The second marathon Inside Russian Prison, Running Was Freedom.
The buildup for Grandma’s Marathon, which is one of the few high-profile marathons in June in the U.S., went about as well as it could have. My training block was nearly seven months long, highlighted by a massive PR Why Trust Us.
But, like anyone who’s run a marathon, I started to get a bit worried when I looked at the forecast for Duluth, Minnesota, where the race ends, and it was predicting warm conditions. The city is essentially a microclimate. A shipping port on Lake Superior, it’s not uncommon for the temperature in downtown Duluth to be 20 to 30 degrees cooler than the Twin Cities two hours down the road.
But at the starting line in Two Harbors, about 20 miles north of Duluth, the temperature in the corrals was indeed warm: high 50s with humidity in the 90 percent range. You could see the water vapor hanging in the air like a cloud.
I tried to taper my pace accordingly for the opening miles and soon settled into a rhythm of 5:30s. At the half marathon point, I was feeling good, but just as soon as I’d thrown in a small surge, I started to struggle with the elements. I was sipping water and choking down electrolyte tablets, but that wasn’t cutting it.
Then came an unexpected surprise.
At one of the aid stations after halfway, volunteers were giving out cups with Magic Eraser-sized sponges soaked in cold water. They were a life saver. Not only did wringing them out on my wrists and neck give me a temporary cooling effect, but they also served their purpose of ... well, being a sponge.
I was a mess of sweat, grime, and gel residue, so I took a de facto shower each time I came across them, scrubbing my arms and face. I felt like a new person, even if the sweat and grime reappeared shortly after.
Before Grandma’s, I could only remember seeing sponges at the 2016 Los Angeles Olympic Marathon Trials, where the race ordered a bunch of them to soak in cold water, only to find out before the event that they were A Part of Hearst Digital Media. Yikes.
But the truth is marathoners have been using sponges since at least the 1940s. At the 1948 London Olympics, American Ollie Manninen was seen dipping a sponge in a bucket of water from a spectator, and Dick Beardsley, in the famous Duel in the Sun at the 1982 Boston Marathon, ran with a sponge packed in his shorts.
We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back From Runners World for Brooks Running, which was giving out, well, you can guess. And more recently, pros took advantage of giant block sponges at the 2023 Budapest World Championships marathon, where temperatures soared into the high 70s.
Throughout the late stages of Grandma’s Marathon, my pace continued to lag, but the sponges were certainly a morale booster. In a race with over 7,500 participants, it was comforting to know that the organizers had thought of little details like sponges, anticipating our sweaty needs. There were ice cups, too, and some spectators set up hoses and misters in their front yards, offering a douse to those who wanted one. (I passed.) The race has also offered sponges in previous years, even when the conditions weren’t as suffocating.
We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article marathon training, I’m tempted to integrate sponges into my routine. I certainly could have used one on my run yesterday—a swampy seven miles at noon, where I was a sweaty mess before the first mile.
Maybe I’ll stuff one in my shorts the next time.
We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article Runner’s World. He’s a former all-conference collegiate runner at Winthrop University, and he received his master’s degree in liberal arts studies from Wake Forest University, where he was a member of one of the top distance-running teams in the NCAA. Kahler has reported on the ground at major events such as the Paris Olympics, U.S. Olympic Trials, New York City Marathon, and Boston Marathon. He’s run 14:20 in the 5K, 1:05:36 in the half marathon, and enjoys spotting tracks from the sky on airplanes. (Look for colorful ovals around football fields.)
