Through flurries of snow and 20-degree weather, runners and walkers celebrated Thanksgiving morning with Hastings’ 27th annual Gobble Gait; 2024 marks a significant milestone for the event, passing the $2 million mark for funds raised to Hastings Family Service.
“Who would have thought that over 27 years, we would have raised $27 million,” said Gobble Gait announcer Jay Kochendorfer, one of the original founders of the event, just before the race.
Mayor Mary Fasbender, another Gobble Gait founder echoed the sentiment saying the funds were crucial to “fight our mission of hunger for Hastings Family Service.”
This year rather than have a Hastings Fire Department fire engine hoist the flag, members of the Minnesota National Guard stood atop the Highway 61 bridge and unfurled the American flag just as Casey Likes sang the national anthem. 8K runners waved and saluted as they ran beneath the flag.
Nick Ross finished first for the men with a time of 26:27. Merret Ross finished first for the women with a time of 29:34. For the men, John Leaf finished second with a time of 26:39, and James Servengol finished third with a time of 26:41. For the women, Kate Eggero finished second with a time of 31:20, and McKenzee Buck finished third with a time of 33:20.
Above Second Street, one of Dakota County’s drones surveyed the crowd on a battery cable tether. The drone, which shoots 8k video, can switch to infrared and zoom in to focus on objects thousands of feet away.
“On a bright sunny day, I can read license plates,” quipped Dakota County Sheriff Sean Qualy, one of the drone operators at the event, about cars parked more than three blocks away. Thanks to the battery cable tether plugged into an external battery and the unit’s van, Dakota County drones can remain airborne far beyond their battery life, bypassing one of the major limitations of drones.
Qualy and the Dakota County drone team operated out of a van specially equipped for drone flight. The van is a relatively new addition to the drone team, “as close as we have to a mobile command zone,” said Qualy, and was finished earlier this year. Inside the van are television screens showing the various camera feeds from the drone. While the controller for the drone itself has a screen roughly the size of a cellphone, having a larger image is useful for picking out detail. “We just needed more screens,” said Qualy. Due to the high-quality of the drone’s cameras, the image is able to be projected onto full-size televisions and photos can be pulled directly from their video feeds.
Registration for this year’s race also shifted with the closure of the Running Room in Woodbury which was previously a registration site for the Gobble Gait. Instead, this year the hours and number of computers for registration were increased at the Legion. While lines stretched across the hall Thursday morning—the last chance for runners to pick up their packets before the race—according to Fasbender the new setup was able to handle the increased crowds. Some 3,000 participants passed through the legion’s doors to pick up their bibs and shirts before the race.
“It was awesome,” said Fasbender.