Des Linden wasn’t supposed to race on Sunday. She was in Florida to train.
The 2018 Boston Marathon champion and two-time Olympian had traveled from suburban Detroit to the heat of Central Florida to prepare for an ultramarathon in the Saharan Desert. The Disney Princess Half Marathon at Walt Disney World was meant to be a casual outing with her husband—a light 13.1 miles through a theme park, not a competition.
Then mile two happened.
Linden pulled away from the field and never looked back, crossing the finish line on March 1 in 1:16:27—a 5:50-per-mile pace—to win the women’s race. She finished nearly seven minutes ahead of second-place finisher Brittany Truitt of Austin, Texas (1:23:14). Stephanie Muscat of Grand Rapids, Michigan, took third in 1:24:40.
The overall race winner was Caleb Belmont of Tampa, Florida, in 1:15:27, with Jorge Cruz of Austin (1:16:12) and Christopher Leonard of suburban Philadelphia rounding out the men’s top three.
More Than a Costume Race
The Disney Princess Half Marathon is easy to dismiss. Runners show up in tutus, tiaras, and elaborate costumes. The course winds through a theme park, not city streets.
But the field is competitive. Brittany Charboneau was the first woman across the 2026 Disney marathon finish line earlier in the same weekend—then stayed at the finish to cheer in the very last runner. Meb Keflezighi, an Olympic medalist and winner of both Boston and New York, has also raced here. Elite runners keep showing up, and Sunday’s result was another reminder of why.
For anyone considering it: the flat, crowd-lined course also makes it a great place to actually execute a race strategy rather than just surviving hills.
The Training Run That Became a Race
Linden’s shift from casual participant to race winner reflects something she has written about at length. In her 2023 memoir Choosing to Run, she described a philosophy built around effort over outcome.
“Effort was always worthwhile, even when the outcome wasn’t predictable,” she wrote. “You’re entitled only to your labor. You’re not entitled to the fruit of your labor. The universe guarantees no results.”
She trained for years with that mindset before breaking through at Boston in 2018, finishing in brutal rain and wind after a decade of near-misses. Now competing in ultra-trail events, she carries the same approach into races that might seem far outside her comfort zone.
A princess half marathon in Orlando is about as far from a Saharan ultramarathon as it gets. She won it anyway. There’s something worth holding onto there the next time your own running motivation starts to slip.
