Minnesota marathoner Dakotah Lindwurm’s grit fits the hilly challenge of the Paris Olympic course

DULUTH — The joke at the news conference during Grandma’s Marathon weekend was that maybe Dakotah Lindwurm should consider training for the 2024 Olympic Games in Duluth — not just because she is the fans’ favorite runner, but because the city’s topography could help her prepare for Paris’ hilly race course.

She wasn’t sold.

“I’m happy to be here,” Lindwurm, of St. Francis, told reporters in June, “but I think the Eagan hills are pretty similar with the rolling — but it is going to be pretty hard to simulate that one specifically hard hill.”

By then Lindwurm had already scouted Paris’ 26.2-mile route that runs a near-loop from the Hôtel de Ville to Versailles, through nine of the region’s districts and past historic sites like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. The course starts flat and ends flat, but in between are rolling hills. All told, there is a quarter-mile gain in elevation and a similar decrease. The course hits a 13.5-degree slope at its maximum. That “one specific hill” Lindwurm spoke of — it’s a bugger. The route, which mimics the one women took to protest bread prices at the start of the French Revolution, has drawn comparisons to the Boston Marathon.

Lindwurm’s coach Chris Lundstrom told her it is the hilliest Olympic marathon in history.

The course could shake up the field in a way that puts Lindwurm in position for a strong finish, according to Kara Goucher, a two-time Olympic distance runner who grew up in Duluth and is a track and field analyst for NBC. Lindwurm is not a thoroughbred racer, Goucher said. Her strength is her grittiness, her tenacity and the way she believes in herself.

“Her skillset is she’s grinding and she’s going to accept what it takes and accept the pain,” Goucher said.

Every year on Jan. 1, elite runners contact Grandma’s Marathon officials in Duluth with their race request. This year, Lindwurm’s order came with a caveat. She wanted to run the full marathon in mid-June, but if she made the U.S. Olympic team — and she knew she could — she wanted a Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon bib instead. It would be her final race before the Paris Games.

In February, Lindwurm went confidently into the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Florida, confidence that had grown steadily over recent years and included back-to-back wins at Grandma’s Marathon in 2021 and 2022. It was unlikely anyone else had a better training block than her, she recalled thinking. And Lindwurm identifies as an underdog, whose origin story starts as a one-time walk-on cross country runner at Division II Northern State University in Aberdeen, S.D.

“When the training goes well, nobody else sees that, so they don’t know exactly how competent or how fit you are,” she said. “And I felt like I was going to surprise a lot of people.”

Lindwurm, 29, finished third at the trials in 2 hours, 25 minutes, 31 seconds — a race she led for a bit before settling to the back of the lead pack. At mile 24, she dug in and shook off Caroline Rotich to finish behind race favorite Emily Sisson, a Milwaukee native who competed in the 10,000 meters at the Tokyo Games in 2021, and winner Fiona O’Keeffe, who set the Olympic marathon trials record by more than 3 minutes, finishing in 2:22:10.

Lindwurm had a relatively long time to get used to the idea that she had qualified for her first Olympics. The months leading up have also given people more time to learn her name.

“If I am out in the normal world and someone notices me, that still kind of surprises me,” she said. “But, like when I’m at Grandma’s Marathon for the weekend, for example, it’s like ‘Oh yeah. Of course. These are my people. These are my people.’”

The Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon, in mid-June, is typically an end-of-the-season race. This year, it was another stop on Lindwurm’s training route. She went in with Minnesota Distance Elite teammate Annie Frisbie and they both shattered the course record — a feat she promised they would accomplish during pre-race interviews. Frisbie won in 1:07:33, followed by Lindwurm in 1:08:03.

In mid-July, Lindwurm’s daily routine included a 10-miler to start the day, recovery, then an additional six to eight miles in the afternoon. She focused on hills, getting as much elevation as possible, two days a week — but spent more time on moderate hills and flat terrain. She worked with a strength coach a couple times a week and has been taking saunas to prepare for the heat of Paris.

None of this is a drastic change from how she would train during her season.

“We’re trying to keep it as normal as possible, since that’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what has been working,” she said. “There’s not any real reason to switch anything up for the Olympics.”

Goucher has come to know Lindwurm, who she first identified as “this girl from Minnesota who smiles when she runs.” That descriptor is authentic to her character, according to Goucher.

“She really is enjoying it,” Goucher said. “It makes you enjoy watching her. It’s not a job for her. She loves it.”

The women’s marathon on Sunday (USA, 1 a.m.) is one of the final events of the 2024 Olympics, though Lindwurm has been there from the start. She recently posted to Instagram a photo of herself next to the Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards and wearing matching rain gear during the opening ceremony July 26. “Wow, I can’t believe I get to do this,” she wrote. “I can’t believe I get to be an Olympian.

“I also cannot believe ANT wanted a photo with me.”

Lindwurm said she always makes three goals that she labels A, B and C. In this case, C is leaving Paris happy with what she had to do to get there. Beyond that, she said a top-10 finish is doable as a B goal.

“And then of course my A goal is to bring home a medal,” she said.