, mile in my shoes.

Jacob Frey at the Downtown Run Around benefiting Mile in My Shoes

Carly Danek for Mile in My Shoes

Jacob Frey was presented with the Pat Lanin Distinguished Service Award by Rick Recker at the 2020 Minnesota Distance Running Association annual meeting.

Wayne Kryduba