The course runs entirely on frozen Lake Mendota, which is the unusual thing about it. No pavement, no hills, just open ice with the downtown skyline on one side and the university campus on the other. The route starts and finishes at a hotel right at the water's edge, where a winter festival is happening around you the whole time.
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Going by the 2026 results, this is a small, friendly field, with a competitive front end and a big recreational middle.
Top 3: Clay Elmore (18:30) · Samuel Dean (18:35) · Jacob Slaughter (18:56)
The Frozen Assets 5K Run/Walk has been held every year since at least 2023. That is as far back as RunSignup's records for this race go, so it may well be older.
Enter a finish time to see where it lands against the most recent results.
How we calculate these stats: RunSesh calculates these figures from the most recent published results of past editions, sourced from RunSignup. We show aggregates only: field size, winning and median times, and the cutoff. We never publish individual finisher tables. Last updated Oct 25, 2026.
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Almost certainly not. Half the race field finished slower than 30:34, and the last recorded finisher came in around 1:14:29, so there is a long tail of runners behind the middle of the pack. Most fields are far slower than people expect.
A field of 277 is big enough that you will have company at your pace without feeling lost in a crowd. There is no qualifying time, and the finish-time spread above shows how varied the field really is. If it is your first race, that spread matters more than the winner's time.
The race winner ran 18:30 while the median finisher took 30:34. That spread points to a mixed field, with a competitive front and a big recreational middle.
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