It’s hard to imagine a more illustrious running career than Des Linden’s. The 41-year-old ASU alum is a winner of the Boston Marathon and has been an Olympian twice.
So the pro running world was shocked earlier this year when, just before the most recent Boston Marathon, Linden announced her retirement from professional marathon racing.
But while that chapter of her career may be over, a new one is just beginning.
Linden joined The Show to talk about how this is a change she’s been pondering for some time.
Full conversation
DES LINDEN: It’s definitely something that’s kind of been on my mind for a while. Like, how long can you stay at a professional career in sports and at a high level, and feel like you’re giving it everything and not really taking it for granted.
SAM DINGMAN: I could imagine someone hearing you say that, and imagining that you’re talking about the excitement, the privileges that come with being a pro athlete.
Maybe you are talking about those things, but from reading some stuff about you, I also get the sense that you want to be kind of challenged and pushed — and that maybe you had reached a point where competitive marathoning felt a little too familiar. Is that fair to say?
LINDEN: That’s very accurate. Yeah. Just the last few years, it’s felt like I’ve been going through the motions. Part of it is that I’ve been in the career for a long time, but also I was very fortunate to accomplish a lot of the big goals that I had set for myself. I made two Olympic teams, won the Boston Marathon, so then it was kind of hard to keep attacking in the same way and have the same excitement and the same energy about it.
DINGMAN: What drew you to marathoning originally? I know you in college ran primarily the 1500-meter and the 5K. What made you want to jump up to the marathon level?
LINDEN: It was just pure envy. I ran with a group of runners, and I hated the longer distances, and they trained for a marathon, went and competed. And we all started the day as runners, and by the end of the day, they ran 26.2 across the finish line, and they were marathoners. And I was like, “Oh, now they have something I don’t have.” Yeah, it seemed like a thinking person’s sport.
DINGMAN: Talk a little bit about that thinking, because one of the things I’ve heard you talk about in other interviews is how much of marathoning is fatigue management and pain management?
LINDEN: Yeah, that’s definitely one of the things that drew me to it. You have to look at the whole 26.2 miles and be very calculated in how you’re going to use your energy, where you’re going to push, where you’re going to race, where you’re going to respond.
DINGMAN: Just as an example of what you’re talking about, maybe let’s go with the Boston Marathon course as an example. Can you just give us a little sampling of when you think about that course and how to navigate those specific 26.2 miles?
LINDEN: Yeah, the Boston course is so unique and special in that way, the first six miles, you’re just gonna bomb downhill, and you think you’re having the day of your life, but you’re just hammering your quads, and you remember that don’t go out too hard. You have to conserve a lot for the last six miles, which is a strange thing to be thinking about two hours ahead of time.
Then you have the middle sections where you’re managing the pack. Are they going to make moves? Is this real? Are we too far out? Is this pace too quick? And then the big thing with the Boston Marathon course is, you know, before the 17 mile mark, you get your first nice climb of the day. And it sounds kind of funny. It’s around 15 or 16 miles, but that’s the first real challenge of the day. And then you’re set up with a series of these four challenging hills.
And you’ve got to match what the group’s doing but also manage your energy, attack the hills, use the downhills, you know? And so the kind of the saying with the marathon is, you run the first 20 miles with your head being very strategic and savvy, and then you run the last 6.2 with your heart.
DINGMAN: That makes me think of another thing I read that you said somewhere about how part of the appeal for running for you from when you first started doing it was this idea of figuring out where your limits are, knowing what you’re capable of. Do you feel like when you discovered marathoning it felt like the outer limits of those capabilities?
LINDEN: Yeah, I think you go into that first one and it’s so unknown, and you can’t cover the distance in training because then you would just beat your body up too much. And so you go in wondering if you have what it takes. So getting the first one under my belt was kind of scratching the surface of like, “OK, this isn’t a limit of what’s possible for me to do, but what can I achieve here?”
And so that was intriguing to me. And I feel like as I got to the end of the career as well, that mystery was sort of gone. I feel like I saw what I could do. And found out how good I was in this distance, and now I’m curious about other things.
DINGMAN: Yeah, though, of course, I don’t want to go by the fact that what initially drew you to marathons was, as you put it, “pure envy.” And you are somebody who is also very honest about the fact that it’s about winning. So where are you going to get that from now that you’re retiring from pro marathoning?
LINDEN: Yeah, that’s a really great point. And I think that’s the challenge for professional athletes is we turn the page. The competition and the workouts and things like that, that’s come easy to me. I like that the most, but I’ve taught myself to enjoy going out and appreciate the run for the sake of the run.
So I’m fortunate that I’ll have that moving forward. I see myself as a lifelong runner. But that competition void — I’ve said I’ve retired from professional marathoning in order to leave the door open for some longer races, ultras. And I think that’ll have to scratch the competitive itch for me.
DINGMAN: So I just want to make sure people don’t let that go by too fast. This is, you know, one of the most accomplished American marathon runners saying that you’re retiring from pro marathoning because the marathons aren’t long enough.
LINDEN: Something like that. Yeah, yeah. I think it’s again, going into that unknown. Like, I do have a 50-miler on my radar that I’m intrigued by. And it’s sort of that initial thing with the marathon is, like, this distance seems kind of crazy. And then people will ask, like, what about 100 miles? And like, absolutely not, never. But I’ve learned to never say never, because that means it’ll probably happen.
DINGMAN: That’s what you said about the marathon.
LINDEN: Exactly. And so I don’t even doubt it anymore. But yeah, I think it’s a little bit of that unknown and just getting to a start line with some nerves and some doubts in my mind of what it’s going to feel like after 30 miles and things like that. That’s fun. That’s the fun stuff about racing, and it’s what was missing with the marathon at this point in my career.
DINGMAN: Yeah, Yeah. Well, can I ask you about that headspace of the unknown? Because, as we’ve been talking about, the marathons had become sort of rote for you, and I hear you saying that part of the appeal of something like an ultra is you don’t really know how your body’s going to respond to that challenge. And that’s part of what you’re looking to discover.
LINDEN: It’s trusting the training, which I’ve done my whole career. You just don’t know what’s going to happen after 30, but if you’ve done a lot of work, it’s a little bit easier to buy into being excited about the unknown versus just being terrified.
DINGMAN: Yeah, I’m sure somebody has tipped you off about the Cocodona, which we talked about on The Show here a while back. That one is, if I’m not mistaken, 250 miles. Does that hold any appeal for you?
LINDEN: See, this is the problem, because as soon as I say no, I’ll be there next year, you know? There’s a few steps prior, I think. And actually, Arizona is just great. There’s Black Canyon, Javelina Jundred, Cocodona — there’s so many opportunities to race out there. And I think I’ll have to take the stepping stones of, you know, 50k, 50 miler, 100 miler. And then, if I’m still into it, 250 is out there, and that would probably be the place to do it.
