Des Linden gives Boston Marathon a surprise — and a fond farewell worthy of a ‘shoey'

New York Times

21-04-2025

BOSTON — Des Linden finished 17th among the women Monday afternoon in the 2025 Boston Marathon, crossing the finish line in 2:26:19. But it was early Monday morning, when many people were just getting out of bed, that Linden delivered some news that would soon have everyone buzzing from Hopkinton to Copley Square.
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In keeping with a longstanding Boston Marathon tradition, which is that you just never know when there's going to be a big surprise, Linden's surprise arrived with the morning paper. Literally. As a means of announcing she plans to step away from professional marathoning, Linden, 41, took out a full-page color ad that ran in the Monday edition of the Boston Globe.
It's important to note that Desiree Nicole Davila — married name: Linden — grew up in California. She's not some zany Boston sports fan whose teenage bedroom was festooned with posters of Cam Neely and Nomar Garciaparra. She probably knows next to nothing about Boston's tricky traffic rotaries, and even less about its trickier politics.
What Linden does know, and she's known it for years, is that anyone who does the Boston Marathon is forever changed. Whether you run it to win it or run it to finish it, the Boston Marathon pulls you in and never lets go. It's true for the qualified runners, and it's true for the charity runners. (Or as longtime marathoner and trainer Susan Hurley calls them, 'the overqualified.')
In 2011, the then-Desiree Davila placed second in the women's division, just two seconds behind Caroline Kilel of Kenya. In 2018, with freezing rain pelting the runners from start to finish, Linden ran a race within the race as she mulled dropping out. Instead, she made her move at the base of Heartbreak Hill and won the women's division in 2:39:59 — better than four minutes ahead of fellow American Sarah Sellers — to become the first U.S. women's runner to win the Boston Marathon in 33 years.
And so as Monday dawned, readers of the Boston Globe found Linden's announcement on page C3 of the Sports section:
'Dear Boston: I made my debut at 26.2 on your roads in 2007 and fell in love — with the distance and with the Boston Marathon. Four years later, we were in it together as you lifted me up through the Newton Hills, carried me as I turned Right on Hereford and Left on Boylston, and brought me with two heartbreaking seconds of victory.'
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Linden then fast forwards to 2018.
'But you never gave up on me, inviting me to keep showing up. Hell, you embraced the fight, because Boston knows grit. The victory in 2018 wasn't just mine, it was ours.'
Meeting with the media Monday afternoon after her 17th-place finish, Linden revealed the fine print of her retirement announcement.
'This is not retirement, capital R retirement,' Linden said. 'It's just the end of professional marathoning. This obviously is where all my focus has been, particularly at this race.'
Later, after the news conference, Linden was asked about the method she chose to announce she's stepping away from professional marathoning.
'I don't know how many people read print, but it seemed like the thing to do,' Linden said.
Print lives! The news quickly became the big pre-marathon talker, even if, OK, Linden helped things along by posting a screen grab of the ad on Instagram.
What's noteworthy is less the mode of dissemination and more about the message. It's not just that she won Boston in 2018, or that she nearly won it in 2011. It's the 'USA! USA! USA!' chant she heard as she raced after Kilel in her desperate pursuit of victory. In 2018, it was the impromptu afterparty at the old Red Lantern in the Back Bay. She drank champagne out of a shoe that night. 'A Brooks casual street shoe,' Linden once told me. 'My own.'
These are things not quickly forgotten. Certainly not by Linden. She remembers the shoe from which she drank champagne.
Linden was asked if she had any waves of nostalgia during Monday's marathon run. She answered yes, sort of, but her responses suggested that even memories of the good old days can be used to gain an edge. Such as when she was asked about taking over the 2018 race at the front door to Heartbreak Hill.
'I thought about that a little bit,' she said. 'There were little points along the way, but that's more from a strategic perspective, where it's like this is a good place to regroup. Like, you can lean into this hill. I remember making a right-hand turn at the fire station and looking back and, oh, I really broke this thing open.'
If this was Linden's last at-bat as a marathoner, she didn't go out with a home run the way Ted Williams did on that cool, gray afternoon at Fenway Park on Sept. 28, 1960, when he socked a pitch from Baltimore Orioles right-hander Jack Fisher into the Boston bullpen.
But then, Teddy Ballgame didn't doff his cap that day. Des Linden spent pretty much all of Monday doffing her cap, literally and figuratively.
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Linden has plenty of friends and family in town. Plans for Monday night in her beloved Boston?
'I haven't thought that far ahead,' Linden said. 'But I can see a shoey happening.'