Health - Injuries seven of the top 10 spots—including two on the podium, with Emma Bates second and Sara Hall third.
At today’s Boston Marathon, the second World Marathon Major race in the U.S. since the COVID-19 pandemic began, just one—Nell Rojas, 33—claimed a top-10 spot. Rojas ran 2:27:12, a nearly one-minute personal best (she’d set her previous best, 2:28:09, when she won Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, in 2019).
Rojas stayed with the lead pack for much of the race, which was her fourth marathon and her debut in a world major. She even led for several miles, a situation she hadn't planned on, she said afterward. “I couldn’t get out of the front, and that’s not the way I race,” she said.
Slightly after halfway, she was the only American woman left in the pack, as Dakotah Lindwurm, 26, dropped back. When Rojas noticed that, she used it as momentum: “At that point, I was like—my goal is to be top American,” she said. “We have to run a little bit faster so that the Americans don’t catch me.”
When Kenya’s Diana Kipyokei—who went on to win in 2:24:45—made her first decisive move at mile 18, Rojas fell back. Though she'd trained on the downhills, she noted afterward, they took more of a toll than she expected, and she couldn't pick up the pace. At 20 miles, she was in seventh place, 36 seconds back.
Once the pack broke, the race got mentally tough. "At 10K to go, I was like, I don’t know how I’m going to move forward at a pace that I need to be going,” she said. But she stayed strong by harnessing the energy of the crowd and running down her competitors. By 40K, she’d moved up to sixth, and stayed there, covering the last mile at 5:33 pace.
The performance is the latest in a string of strong ones for Rojas, who’s based in Boulder, Colorado, and currently unsponsored—a fact she hopes will change soon. She placed ninth at the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in February of 2020. Last month, she won both the USATF 10-Mile Championships in 52:13 and the Cooper River Bridge Run 10K in 31:52.
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The next two Americans were Elaina Tabb, 31, a math teacher in Pittsburgh, who finished 12th in 2:30:33, and Minnesota’s Lindwurm, who was 13th in 2:31:04.
Other notable names finished a bit farther back. The 2018 Boston Marathon champion Desiree Linden, 38, finished 17th in 2:35:25 and told reporters that she got sick out on the course. She’d told Runner’s World before the race that her buildup hadn’t been stellar—she’d coped with a hip/IT band issue, followed by fatigue, this summer.
But she likely has another chance to perform well soon—she’s scheduled to double back to the New York City Marathon in four weeks.
Jordan Hasay, 30, fell off the lead pack just after 5K. She finished 33rd in 2:41:43. Meanwhile, in the most daunting part of her quest to run all six major marathons under three hours in seven weeks, Shalane Flanagan prevailed. She finished in 2:40:34—24 hours after running Chicago in 2:46:39.
One notable name who didn’t record a finishing time—two-time Olympian and 2:26:33 marathoner Molly Huddle. Guide to Mental Health, announced she wasn’t starting because she is pregnant.
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
