Before I Won Boston, I Almost Quit Running

IN AN EXCERPT FROM HER UPCOMING MEMOIR, DESIREE LINDEN SHARES THE STORY OF THE PAINFUL YEAR THAT LED UP TO THE BIGGEST WIN OF HER LIFE.

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I WOKE MYSELF with a gasp: one big, sharp inhale. Ryan, my husband, didn't stir. Our bedroom was pitch-black and silent. The wind off Lake Michigan was absent, for once, and I didn't hear the usual rhythm of waves lapping at our shoreline.

It was the summer of 2017, a couple months after the Boston Marathon. I lay on my back and tried to process why I was awake when I had done nothing but sleep for weeks. There was no fragment of a nightmare floating in my mind, no pounding heart.

In fact, no heartbeat at all.

Fear surged through me. Had I woken up because I'd stopped breathing? I held completely still and listened for the reverb in my chest. Finally, I detected it, shallow and faint, alarmingly slow.

I was afraid to go back to sleep. I was afraid I wouldn't wake up.

My life didn't flash before my eyes. I didn't review the tailspin that had led to this night, how I had spiraled in a matter of months from one of the fittest people in the world to someone who struggled to climb a flight of stairs, my senses dulled, barely functioning. There was room for only one train of thought in my head.

I don't want to die. That's an improvement. At least I'm feeling something.

As I fought sleep, knowing I would lose, I made a decision.

If I wake up, I'll take the medication.

I MADE MY marathon debut in Boston in 2007, and race day cemented my new love affair with the distance and the one-of-a-kind setting. Ever since then, even as I raced around the globe, in World Majors and two Olympics, winning Boston was my dream. "I've watched this race, and the winners aren't doing anything I can't do," I told my coaches in 2010. The following year, I came in second place-losing by just two seconds.