After winning Boston, Linden has enjoyed herself. She drank Champagne from a shoe, then was honored at a Celtics game. She was a presenter at the Billboard Music Awards. Weeks before the New York City Marathon, when a lot of runners might isolate themselves to avoid trip hazards and germs, she traveled to Austin, Tex., for the Formula One United States Grand Prix. (She said she and her husband, Ryan Linden, are huge fans.) She has become an it woman to those American runners, especially women, who are more into the grit of the sport than any glamour it brings. Fun fact: Women now run more races than men in the United States.

For New York, she took a risk. After Boston, she left the Hansons-Brooks Original Distance Project, the program she had been with since college. Walt Drenth, her college coach, who is now at Michigan State, is guiding her once more.

To get ready for New York, she has trained about 120 miles per week, the same as at Hansons-Brooks. She also does “some shorter bouts of exercise, some things with a little bit higher intensity but not necessarily threshold pace,” Drenth said. She has done stints at altitude before, for example, in Kenya in 2014, but opted this time to stick closer to home, running along the shores of Charlevoix, Mich. There, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night keeps her from the swift completion of her appointed rounds.

“I felt like I’m at the point where I’m at a plateau, and this is a chance to really take a risk and see if I can’t hit a little higher peak,” she said. “Let’s see if there’s something else we can squeeze. Having fresh eyes on it is helpful.”