LINDEN TO DOUBLE BACK FOR BOSTON MARATHON AFTER OLYMPIC TRIALS
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2024 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission.
(10-Jan) — On April 15, two-time Olympian Desiree Linden will contest the Boston Marathon for the 11th time this year just 72 days after running her fifth USA Olympic Team Trials in Orlando, the Boston Athletic Association announced today. The 40-year-old Linden, who won the bitterly cold and rain-soaked 2018 edition of the race, will be trying for her sixth top-5 Boston finish.
“At this point in my career, it’s an easy decision to return to the Boston Marathon and make it my top priority race of the spring,” said Linden in a statement. The longtime Brooks-sponsored athlete continued: “I can’t wait to take on the iconic course for an 11th time and have the opportunity to mix it up with some of the best runners in the world.”
Since making her marathon debut in Boston in 2007, when she ran a modest 2:44:56, Linden has made the Massachusetts capital her second home for running. In 2011, just her second time running the race, she came close to winning, finishing second in 2:22:38, just two seconds behind race winner Caroline Kilel of Kenya.
“I felt like I could run with anyone,” she said that day. “The last 800 meters, my legs were fried. I was trying, just trying, to keep contact.”
In 2018, on one of the worst weather days ever for the Boston Marathon, Linden willed herself to the finish line first after about three-quarters of the elite field dropped out behind her. She became the first American woman to win the race in 33 years.
“It was kind of comical how slow you were running,” Linden observed at the 2018 post-race press conference, saying that she was repeatedly “stood up” by the wind. She added: “Definitely toughest conditions on the cold side that I’ve run in.”
The B.A.A. also said that another top American, Emma Bates, would line up for Boston. Bates, who finished fifth at the 2023 edition of the race in a personal best of 2:22:10, scratched last week from the USA Olympic Trials, saying that she ran out of time to prepare properly due to an injury. She is one of 13 USA women who had achieved the 2024 Olympic Games qualifying standard (she actually did it twice).
“The good news is that I’m back to doing workouts with Team Boss (her training group),” she said in a video posted to her Instagram account. “Bad news is I’m withdrawing from the Trials. I just…
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