The passion and love that Dakotah Lindwurm has for running is beyond words. The talented marathoner has found great joy in the sport that she loves, and her love and passion for running has equated to success on the marathon course.
Each day, she looks to use the passion that she has to reach her full potential in running, as well as help others reach theirs.
Lindwurm has won the prestigious Grandma’s Marathon twice, and her personal best time in the marathon is 2:25.01. Lindwurm has a more aggressive style of racing, which is a result of her giving maximum effort in every mile during every race.
“I think for me when I’m racing, especially a marathon – because we do it so rarely, every time I try to race, I’m going to just swing for the fences and it tends to work out for me,” she said. “I don’t try to race conservatively very often because I get to do this once, or maybe two or three times a year. So if I’m gonna race a marathon, I’m gonna race it really hard and give it every single thing I have. I’m never gonna go up conservative and do a really tactical marathon and try to get super fast at the end, I want to go out there and grind for every minute of the marathon. And I think that ends up coming off as somebody who’s confident, but it’s more just me trying to capitalize on any minute I have running the marathon.”
Lindwurm has a unique, but simple way of showing the love that she has for running while she’s racing. She often cracks a smile while she’s on the race course, something that she started doing when she made her marathon debut at Grandma’s Marathon in 2018.
“I saw my dad and I was kind of going through a rough spot – mentally I wasn’t feeling very good,” she said. “I smiled at him and kind of gave him a thumbs up, and it flipped a switch for me – I immediately felt so much better. I was like,I wonder if that’s correlated. And then I kind of went through a rough spot later, and cheered on the crowd a little bit, kind of gave them a thumbs up and then again, they got so loud and I felt better. So it’s just been something where it’s like when I’m hurting, I just tried to bring out the smile so that it kind of pulls me out of that dark spot.
And I do genuinely love what I’m doing. High school Dakotah would be like, ‘wait, running professionally is a career that you could choose?’ I didn’t even know this existed. And I wake up every day and I’m living my dream. So I definitely don’t take advantage of that when I’m racing. I want people to understand how much this means to me that I get this opportunity. And if it wasn’t for the fans out there cheering I wouldn’t have a job. And running 26.2 miles would be a lot less fun without them. So if I can give them a smile, thumbs up, and they think like, wow, that looks fun, that looks easy, I want to be able to do that for them, because I appreciate everybody out there cheering for me.”
In addition to being an elite marathoner, Lindwurm is also a coach. She has a passion for helping others reach their running goals as well as a wealth of knowledge in the sport, and she felt that coaching would be the best way to help others, as well as display her wisdom.
“I got into it during the pandemic when I got laid off. And I was kind of like, oh, I don’t know what to do with my life. I need a day to day purpose. And there just wasn’t a ton of opportunity during that time. So what can I do? What skills do I have? And like, oh, my gosh, I have all this knowledge in the marathon, why wouldn’t I help people? And so I guess that’s how I got into it because why not help? My dream of being an Olympian is just as important as somebody’s dream to qualify for Boston. And I want everybody to be able to experience getting their goals. And so I guess that’s why I got into it.”
Like other elite marathoners, Lindwurm has her eyes set on the Olympic Marathon Trials that will take place in Orlando in 2024. But prior to that race, she has her eyes set on the Chicago Marathon, where she’s looking to showcase the hard work that she’s put in so far this season.
“Training has been going really well leading up to Chicago right now,” she said. I actually just had to work out recently with my teammate Annie Frisbee. And when I got done, she and I had both run it basically all set per step, and we really hit it out of the park. And I looked over at her and I said, I think we’re gonna do some big things this fall. So I think we’re kind of like sharks in the water. We’re a little bit underrated right now, and that’s not anybody’s fault, but more just speaking to the level of how well all American women are running right now. I mean, the fact that a 2:25 marathon is kind of like meh, it’s pretty amazing because that means we’ve got so many women who are running so well. So I’m really excited for Chicago, I think we’re gonna see some big things as long as we get a good weather day there.”
How she performs in a race doesn’t determine the fun that she has when running and competing. Each day that she wakes up and runs, she knows that she’s living a dream that’s now her wonderful reality.
“I’m always having fun, win, lose or draw, I’m having fun,” she said. “I get to live my daydream. I don’t ever have to work a day in my life because I love what I do.”
