Long-distance runner Dakotah Popehn (formerly Lindwurm) is wrapping up 2024 in style. Popehn, 29, shared a picture of herself wearing a purple jacket and black active leggings, posing on a New York City street. “Last one, best one! I’ve been calling the @nycmarathon my encore of the year because I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this amazing year than 26.2 miles through the streets of New York. See you guys on the other side 🫡,” she captioned the post. Popehn’s career is going from strength to strength after competing in the Paris Olympics—here’s what’s next for the elite athlete.
Popehn gets into a meditative state when she’s running. “I try to zone out and think as little as possible for 20 miles,” she told Mpls St Paul Magazine. “When you run 130 miles a week, a lot of your miles are blank-brained, I’d say. You’re 8 miles in and you’re like, I don’t even remember what happened. It’s like meditating almost—I feel grounded and peaceful. Then when it gets hard, you fall back on the little things that you practiced. You can’t think, Oh, I have 4 more miles, because that feels like another marathon.”
Popehn was thrilled to be in Paris for the 2024 Olympics. “It’s so hard to describe because it’s the thing I’ve worked for for so, so long and you have this, like, little belief that you can do something crazy like that and then it comes true and it almost feels like a fever dream,” she told In the Know. “From the opening ceremonies, being on a boat with LeBron James chanting, ‘USA! USA!’ with everybody in the rain. Like, that was a highlight for sure.”
Popehn played hockey before she moved over to long-distance running. “When I was younger, like a true Minnesotan, I played hockey,” she told Minnesota Monthly. “When I was in middle school, I did watch [the 2004 movie] “The Miracle” [about the United States men’s hockey team beating the Soviet Union team in the 1980 Olympic Games]. I remember as a goalie, I looked at Jim Craig and was like, that’s what I want to be. That’s what I want to do. When I transitioned to running, I wasn’t incredibly great at it.”
Popehn has big dreams after competing in the Olympics. “Right after I made the team, I had to see—I didn’t have to; I chose to see—a sports psych for a little bit,” she told Mpls St Paul Magazine. “Because I did feel like, Oh gosh, I just accomplished my end-all-be-all dream, and I’m still very young in my career. What happens after the Olympics felt like a big black hole. But I sat down and realized I still would like to win a major marathon—New York or Boston. And Paris being hot, hilly, and humid, I definitely have ambitions to get a medal there, and if I don’t, we’ll go for LA in 2028 or even Brisbane in 2032.”
Popehn is inspired by her father, and her late mother who always believed in her. “I feel like I’m just a really, really hard worker,” she told Run. “I think it comes from my whole family—just the most amazing examples. Watching my dad my whole life, wake up every day and no matter if he’s doing his job or something around the house, even dishes—he does everything 100 percent. He never slacks or does anything halfway. That example has been totally ingrained in me. Even if I wasn’t a runner—if I was a teacher, I’d be doing that to the best of my ability.”