Did the Olympic Channel just unknowingly reveal how Des Linden (and Yuki) won 2018 Boston? Des has a 19.6% body fat percentage

My two main thoughts on the video are:

1) Like many others, I agree that 19-20% seems a little high from what our eyes tell us.

2) I'm glad to see that Lolo has moved onto the next phase of her life. TV personality seems like something that she is well suited for; kinda like Summer Sanders back in the day.

I find 19% BF completely believable. She's a very slight woman and obviously extremely fit but I don't think it's in her genetics to get totally shredded the way some other elites are. I don't think it's a question of her drinking whiskey now and then, she runs 100+ mile weeks -- it's just where she lands and it works for her. Aside from before Rio, how many stress fractures or major injuries has she had? If she was 6 inches taller and weighed 130 lbs. at 19% bodyfat, it might be a bit of a different story, but she's short and weighs 100 lbs. which plays a big role too. Agreed about the theory about many East African women being able to weigh very little while maintaining higher body fat, which allows for healthier hormonal levels and more durability.

https://www.slowtwitch.com/articles/images/5/169525-largest_RyanL2.jpg

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c3e542f4eddec0c706817db/1575566866492-ZOVKNI39TGWONEGTF60O/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kMRyhYDgPk9y7GMUxyVGe-RZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpzEOKU3ynhxGCOkjkiI2jkNnwo4GpKkY3nGgozguHn9FA2PHrUGCg52mo1A4uM7YTw/Smiling%2BWalking.jpg

The best part of this discussion is that Des has responded exactly like I htought I hoped she would.

Even though I'm pointing out that a woman with a high (for elites) fat percentage can win a major, a few women on twitter were urging us to delete the tweet.

Des disagreed.

https://twitter.com/des_linden/status/1263673813469929472

No that is not true that a little extra body fat helps over a long career. Lowest body fat doesn't always win that part is correct, but if you're much over 5% as male good luck ever getting anywhere near your potential. Women's baseline is higher.

Being a distance runner with extra body fat does not extend your career. I have no idea where you came up with that concept. You look at guys with extended consistent success such as Kipchoge, Farah, Lagat, Geb, El G, none of them have carried extra weight compared to their peers.

While being too thin to an unhealthy level is detrimental there is no long term negative to being at your ideal weight. Extra weight is extra energy spent and extra stress on the body during training.

From what I understand it’s very difficult to get an accurate body fat measurement without going to an exercise physiology laboratory and doing an underwater submersion type of test

(Of course there are the electrical impulse in scales and the caliper methods but they aren’t so great)

As usual, you post something to defend your original statement rather than conceding even an inch.

she's being chill about the whole exchange, but she isn't exactly exhonerating you rojo. She's just asking us not to throw out the baby with the bathwater (oversimplifying and deleting the tweet), as there is some interesting insight in your questionable tweet. We try to learn something from unimaginable horrors of war too, lmao

it can be both, turn off the binary filter in your brain bro

Without disclosing the methods used to measure body fat across elite distance runners and using that to compare, this discussion is going to be like asking people on letsrun to estimate their WAIS- V IQ based on a pop up ad test (and seeing 50%+ say it’s > 130 points and therefore Mensa territory) or insisting VO2max is >70+ mL O2/kg based on their $200 Garmin GPS wrist watch built in indicator.

OK, let's assume you know as much as you claim. You know the women's ideal body fat % for success at the marathon. Why did Des beat those, even with a higher body fat? That's my point. We know the general rules for body fat % among elites, but why then do some win when they have a higher body fat % than others?

I'm saying, compared to their peers who did NOT enjoy such longevity...how do we know that it wasn't the slightly higher body fat % that helped these now-well-known runners? I'm not asking you to repeat dogma; I'm asking you to consider how you came to those conclusions in the first place. You just keep screaming ALL RUNNERS SKINNY. Hear the nuance in what I'm asking.

My point is, we don't know what an ideal weight is (or if it exists at all), and we don't really know when someone is below that weight if it exists. How do we know that there aren't a ton of skinny-minnies out there who would get FASTER if they stopped hyperfocusing on weight and gained half a percent of body fat. We don't know. We just know runners are skinny.

I know this. Dogma Dogma Dogma. VO2's units are mL O2 per minute per KILOGRAM, yes...I know. I know what you know. You don't need to educate me. Assume I'm not an idiot, and start again. You aren't responding to what I wrote.

Rojo, this is body shaming and just sick! SICK! Robert Johnson of Letsrun.com is a body shamer!!!!

https://www.waldeneatingdisorders.com/blog/body-shaming-what-is-it-why-do-we-do-it/

rojo wrote:

The best part of this discussion is that Des has responded exactly like I htought I hoped she would.

Even though I'm pointing out that a woman with a high (for elites) fat percentage can win a major, a few women on twitter were urging us to delete the tweet.

Des disagreed.

https://twitter.com/des_linden/status/1263673813469929472

Folks, the message here is clear: Rojo only likes a woman when things go EXACTLY the way he wants them to!

Body fat tests are crap. Caliper or otherwise. For reasonably fit athletes, BMI is a far more reliable indicator of build/ body composition. Linden isn’t Shalane Flanagan but she is still quite lean.

A better argument is that Yuki and Desi’s short stature and quick turnover allowed them to punch through the wind better than taller long striding runners.

This whole premise of this thread is insane and is why running (especially with female athletes) has, and will continue to have, an eating disorder epidemic. Des is skinny as hell and even saying "has a relatively high body fat % to other runners" perpetuates an absolutely unhealthy archetype of what a successful runner should look like. You can see her ribs when she's wearing her singlet for crying out loud.

People need to stop obsessing over crap like this and conversations like these need to end for the sake of the sport and athletes.

% body fat varies a great deal depending on the way it is determined. One method may say you are 20% and another method says you are 10 %, which is accurate?

The Angel of Death wrote:

This whole premise of this thread is insane and is why running (especially with female athletes) has, and will continue to have, an eating disorder epidemic. Des is skinny as hell and even saying "has a relatively high body fat % to other runners" perpetuates an absolutely unhealthy archetype of what a successful runner should look like. You can see her ribs when she's wearing her singlet for crying out loud.

People need to stop obsessing over crap like this and conversations like these need to end for the sake of the sport and athletes.

+1

I honestly think her success was to due her body shape and what she wore...very short and compact...wearing very low windage attire. Some the competitors were like sails...loose fitting clothes catching the wind...and taller...which also makes you more susceptible to effect of wind. Yuki same thing.

Derderian wrote:

Factors other than body fat may have been at play in the cold, wind, and rain at Boston that favored Des Linden. Because it was cold runners grabbed what warm stuff they had and wore it to the start and for a while in the race intending to doff them when they warmed up. But of course they did not warm up. Linden happened to grab some serious mittens and a more wind proof jacket than others might had lying around. She kept them on. Chance had a part.

Also we have noticed that some runners have leg veins on top of sub cutaneous body fat. Their legs look like road maps. They likely lose heat more quickly than the runners whose veins you can't see, especially in cold rain and wind.

Of course being fit and competitive has the most to do with it.

Tom

I think the clothing choice and acclimation was the deciding factor. Many elites tried to run in shorts and a singlet and did not fare well. No different than getting overheated in a hot race.

She won with her brain.

You're citing all male athletes here as your proof, when there's strong evidence that RED-S risk is higher in females than males.

I think it's plausible that her weight is naturally periodized with her training/racing cycle, and that she doesn't sit around 19% on race day. There was a good look into Hilary Stellingwerff's body comp cycles, which rose 2-4% weight/body fat over her race day baseline. So possible that Des's weight fluctuates similarly, though to a lesser degree if she doesn't do it intentionally.

Study cited here:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29140157/