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Inside a Bible that goes everywhere with Ryan Hall is a photo of Hall and a fellow runner standing toe-to-toe at the starting line of the U.S. Olympic marathon trials last November in New York City. It was the last race the two men would run together, and it signifies for Hall the importance of living with purpose. The other man in the photo is Ryan Shay, Hall's running partner and friend. Thirty minutes after the photo was taken, Shay, 28, collapsed on the race route and died of a heart attack.
“His memory inspires me,” Hall says. “I don't know anyone in the world who trained harder that Ryan Shay. [His death] reminds all of us to seize the opportunity every day.”
At the moment Shay lay dying, Hall was unaware of what had happened, and he learned about it only after he finished, in first place, qualifying for the Olympics in Beijing. “It was a dramatic and very emotional day,” he recalls, trying to reconcile a personal triumph with a personal tragedy. “It was so surreal.”
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Photo: Glenn Matsumura |
For Hall, '05, running has been an intensely purposeful pursuit since a day 12 years ago when he experienced what he describes as “a message from God.” He was in eighth grade, in the middle of a 15-mile jaunt around the lake in his hometown of Big Bear Lake, Calif., when he felt a calling to compete in running at the highest levels. “I felt God had blessed with me this talent.”
Hall says running and faith are inseparable for him. The night before every major race, he watches Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ to get mentally prepared.
“When I'm running I'm dealing with pain management,” says Hall, 25. He recalls being in agony in the final two miles of the London Marathon in April 2007, his body yielding to a combination of 70-degree heat and a suffocating pace he had set earlier in the race. “I actually saw visions of the scarred body of Jesus, and it made me able to go on,” he says.
Hall's performance in London—running his first marathon—thrust him into the world's elite class of long-distance runners. He finished seventh with a time of 2 hours, 8 minutes, 6 seconds. A year later, he established himself as a serious medal contender by finishing 5th in the 2008 London Marathon. His time of 2:06.17 was the fastest ever recorded by an American-born marathoner.
While at Stanford, Hall majored in sociology and was a three-time All-American competing in the 1,500 and 5,000 meters. And he met his wife, the former Sara Bei, '05, an Olympic hopeful herself in the 1,500 meters.
Hall's coach, Terrence Mahon, says Hall spends “every waking moment thinking about running.” His daily schedule goes something like this: rise at 7 a.m., eat breakfast, run 10 to 12 miles, eat lunch, have a massage or an ice bath to ease the muscles, take an afternoon nap to recover from the morning workout, run another five to six miles, go to the gym for strength and flexibility exercises, eat dinner, go to bed. “It's basically a full-time job,” Hall says.
“Ryan's greatest assets are his passion and dedication, which have brought excitement and enthusiasm to the running world,” Mahon says. Indeed, after Hall's performance in the London Marathon, New York City Marathon director Mary Wittenberg told USA Today, “A star was born.”
Hall's main competitors in Beijing will be three-time London Marathon winner Martin Lel and four-time Boston Marathon winner Robert Cheruiyot. Both men are from Kenya. Somewhere along the way, Hall knows he will need to call on his reserves, both physical and spiritual, to pull him through. He will think of Shay, and others who have helped him, he says. “I like to imagine that I'm just taking an easy run through the forest in Big Bear and that the prize I'm most longing for is to see Sara and my family at the finish line.”
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