By Kelly Joy — July 2023

Photos provided by Linnea Burman

*“The feeling of the final mile in your final World Marathon Major.”*

I feel a list would be the best way for me to open up this interview write up about Linnea Burman. The power lies within the staccato of short sentences. They make the point quickly and hit a higher note of understanding, a lot faster than a flowery sentence or two.

Linnea Burman…

Vice President and General Manager of Medtronic.
Mother of 2 young adults.
Just completed the 6 Marathon Majors.
Had double hip arthroscopic surgery.
Commutes from Minneapolis to Lafayette, Colorado several times a month.
Marathon runner.

Now when you read these in succession, what words spring to mind, time is one of the first things, how does she find the time? Other words that come to mind are smart, driven, dedicated, tenacious, nurturing, powerful, inspirational, and basically an all-round bad ass.

Hey, we could leave it at that, but what I want to do is fill in the sentences, the life between these quick statements. Because, as John Lennon said, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” There is so much life between these bullet points and that is what I am about to share.

How it all began – The Journey to completing the 6 Marathon Majors

Linnea is a runner who is in her late 40’s and has just completed her 6th Marathon Major – her journey culminated in Tokyo in March of 2023. A goal she had to set out to complete before she turned 50 years old. She is 49.

An adventure always has a starting point, what was Linnea’s?

Not everyone starts out as a serious runner. Linnea in her youth ran recreationally – something she dipped in and out of. It’s a thing one does to stay relatively in shape and healthy, it’s quick to do and requires minimal gear. Sometimes the true beauty of running lies in its simplicity.

“About 60 years before this photo was taken of me on a middle school track in the Central Valley of California, my Grandmother’s Father was encouraging his daughters to participate in sports. She went on to become a national champion in the javelin and was a woman beyond her generation. My Great Grandfather inspired several generations of our family. On the 50th anniversary of Title IX, I am even more motivated to keep paving that path!”

Linnea discovered her “let’s get serious running” when she was in her mid-thirties. Medtronic is the title sponsor of the Twin Cities Marathon (Minnesota). As part of the sponsorship, they had a program in which they chose 25 patients from around the world to participate in either the 10-mile or marathon events. One competitor was a lady Linnea had gotten to know who had used a wheelchair for three years due to illness. Through medical technology and rehabilitation, she had regained her ability to walk and decided as part of her recovery story to run the 10 miles. She inspired Linnea to attempt the 10 miler herself. Up to this point Linnea had really been only doing 4-6 miles runs and 10 miles felt so far. As a result of her fear, she over trained, which involved her running up to 15 miles. A rooky error, but to run well is an evolution of many mistakes.

That 10-miler kick-started an adventure into and falling in love with “the marathon.”

Let us welcome in the Marathon…

The next steppingstone for Linnea was joining her corporate Ragnar Team. Ragnar racing is basically adventure racing. The team consists of 12 people, and you race a course against others. Linnea’s team was a force to be reckoned with and with each year that passed, out of the many teams who competed they went from being in the top 50, to the top 10, and then top 3. That is when our heroine of this story got serious and hired a coach, so she could be fit enough to be able to hold her place in the team.

As the age old saying goes, she had been bitten by the running bug, for which there is no cure.

ROLL CALL of Marathons, please step forward in chronological order…

3 x Twin Cities Marathon (Minneapolis)
Marquette Marathon (Michigan)

It was at this point, Linnea decided to train for the Boston Marathon, and it took a couple of times to secure a time that would secure a bib:

Mesa Marathon in (Phoenix, AZ) – qualified with 2:52-minute buffer.
Marquette Marathon (Michigan) -qualified with a 6:11-minute buffer

Linnea’s strength is incredible when it comes to marathons. Her marathon trajectory is insane. Before I get to the meat of this interview, the bones are her marathons and how they stack up. Here is a quick timeline as this is important to know.

BOSTON 2018 – yes people this was that horrible weather year, when Des Linden won. And Linnea came within 48 seconds of her PR at the time of 3hrs 38 minutes, on a tough course with adverse weather, that is incredible. She ran in a poncho. This is her proudest moment, as it should be.
CHICAGO 2018 – ran a new PR of 3:37 and hit the qualifying time for the NY Marathon. At this point Linnea also met Tom from the company Marathon Tours and she got excited about completing all of the Marathon Majors. She put her name down and just had to wait for her name to get to the top of the list to get a Marathon Tours ticket to some of the more difficult races to access. This took 3 years, but in the meantime, she completed Berlin and a couple more Boston’s.
BERLIN 2019
BOSTON virtual 2020 – COVID EDITION
BOSTON 2021 – FALL EDITION
LONDON 2022
NYC 2022
TOKYO 2023 – THE END

So, here are the bones of her marathon tour, but this is where Linnea’s power blew me away. Before I dig in further, what I want to say is we have to appreciate that Linnea has a high-level, all-consuming job with a significant amount of travel, and she still manages to get her training in. She shares there are a lot of early mornings, squeezing it in between meetings and travel and schedule changes due to her life. This shows a strength of character and grittiness that is vital to being able to finish a marathon.

Chutes and Ladders

To dedicate yourself to the marathon is to be enamored with the process, it takes a lot of concentrated time mentally and physically to be prepared to run 26.2 miles, there are times your body just hurts and is so tired, you think is this worth it, as any runner would say, it truly is.

We have the ladder of marathons, now let us add the chutes of life, which can rapidly bring you back down as you scramble up to keep up with your training. Linnea has many ladders, but from listening to her she had many more chutes, trying to pull her away from her goal.

In September 2020 Linnea walked the virtual Boston marathon (this was a COVID year). She walked as she was in pain from femoroacetabular impingement and labral tear and 2 days later she had arthroscopic surgery on one hip. In January 2021 she had the other one done.

I asked her how she coped, as running is a release for Linnea, a way to decompress from a demanding life, she was told she could not run 4 to 5 months after each surgery.

She admits, it was awful, also with it being COVID as well,

“It brought out the worst version of myself, it was not pretty.”

I ask her, how did she manage the emotions and herself during that recovery period?

“I did a lot of strength training, even when I was on crutches.”

This takes courage and tenacity to continue on a path when it starts being extra hard.

“I did a lot of Karaoke with my daughter, and I signed up for a marathon.”

2-3 months after recovering from her second surgery Linnea ran the 2021 September edition of the Boston marathon. It was during this time that Linnea left her current coach, as she looked for a more adaptive way of coaching to fit her life. At the same time, she had started to commute to Boulder for work and searched for a new coach. Google presented Boulder Underground, and she was matched with the sunrise chaser herself, Tansey Hensley.

In Linnea’s own words “Tansey’s perfect,” her approach was effort-based, rather than slashing through the miles, Tansey appreciates how important rest is, and she looks holistically at the whole person and their life. Because, for non-elite runners, there is more life to deal with when trying to fit in your running.

Up next for Linnea in her marathon odyssey was London and then NYC 2022 in quick succession.

It was at this moment life created a tornado of moments to navigate. In her build up for two very intense marathons, NYC being technically one of the hardest, Linnea, was caring heavily for her father who sadly was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, and lovingly supporting one of her children as they navigated through a gender transition, as only a mother can. The tornado kept whipping through, work was intense at this moment in time, she caught COVID not once, but twice, and to top it all off, Linnea was stung by a bee and went into anaphylactic shock. Thankfully, she got to hospital in time and received a shot of adrenaline while riding in the ambulance! I mean what are the chances? In total Linnea lost 5 weeks of training leading up to London and NYC. But still she persisted.

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot

Next on deck was London, admittedly probably not enough training in the bank, but Linnea decided to run it with a friend and use it as a training run for the more difficult NYC marathon a month later. She ran 18 miles and then walked / ran her way to the finish line. To be honest the beauty of this is that Linnea could fully absorb the energy that is London, to relish the crowd and feel all the feelings of being in a big, bold city. It turned out to be her favorite of the Majors.

NYC 2022: as Linnea prepared to complete number 5 of her 6 Marathon majors, her father went into the hospital the night before the race, and she was faced with the awful fear that the end was near. He hung on for a few more months.

“I knew in NYC I had not used all the mental tools I had acquired over the years.” Linnea admits, but honestly how could she. As her brain was consumed by family, illness and hanging on to her training as she gave herself fully to her life outside of running. She had to, and that is where we see a runner in their most beautiful and honest form.

Running is ultimately very selfish and as most solo sports can be, it errs heavily on the side of narcissistic behavior, because ultimately, we run for ourselves, no one else benefits from our outcomes, or our training. Yes, it may make you a calmer, more rational person, that others can benefit from, but essentially you run for you. Yet take Linnea, she is a runner, but she still channeled the energy she had for running into caring and convalescing, fighting sickness and working. Her energy was spent, ensuring others were seen and cared for, as she slid then slowly climbed her way back up the chutes, rather than her ladders. So, now when Linnea ran, she ran because she could, or when life allowed, letting go of time goals for that moment. She now ran to feel reconnected to herself while her world whipped around her, forcing its way to the fore and she ran for the simple beauty that her body allowed her to. As she knew what life would be like if her running was taken away, how lost a person can feel when running is no longer present. As runners it can be really difficult to find a new way to feel fulfilled if that daily adrenaline and dopamine shot is not administered as a 60-minute run.

Number 6

As Linnea returned home from NYC, Marathon Tours had a bib for her to go to Tokyo 2023 (March). As she and Tansey worked on her training schedule to keep her strong and healthy, Linnea’s father sadly passed away on February 14th, 2023, two weeks before her last of the 6 Major Marathons. As she entered the short-time widow before leaving Linnea was planning her father’s funeral. She almost did not go but felt her father would have wanted to finish this hard-fought journey she had been on for the last 5 years.

She committed to staying focused and present and ran her best time since having surgery: 4:08. She describes her last mile – THE last mile of her 6-marathon major adventure. As she ran through Tokyo …the terrain changed to cobblestone and she lit up, she ran with tears, and so much joy, remembering all the hard work, the friendships and remembering she had done this for herself.

What Next?

The marathon, however, is not over for Linnea. Next up is the California International Marathon in December where she is hoping to get a Boston Qualifying time 4 days before her 50th Birthday. She also loves how marathons can take you to new countries and experience different cultures, so she is contemplating the 7 Continents Club which is running 7 marathons across 7 continents via Marathon Tours. Sounds amazing.

Yet, from our brief hour together the thing I saw in Linnea is something I truly only see in women with high powered careers and are mothers. It’s an ability to achieve at all costs. They are so driven, used to sacrificing their time for work and kids, but see the need to have something that pushes them physically, and to give back something to themselves with that same intensity. They can see how vital and important that is to their survival in other overwhelming areas of their lives. It is where they can be themselves, they are purely them, where Linnea is Linnea, not a mother or a leader of a company, but Linnea, a powerful, capable, driven, and gritty athlete. Yet the crux of this is being able to push the boundaries of life’s other demands to allow herself to flourish and thrive in this space. That is what she is doing. It is never easy, but it is important for her to be wholly Linnea. I will say I was so inspired by what Linnea has achieved and navigated through her life and her marathon running, her ability to be so consistent in her training. When not completing the Majors, she likes to run two marathons a year and at almost age 50 she is consistently running between a 3:37 and 4:20 hour marathon. That is just outstanding and mind blowing and women like her push me to keep making sure I work hard for me, as much as I work hard for others. Thank you. I am so excited to follow her subsequent marathon expedition, and to see what ladder she climbs next.

Linnea Stats

Fuel of Choice - Maurten Gel and Drink.
Marathon Tip - Carry Biofreeze for those aches and pains.
Sneakers - Asics (training) and Saucony or Nike Alphafly (racing).
Inspired by - “A speech Kristin Richard (Lance Armstrong’s ex-wife) gave at the first ten miler I ran. She said something that I will never forget. She said, ‘Finish the sentence… I am a [fill in the blank] without describing your role in your family, relationship to someone else or your job.’ I found that “runner” filled that blank for me. Making time for myself, I felt revived.”
Something others may not know about you - “I am an amazing sleeper…. I fall asleep within 30s of my head hitting the pillow… sometimes in the middle of a sentence. It annoys the heck out of my husband.”

“Running is a way I can invest in myself. It gives me the place to flush my mind, empty my head, and to gain confidence in myself as a person..." - Linnea Burman