The Mature Runner: The 2024 Paris Olympics
While Stacy and I have been living in France these past five weeks, I just realized the August 2024 Paris Olympics are just a few hours away from where we’ve living. And here’s some interesting info I found about what will happen this coming July.
The theme is “Olympics for Everyone” and includes a wild marathon course said to be the hardest one so far. I need to look up the Rome 1960 Olympics, which was mostly on cobblestone streets and had to negotiate the “Nine Hills” of Rome. But for the Paris Olympics, they start on the Ile-de-la-Cité, go past Notre Dame, then the Louvre, and wind through town/over the many bridges over the Seine river, and head down to Versailles and back. Interestingly, the Louvre had been the palace for the many kings, and then the royal household moved to Versailles (rumor has it the hunting was much better there than along the Seine River). A bit of history, Abebe Bikila (Ethiopia) won the Rome marathon running barefoot in 2:15:16, which was then a world record, and is still a barefoot marathon WR. Oh, this race started the world record holders coming from Africa. And they have dominated ever since. Rome was the 1st to start and finish outside the Olympic stadium, and the same is true for the Paris Olympic marathon.
Abebe Bikila winning in Rome, 1960, barefoot centralmente.com
The women’s marathon race is the very last race of these Olympics, and the three USA runners who qualified have quite the story. The current rule is that each country gets three entrants, but there is also a qualifying standard as well. A rather unknown, Dakotah Lindwurm had only a 15 seconds cushion before not making the team. The look on her face as she finished in 2:25:31 says it all – she was SO excited – it’s great to see such overflowing emotion on her face. It was not showboating. It was pure elation.
Dakotah Lindwurm squealing with delight fox9.com
Here are a few of the gems I got from perusing the online interviews with her, after she got on the Olympic team. It was so obviously a dream come true, and her honesty is so welcomed. After the race, she was in a restaurant and spied her idols at a table (Fiona O’Keefe and Emily Sisson, who had come in 1st and 2nd), and told herself to just go up and say “hi.” As she got near, they both jumped up and started screaming at her; she was the talk of the town, and it hadn’t yet sunk in I guess. She grew up in St Francis, Minnesota, and of course was a decent hockey player in high school. She wasn’t that good, but realized she kept beating all the other girls while running in gym class. She had tried to run on the JV team, but kept coming in last, and said that motivated her since she didn’t like to fail at anything. Then she discovered she was pretty good at running, but realized she wasn’t good enough to get a scholarship or anything. She went to Northern State University (South Dakota) a Division II school, and was a “walk-on” with the cross-country team as a sophomore. Then she realized she preferred running with the guys since they went faster – instead of like the girls who would often sneak out and hide behind the bleachers to avoid certain workouts. Her rise to be an Olympian had become a dream, and she really kept pushing herself. One account was about her coach (she finally had a coach with the Minnesota Elite Runners, Chris Lundstrum) asking how she was feeling with her 120 mile/week workouts. This was in preparation for the Orlando Olympic Trials marathon. She said she kept feeling stronger and wanted more miles. So he agreed to crank it up to 135 mile weeks, and that suited her fine. So, while working away out of the limelight, she came into the Trials unheralded. Between now and the August 11 Olympic race, she’s planning on doing her 3rd Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth on June 22, which she has won twice and she loves to support them, even though the race of her life will only be 50 days later. She says she’s not
worried, a good race before an important race has always worked for her. Here’s to the trio Fionna, Emily and Dakotah!
Fiona O’Keefe, Emily Sisson, and Dakota Lindwurm ready to go runblogrun.com
