Greg Hansen: Tucson's Sarah Sellers savors 'crazy experience,' second-place finish in Boston

Desiree Linden is 34 years old and does not punch in and out of work. Running is her job. In her spare time, according to her bio, Linden “collects whiskies and tapestries.”

The people who run the Boston Marathon paid for her expenses to Monday’s race.

The woman who finished second at the Boston Marathon has no sponsors. She bought her running shoes off the rack at The Running Shop on North Campbell Avenue. She paid a $185 entry fee to run in the Boston Marathon.

Sarah Sellers usually trains by herself, often running around the track at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind.

When Sellers returned to Tucson late Tuesday night, the battery in her car was dead, but, oh, is she alive.

Back on the job as a nurse anesthetist Thursday morning at Banner-University Medical Center, Sellers celebrated with her co-workers by eating a piece of chocolate cake for breakfast.

That’s a better story than whiskies and tapestries, don’t you think?

A lot of running people might say that Sarah Callister Sellers, 26, proud graduate of Weber State, got lucky Monday because weather at the Boston Marathon was fit for neither woman nor beast.

They may say that many of the elite women’s runners checked out mentally and physically, giving in to the wind and rain.

I prefer to think it was one of America’s most inspiring distance-running stories since Billy Mills won the 10,000 meters gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

By midweek, The New York Times and Washington Post had interviewed Sellers. Chelsea Clinton tweeted “Such an inspiring story. Congratulations, Sarah!” Sellers finished with a time of 2 hours 44 minutes 4 seconds.

“Everyone loves to see an underdog do well,” Sellers said Thursday.

The administration at Banner-UMC gave Sellers an hour away from the operating room Thursday. She was able tell her story in Tucson, a place she and her husband, Dr. Blake Sellers, have lived for 10 months. Blake, who is often Sarah’s only training partner, is one of 17 residents at the hospital.

Their trip to Boston has changed everything and nothing.

Sarah isn’t going to leave Banner-UMC and put her medical career on hold while she trains for the 2020 Olympics.

“It was a crazy experience, but I would never want to change what I do for work,” she said. “I don’t want to make any drastic changes.”

Sellers’ unexpected rush to second place in the Boston Marathon isn’t that far out. She was a nine-time Big Sky champion, undefeated her final three seasons. When NBA star Damian Lillard was Weber State’s 2012 Male Athlete of the Year, Sellers was the Female Athlete of the Year.

Weber State coach Paul Pilkington saw Sellers on the same path as former WSU All-American Lindsey Olson Anderson, who was part of Team USA, a steeplechaser at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“My post-collegiate career came crashing down when I had a stress fracture of the navicular bone in my foot,” Sellers said. “That’s a pretty high-risk injury with long-term implications. So it kind of forced me to give up running to let it heal.”

Now, six years after leaving Weber State, Sellers is not unlike an injured football player whose body healed after sitting out an extended period. She’s fresh. Her body isn’t worn down by a 150-mile a week routine for the last decade.

In Phase II of her career, Sellers will be on the must-invite list to a handful of the top American marathons, half-marathons and 10Ks.

“I have a routine going and I’m making progress,” she said. “I don’t see a whole lot of changes, honestly. If I made any huge changes, I’d be more at risk to struggle in running and at work.”

Sellers’ second-place finish, while unexpected, wasn’t a shocker.

She was given racing bib No. 42, which means she had the 42nd best overall time of all women’s qualifiers. That meant she was part of a second group of “elite runners” given a bus escort to the starting line Monday. She was one bus behind 20 elite runners whose expenses were paid to Boston.

If you study the last 10 Boston Marathons, the No. 2 finisher was a known, world-class runner.

Kenya’s Rose Chelimo, No. 2 in 2017, won the world championship a few months later. Others who finished second the last 10 years – Ethiopia’s Tirfi Tsegaye, Mare Dibaba, Meseret Defar and Dire Tune — all were ranked among the world’s top 10 entering the Boston Marathon.

Dire Tune? That’s what experts would’ve predicted for Sellers before Monday’s race. Few were singing a happy song during the rainstorm, with temperatures near 40 degrees. But Sellers just kept going, passing many of the world’s leading distance runners mile after mile.

She first became visible in television coverage at mile 21. By then she was 11th. She ran faster.

When Sellers won a Utah high school championship in 2008 in Park City, it was also in rainy and cold conditions.

She is of hearty stock, and on Monday her Utah upbringing paid off. “I was never worried,” she said. “There was never a risk of not finishing. I’ve been in those conditions a lot, so I was pretty confident.”

She did admit, however, that “I was shaking violently for about an hour after the race.”

A few days a week, Sellers is up at 4 a.m., and trains before her 10-hour shift at Banner-UMC. She runs The Loop. She runs on the track at Pima College or anywhere there’s an unobstructed trail. She picked up that routine from her parents, who would get up early and run in the foothills near Weber State when Sellers was a schoolgirl.

“When my parents went out running in the morning, I felt like I was missing something when I didn’t run with them,” she remembers. “It inspired me to start racing.”

What’s next?

“I had not thought one day past Boston before this,” she said. “I had no anticipation. But I’ll definitely put some races on the schedule. I’ll definitely give it my best shot.”