Excellence in motion: Ryan Hall

I got up early Saturday morning to watch the men’s Olympic Marathon trials on the internet. (If you have to ask why, I can’t explain it to you :) ). NBC seemed to have technical difficulties for the first hour, so by the time I made my connection, the leaders were approaching the halfway point on a beautiful course that consisted almost entirely of laps through Central Park in New York City.

For miles 13, 14, 15 and 16, five men ran extremely close together at the front, and I tried to identify runners that I had barely heard of but had read about in the pages of running magazines. But along about mile 17, as the lead pack began an uphill climb, Ryan Hall decided to shift into a higher gear. He waved to the camera truck to speed up, and then Hall turned it up a notch and quickly the other four men began to shrink into the background.

From that point on, Ryan Hall never seemed to be working hard and he never slowed down. As he sailed through miles at a 4:40 and 4:50 pace, he was the embodiment of a person doing what he was born to do. Hall finished the marathon in 2:09:02 shattering the old trials record and beating all other competitors by a couple of minutes.

There is a lot to like about Ryan Hall. He’s tall, blond, Stanford-educated, and very upfront about his Christian faith. Runner’s World editor Amby Burfoot says Hall will be one of the most hyped athletes on the 2008 Olympic team. But Saturday was all about Hall’s remarkable running, a God-given talent that Hall, with thousands of hours and miles run, has shaped into athletic poetry.

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Early in the race, 28-year-old elite marathoner Ryan Shay collapsed and died. Amby Burfoot has written a remarkable reflection on this tragedy (and on Ryan Hall) here.

November 7, 2007 · Filed Under Life, Running

Comments

One Response to “Excellence in motion: Ryan Hall”

  1. sam clark on November 23rd, 2007 3:04 pm

    thanks for sharing this. I didn’t get to watch it but I really wanted to.

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