On August 29, 2010 we held the Minneapolis Duathlon.  Olympic Runner Carrie Tollefson came to our event to interview a bunch of our participants and highlight the elements of the race.  Overall the piece shows you how fun this event is and why it is for EVERY BODY!

Four years ago, at the mere age of 20, Laura Skladzinski (pronounced Skwa-JIN- skee) strapped on her running shoes for the first time.  The self-proclaimed "worst student in her grade school gym classes", made that decision and it changed her life.  Now at the age of 24, she is poised to become the youngest person to ever complete a marathon in all 50 states!  And what's better, she chose Team Ortho Foundation's Minneapolis Marathon to be the race to get her final state -- Minnesota! 

Laura said her love for running began when she was interning in Florida and struggling to get settled.  So she chose to do two things: learn to cook and learn to run.  She said the cooking was easy, but the running was hard.  In a few months she did a 5K and by mid-2008 she she finished her first marathon -- and has been doing it ever since!

To meet her goal, Laura has been flying to destinations to run on the weekends, all while holding down a full time job.  She's even run two marathons in one weekend.  "The first was [last] summer," Laura recalled, "...where I got to visit Salt Lake City and run one on Founder's Day (a state holiday there). I then flew us back to New York on a redeye flight and then connected up to Saginaw, Michigan, where I managed to run even ten minutes faster than in Salt Lake! The second “double” marathon I did was much easier on the travel: the first was in New Hampshire, and then I drove a few hours to Portland, ME to do one there the next day."

Life will be a little easier when she comes to Minneapolis on June 6th, when she's only doing the Team Ortho Foundation event.  Her selection of our event was pretty strategic on her part, "I wanted to choose a race that was big, but not so big I'd get lost in the shuffle. I wanted it to be in a city that made travel easy, so my friends and family could come. Most of all, I wanted a race that had gotten good reviews, and all my friends who ran the inaugural said it was fantastic!"  Laura said.  "My initial marathon training was mostly done along the Hudson River in New York City and the Charles River in Boston, so now I really love running by a river. I'm excited about getting to experience that in new city."

Months after the deadly earthquake in Haiti, orthopaedic experts with connections to Team Ortho Foundation, have been volunteering at the Healing Hands for Haiti clinic, their mission is to literally get patients back on their feet, a service even more desperately needed since the earthquake.

Al Ingersoll (pictured left), a Certified Prosthetist from Minnesota and his wife, just embarked on a year-long mission with this organization to get the injured -- including the estimated 4,000 new amputees -- the services they need..  At a recent Team Ortho Foundation volunteer thank-you party, Team Ortho announced it's $3,200 donation to Healing hands for Haiti.  Al said he was very grateful for the donation.  He explained that six of the organization's seven buildings were destroyed in the earthquake and the seventh building was seriously damaged.  They hope to have a new building up in the next six months.  For now they're in a temporary location.

Al spoke for a few minutes during the volunteer party about his experience in Haiti since the earthquake,  besides the physical trauma, there's the "psycho-social troubles...it's hard to get [the Haitians] back into their routines.  They don't want to go into their buildings."