Des Linden’s gritty run to win the 2018 Boston Marathon was the stuff of a dramatic sports movie.
While the day’s torrential rain and cold and wind drove many of her competitors to withdraw midway through — or worse, hypothermia — the 35-year-old persevered to break the 33-year American title drought at the world’s most iconic marathon.
Five years later, it’s still easy to recall the imagery of the victory: Linden crossing the finish line still fully clothed in her Brooks running jacket, embracing her husband Ryan and her agent Josh Cox, and later chugging champagne out of a shoe.
What Linden reveals in her memoir, “Choosing to Run,” written with ESPN alum Bonnie Ford, is that her epic victory almost never happened, due to a secret battle with hypothyroidism, a condition that has become somewhat controversial in the endurance sports world. That’s just one of many revelations in the quick read, which goes deep on the financial realities of professional running, including the no-frills lifestyle of Linden’s early days with the Hansons Distance Project, the dirty details of contract negotiations,…
