PROFILE
RUNNING FOR OFFICE Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is an accomplished runner BY STEVE BRANDT
J
oin a group run from the Mill City Run-
ning’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
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SPRING 2020
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-
