This Boston Marathon Champion Keeps Choosing to Run

Injuries kept Des Linden out of the Boston Marathon in 2013. She did some television commentary, went for a jog and was in her hotel room when the bombs went off. It made her want to win the race one day even more, which did not seem possible, because she had wanted it so badly for years.

When she did so in the frozen deluge of 2018, in a race she had planned to drop out of in the early miles, it was all the sweeter. That win is her legacy, even though she hates that word.

In her recently published memoir, “Choosing to Run,” the only American woman to win the Boston Marathon this century writes about that race, the up-and-down years leading up to it and her battles with hyperthyroidism, which she ignored for a dangerously long time and was still adjusting to when the gun sounded in Hopkinton in 2018.

Linden, 39, who will run Boston for the 10th time on Monday, plans to try to make her third Olympic team next year. Last month, one day after she finished as the top American at the New York City Half-Marathon, she talked about life and running.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/14/sports/boston-marathon-desiree-linden.html