What a sad day...such a shock when I heard the news in Dublin. I crossed paths with Ryan Shay a few times while I was competing for Iona the same years he competed for ND (1997-2002). I raced against him a handful of times but 2 memories which stick out in my mind are NCAAs 10k in Raleigh, NC 2000 and NCAAs 10k in Baton Rouge 2002. In the first one, the pace was painfully slow (16.30 at 5k) and nobody would take the lead as it was 95 degrees and very humid. Twice in the race I heard Ryan shouting "come on you pussies lets go"...just remember he was getting really pissed off!!! I think it just summed up the type of runner he was...the next year he went out and won the 10k at NCAAs in Oregon.
Then in Baton Rouge he was 2nd behind Boaz and I cooled down with him and Tom McCardle (3rd) afterwards. The one thing that stuck out in my mind was that we were running well under 6 min pace for our 3 mile cool down. Myself and Tom looked at eachother once or twice as if to say "this is a bit fast isn't it?"...about 4 hours later we got drunk as lords in downtown Baton Rouge and (this memory just popped into my head now!!) i remember on the way home to the hotel there was a bike sitting against a wall and ryan hopped on it and start shouting "come on Boaz, i'll catch you now!!!"....Ryan was a really honourable, straight up , honest fella who liked to run hard and leave nothing to chance...such a sad loss and my thoughts go out to his family and friends at this terrible time. RIP Ryan, it was a pleasure to know you.