SportTechie’s Athletes Voice series features the views and opinions of the athletes who use and are powered by technology. Recently, SportTechie chatted with 2018 Boston Marathon winner Desiree Linden about her personal use of technology and about how running continues to evolve.
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In April, Desiree Linden became the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon in 33 years. On a cold and rainy day in Massachusetts, Linden didn’t have much belief that she could win the 122nd version of the race. She even slowed down early into the 26.2-mile race to wait her teammate, Shalane Flanagan, so that they could both catch back up to the elite pack together.
Tens of thousands of runners battled high winds, rain showers and temperatures down in the 40s that day. The Boston Globe questioned whether conditions marked “the worst weather in Boston Marathon history.”
After Linden and Flanagan caught back up to the pack, a surprising thing happened. Linden, a 35-year-old professional runner who trains in Michigan, began to pull away. She would end up winning the marathon in 2:39:54, four minutes clear of the second place finisher, fellow American Sarah Sellers.
Before Boston, Linden had twice finished second at major world marathons—Chicago in 2010 and Boston in 2011—and represented the U.S. in the marathon at both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympic Games. She failed to finish in London, but raced to seventh place in Rio. Since Boston 2018, she has had to juggle her training around the enormous rush of press events and scheduled appearances that come with being an American winner of a major marathon.
Tracking Technology
“GPS has been the biggest technology for our industry. A lot of watches provide cadence, heart rate, mileage, pace—real-time pace versus average pace. It’s a lot to take in while you’re out there, but you can come back and really dig into it and start to put together a bigger picture of your running. When things go awry, you can look at data points that may have led you to mistakes you made in your training.”
“I’ve been compiling data over years. I’ve been running for 13 years and have a lot of digital training logs. Running is much smarter now. In the past you would use a regular timer watch and sort-of guess your pace. Usually I run around 7:30 [mile splits] for an easy day. Whether you’re running hard or easy you don’t really know besides calculating running time versus distance. Now I can say ‘OK, I have 10 miles for a recovery run and I won’t go over because I was running too hard.’ It’s more trackable because you have those data points along the way.”
Social Running Platforms
“Technology has made the running community a lot more global. It has become more social, since we use social media to share things—share our journey, give people more perspective of what professional runners are doing, what a hard day looks like versus what an easy day is. It’s a pretty universal sport so it enables people to be like ‘Oh wow, the pros are doing this.’”
“There’s also the New York Road Runner virtual races, which I’ve done a few of. Maybe you don’t get into the New York Marathon, but you can virtually participate and see how you match up. It has taken something that is one day at one time and opened it up for everyone. Even if it’s in this virtual way, you can see yourself on the leaderboard and feel like you’re a part of a bigger event you’re not even at.”
Data Versus Disconnection
“Running is still a pure sport where you can go out with just your shoes and kind of disconnect for a long time, which is refreshing in today’s world. But then you can implement technology as you go and take as as much data as you want. The range is different for everyone.”
“It would be really neat to have real-time tracking in the race via a mechanism in clothes or shoes. They could give you splits during the race every 5k or so, and there could be something in the shoe that could real-time track runners so that people could see heart rate and cadence during the race. I think that’d add an interesting graphic during race broadcasts.”
The Balance Between Innovation and Ability
“A lot of big companies are attempting to break the two-hour marathon barrier and see the shoe as a place to really make that jump. There’s definitely a movement in shoe technology. I think there’s a lot of brands trying to catch up in that race.”
“The question is how much do you let it impact your sport? Is the shoe doing the work or is it still the athlete? It’ll be interesting to watch and see how governing bodies decide if and when technology is taking over the actual capacity of the runner.”