PROFILE
A CONVERSATION WITH ALAN PAGE
The ex-Viking and state Supreme Court justice is well known at the Twin Cities Marathon for playing his tuba for runners BY DENNIS BARKER
O
f all of the things Alan Page is
known for, perhaps the one he is known for the least, is the one he has done the longest. He has been a runner since the mid-1970s. He took up running in the midst of an NFL career with the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears in which he earned All Pro honors six times, Most Valuable Player once and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. After receiving his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1978, he worked as an attorney, then served seven years in the office of the Minnesota Attorney General. In 1992 he was elected to the Minnesota Supreme Court, becoming the first African American on the court. He was reelected three more times, serving 23 years until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 in 2015. In 1988 Justice Page, and his wife Diane, founded the Page Education Foundation, which assists Minnesota students of color in pursuit of post secondary education. To date, the foundation has awarded $15 million in grants to 7,000 students. In 2018, Diane Sims Page passed away. She and Justice Page had been married 45 years. Justice Page is also known for serenading Twin Cities Marathon runners with his tuba as they pass near his Minneapolis home. DB: You’re known to this generation of runners as a good running watcher/musician at the Twin Cities Marathon, but what is your own running like these days? AP: It’s sort of graduated to walking every morning. Until about two years ago we ran three to four miles in the mornings, together with a group of friends. DB: Has it been hard to run since Diane passed away?
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FALL 2019
Diane and alan are pictured out for a run in 2015. Photo by Jerry Holt, Star Tribune.
AP: At first it was very difficult. It was our time to be together, to goof off, to be ourselves, to enjoy the outdoors together. DB: How did you first get into running? AP: We fell into it together. It was the running boom in the mid 70s and we had friends who were runners. It wasn’t something we were naturally inclined to do. We started running and struggled and gradually became runners. DB: I remember Diane as a very graceful runner. AP: Graceful and determined. She didn’t start running until she was 31or 32 years old. She wasn’t athletic before then - sports were frowned on for girls when she was in school. But once she got into it, she was determined. Our first or second race was the Bud Light race in St. Paul. We ran together for a while then she
took off and left me for dead. When I got in, she had already been done for five minutes. DB: Did your competitiveness from football kick in when you raced? AP: In running, and football, too, I always just tried to do the best that I could. I tried to push myself and be as good as I could. And I wanted to feel good doing it. DB: Then you ran your first marathon (Grandma’s 1979). What was that like? AP: It was painful. We had been running for six or eight months and I said I’d like to do a marathon and Diane said, “No, we’re not doing a marathon!” But we trained for it and started the race together. She didn’t stay with me long before she took off. I had never been that tired or beat up before, including all of my football games. At 19 miles I started to struggle and promised myself, not just said, but promised,
