Choosing to Run by Des Linden

Author:Des Linden [Linden, Des]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

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In the hours after the Boston 2017 finish, frustration and futility overwhelmed me. This race that was so very familiar to me suddenly felt foreign and uncomfortable. The swirling talk of tech shoes and speculation about borderline ethics made me feel as if I couldn’t even really identify what I was up against.

I was thirty-three, and I’d never won a marathon. Maybe I needed to look for that somewhere else: a smaller-market race or a different event. Deep down, I still believed I was capable of winning a major, but continuing to chase that dream while competing against what felt like nefarious forces struck me as insanity. It seemed like time to readjust my expectations and where I chose to invest my energy.

I knew the Abbott World Marathon Majors were trying to keep elite fields clean and results believable. With prize money and credibility at stake, the WMM, organizers of the six biggest marathons in the world, including Boston, had instituted an additional drug testing program in 2015, but there was no foolproof system. If there were athletes exploiting the gray areas in anti-doping, I couldn’t outwork or outsmart them. They were playing a different game. I questioned what I would learn about myself by racing them. It felt like a waste of valuable time and reignited my old college-era conflict about what I was doing with my life.

At the postrace Hancock event, I said some abbreviated version of all that to MK, one of few people I knew could comprehend how I felt. She didn’t argue—or agree.

“We’re at a party,’’ she said. “The race literally just happened. We’re not talking about this now.”

I moved on, sipped my Moscow mule, tried to be civil. When I observed Josh venting to MK a little later, I appreciated how adamant he was being on my behalf, but I shared little of his energy. The way I saw it, my forward progress was blocked, and my window to win a major marathon had slammed shut. My 2011 stretch duel with Caroline Kilel, once so motivating, now loomed as a depressing reminder of what could have been. Overall, my sport seemed to be descending into disorienting chaos. It seemed easier to let go of ambition and stop caring.

Besides, I was about to leave for India.

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