What's wrong with Ryan Hall

i used to be a big fan of Hall, now I could care less what he does. Number one, the guy said in a runners' world article that he was going to run 2:05 in new york... nothing pisses me off more than people who hype themselves up and severly underpreform. ryan hall and scott bauhs need to start just thinking things and shut ther mouths...

number two, if hall doesn't come back to the track his career will end very shortly guaranteed

locked up wrote:

i used to be a big fan of Hall, now I could care less what he does. Number one, the guy said in a runners' world article that he was going to run 2:05 in new york... nothing pisses me off more than people who hype themselves up and severly underpreform. ryan hall and scott bauhs need to start just thinking things and shut ther mouths...

number two, if hall doesn't come back to the track his career will end very shortly guaranteed

Not even Wanjiru or Geb could run 2:05 in NYC, I think.

He said he was in 2:05 shape on a flat course in preparing for NY.

There isn't anything wrong with Hall. He is one of the top marathoners in the world. He is having a bit of a sophmore slump. Going from being one of the best to being THE best is not something that happens as a matter of right for talented runners.

If anything, I think Hall's training has taken "marathon specific" work too far. It seems like he has just maintained rather than grown as a runner since his 2:06 in London. He should mix it up. Meb ran road races this summer and PR-ed a fast half before NY. Hall has shyed away from running shorter races and has treated his half marathons as training runs. He should try to break his 1/2 AR in Houston, run a big 10 mi or 1/2 in Europe against superfast E Africans in the spring and take another shot at Boston in 2010.

The posts about his long tempos at 5 min/pace are interesting. Fitness wise, due to the altitude, it might feel like 4:50's etc but his legs will feel a difference. I think a lot of the Africans run at the same pace as their goal while at altitude which is obviously harder but gives the added benefits of knowing they will be able to run it easier at sea level and getting used to the turnover/stride length they will experience in a race.

If Hall is running everything at 5min miles and someone drops a 4:30 mid race he's gonna think he's sprinting.

Danny Komen wrote:

The posts about his long tempos at 5 min/pace are interesting. Fitness wise, due to the altitude, it might feel like 4:50's etc but his legs will feel a difference. I think a lot of the Africans run at the same pace as their goal while at altitude which is obviously harder but gives the added benefits of knowing they will be able to run it easier at sea level and getting used to the turnover/stride length they will experience in a race.

If Hall is running everything at 5min miles and someone drops a 4:30 mid race he's gonna think he's sprinting.

Ding ding ding!

I wouldn't presume to tell Hall (or anyone else, really) how to train, but my personal experience is that if I don't have a good bit of actual race pace running at altitude (as opposed to race effort running), I'm screwed. And yes, the longer tempos at race pace absolutely suck -- they feel about 15-20 seconds per mile faster than they are, with zero recovery -- but you do what you have to.

There is also the longer term adaptation to altitude, which decreases your sea level advantage. To take an extreme example, look at Kip Keino. He could run an astonishing fifteen at Mexico City, having run all his life at altitude, but could never run any faster at sea level. He was so well adapted to medium altitude that it did not affect him at that distance. Plenty of people that I trained with in Albuquerque (mile high), who had lived there many years, ran just as fast in the Duke City Marathon as at sea level marathons. Hall adapts better and better to running his 18 milers at altitude and drops a minute, but the effort is not commensurate anymore with ten seconds faster at sea level; maybe now it prepares him to run five seconds faster. (he is also adapting physiologically to this particular workout, so he runs it faster without being better prepared for the race: the body needs different stressors to continue to improve, or indeed often to maintain). So, he needs to run the workout significantly faster or even better to change up his training, to focus on five and ten k races next Spring and Summer, and to let his body recover from so many marathons. Maybe run one next fall. The performance trend is not encouraging. He's not running badly by American standards, but he's fallen quite a bit from his own standards.

Sophmore slump for Hall. After going 2:08 in his debut, winning the trials and going 2:06 he has had a tough year and a bit. He will bounce back.

Like the other guy said, you have to go all out everytime, sometimes you die and sometimes you don't. If he keeps running like he does won day he will break through and win a big one and then all these less than stellar finishes will instantly be forgotten.

He left the track too soon, God is too important, he wears shades. He will shortly flake out, running light weight road races, always trying to be King of American Marathoning. Good luck Ryan

One word. Track! Needs to skip spring marathon and run a track/road race season. Bring back that 13:15 speed plus new marathon strength and he would roll again.

All you guys are just haters. Everyone has good races, bad races and races that are just ok. If he only races 2-3 times a year he is bound to have one of those races be either an ok race or a bad race get over it. If Meb had not run the race every one would be on here gobling him like crazy.

bump

The dude ran a 42 minute 10 mile in practice a couple weeks ago. He might have still been a little tired. Besides that, he only got beat by 3 seconds a mile.

Not to say that he is having major problems but I think the biggest issue he has is a lack of speed right now. Geb ran a 3:31 1500 and I don't know what Tergat ran but he was a sub 26:30 10k runner if I'm not mistaken. Meb was a 27:13 10k runner (I say was because I'm pretty confident he couldn't run that right now, but you never know)

Has Hall raced anything below the half marathon since college. No matter what race you're running you can't run it purely on strength, you need to have some speed to handle the changes in pace. I'm sure if Hall went out to London or Berlin and ran a perfectly even paced race he could run around 2:06 or faster, but he can't handle a changing pace and tactical race because those surges take a lot more out of his legs than they do from guys like Meb or Geb who have had impressive track careers.

Some of that may be semi incoherent but the general point is that I think Hall may do well if he does what Ritz did. Hall has a huge base right now so if he moved down to the 5k/10k for a little while and had a bit of a change of pace, in both races and workouts, it could benefit his marathon future.

I would venture to guess that he and his coach got a little "greedy" with the training. When you hear about guys putting in killer 18 mile runs in training, that is also where the race was left too.

Perhaps he should have run some of those long hard runs a little bit slower, or reduced the distance down some.

The idea is not to run the hardest you can in training, but to run the pace that is ideal for yourself to be ready to race come race day.

His NY time was actually pretty good though. Very few runners have cracked 2:09 there. I would rank his Boston and NY as just a little off his 2:06 performance in London.

You sir, have nailed the solution.

[quote]Precious Roy wrote:

He said he was in 2:05 shape on a flat course in preparing for NY.

There isn't anything wrong with Hall. He is one of the top marathoners in the world. He is having a bit of a sophmore slump. Going from being one of the best to being THE best is not something that happens as a matter of right for talented runners.

No. after the new york half he was quoted as saying that he thought he could run the same pace for the full marathon as he did in the half... that would come out to be 2:05 and change. when they asked him about 2:05 he said something like,"anything is possible" or some BS like that. bottom line, you don't say this stuff and run 2:10. he needs to shut his mouth.

or

So which is it?

We know that a fast 1/2 does not equal a fast marathon (unless you are Lel...and maybe Meb?), so going after his AR seems like it might not be the best idea. It seems that too many people on this thread are time centric. He just needs that killer instinct that Ritz has in abundance at the moment, as most of his races seem very calculated. Obviously a balance of smarts and aggressiveness are needed in the marathon, but I feel like to really win one of these majors he needs to shift towards aggressiveness. Of course the last time I tried that I ended up with a 10 minutes positive split, so I wouldn't listen to me if I were him.

The problem is that he is coming down from altitude for the races and sometimes he might not always have the right amount of time for adaption.You either race as soon as possible after coming down or you wait a couple of weeks.

Danny Komen wrote:

The posts about his long tempos at 5 min/pace are interesting. Fitness wise, due to the altitude, it might feel like 4:50's etc but his legs will feel a difference. I think a lot of the Africans run at the same pace as their goal while at altitude which is obviously harder but gives the added benefits of knowing they will be able to run it easier at sea level and getting used to the turnover/stride length they will experience in a race.

If Hall is running everything at 5min miles and someone drops a 4:30 mid race he's gonna think he's sprinting.

*I want to mention, firstly, that everything I say should be read within the context of a continued Hall fan*

To say the Kenyans are running similar paces as Hall's at altitude is misleading. Yes, they do run a lot of 5 min-type longer runs, but the Kenyans are notoriously known for hammering out 20-25x400's at 62-64 and 10x1k at 2:35 on a regular basis...at altitude. I don't think Hall is running anywhere near these paces on a CONSISTENT basis, hence, his inability to respond to sudden pace changes. Another differnce is the Kenyan camp system; they probably have a group of 30-50 2:05 to 2:09 guys training together. Hall stated himself that he lives a couple of hundred feet from Meb but rarely runs with the guy. If my neighbor was an Olympic marathon silver medalist I'd be hanging around his mailbox waiting for him to come out to run. The proof is in the pudding.

Before, when Hall was transitioning from the track to the roads (after years of running with the boys of Stanford), throwing in 4:30 miles in the middle of his races appeared effortless. I remember watching his Houston half video and thinking how easy he made 59:43 look. That Hall would whoop the current Hall all over the road--any distance! His rhythm was completely different then versus now. My assumption is that the rhythm of running 62s 400's and 2:35 K's was simple muscle memory lingering over from his 3k/5k work. He still has the wheels, I believe. But, continuing to slog (relatively speaking, of course) out 2:14 800's on the road with Josh Cox ain't gonna get it done.