Sara Hall coached by Ryan Hall

That was my first thought. In some ways, Ryan Hall is one of the least successful coaches around - he's had one athlete to coach, and he ran him into the ground. And he's awfully flaky.

To be fair, though, I think sometimes it might be possible for somebody to know what they are doing, but just not execute properly themselves. They don't "practice what they preach". It's easier to look at somebody's else's training and say, "you should have an easy day" or "you need a break for a couple of weeks". When you're coaching yourself, if you're really driven, it's easy to override good sense, goad yourself for being weak, and generally drive yourself into the ground. Whereas if you have a coach, and you generally do what they tell you, then you will take time off when they suggest it.

So, I agree that Ryan Hall has not done anything to prove he's a good coach, but at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if he does OK with coaching his wife.

Say it ain't so, Sara! wrote:

HOWEVER, why would anyone think he is a good coach? His self-coaching has largely been a disaster.

.

Yep total disaster.

2011 2:04:58 4 Boston MA 18 Apr

rojo wrote:

Yep total disaster.

2011 2:04:58 4 Boston MA 18 Apr

Fair enough, but Mahon coached him until the year before and he only ran one more decent marathon (2012 trials, which he ran injured) before burning himself out. That's not much of a coaching track record.

Say it ain't so, Sara! wrote:

rojo wrote:

Yep total disaster.

2011 2:04:58 4 Boston MA 18 Apr

Fair enough, but Mahon coached him until the year before and he only ran one more decent marathon (2012 trials, which he ran injured) before burning himself out. That's not much of a coaching track record.

That 2 year period from 2010 to 2012 was the only time he was self coached, and ran 3 good marathons. Once he trained under Canova, Magness, Daniels, and a few others he never raced well again. His self coached period was quite good by comparison.

Also if anything it may well have been Mahon's insanely hard tempos that fried him. 8 miles at half marathon pace?

rojo wrote:

Yep total disaster.

2011 2:04:58 4 Boston MA 18 Apr

This is similar to how Salazar was coaching Ritz for a short period when he ran sub 13. The work had been done under Hudson, but officially Salazar was his coach.

Same thing with Hall. The work had been done under Mahon. Look at the following years and races to see how Hall coaching himself worked out.

God is the almighty coach and Ryan is his messenger.

TLW wrote:

rojo wrote:

Yep total disaster.

2011 2:04:58 4 Boston MA 18 Apr

This is similar to how Salazar was coaching Ritz for a short period when he ran sub 13. The work had been done under Hudson, but officially Salazar was his coach.

Same thing with Hall. The work had been done under Mahon. Look at the following years and races to see how Hall coaching himself worked out.

Really, so why did he DNS his last marathon under Mahon and run sub-par in several previous ones?

There comes a point when coaching doesn't matter that much.

Speaker of Hard Truths wrote:

There comes a point when coaching doesn't matter that much.

Oh, really?

Speaker of Hard Truths wrote:

Say it ain't so, Sara! wrote:

Fair enough, but Mahon coached him until the year before and he only ran one more decent marathon (2012 trials, which he ran injured) before burning himself out. That's not much of a coaching track record.

That 2 year period from 2010 to 2012 was the only time he was self coached, and ran 3 good marathons. Once he trained under Canova, Magness, Daniels, and a few others he never raced well again. His self coached period was quite good by comparison.

That seems like a stretch. When somebody is changing coaches every few months, I think it makes more sense to just call them "self-coached". He was obviously not committed to their programs, and just did whatever he wanted to.

Speaker of Hard Truths wrote:

Also if anything it may well have been Mahon's insanely hard tempos that fried him. 8 miles at half marathon pace?

Was it the thyroid medication or the hard tempo runs that messed up Hall's endocrin system?

shinto wrote:

Speaker of Hard Truths wrote:

That 2 year period from 2010 to 2012 was the only time he was self coached, and ran 3 good marathons. Once he trained under Canova, Magness, Daniels, and a few others he never raced well again. His self coached period was quite good by comparison.

That seems like a stretch. When somebody is changing coaches every few months, I think it makes more sense to just call them "self-coached". He was obviously not committed to their programs, and just did whatever he wanted to.

I pretty much agree with that. But he was already struggling for several years under Mahon too. Like many athletes his best performances came in short unpredictable spurts over his career. He even had amazing results in high school with no track program 'coached' by his baseball playing dad who read a Lydiard book.

Speaker of Hard Truths wrote:

I pretty much agree with that. But he was already struggling for several years under Mahon too. Like many athletes his best performances came in short unpredictable spurts over his career. He even had amazing results in high school with no track program 'coached' by his baseball playing dad who read a Lydiard book.

I don't think you quite understand the whole story. Hall's first run with his Dad was a 15 miler. He was doing 8 mile tempo runs at 5:00 pace in HS. His Dad had advisement from others and had him doing proper training.

You can't blame any coaches for Hall's results. Historically, Hall has always made poor training decisions when self coached.

Have you ever seen his training log from Stanford of what he had himself doing over the summers? He was running hard intervals almost every single day.

When Hall was coached by god he had no schedule and let the lord guide him everyday.

Even recently Hall was doing 20-23 mile tempo runs in Ethiopia at 8k feet with low testosterone.

this is just what an athlete that doesn't dope career looks like.

So, does this pretty much rule out Ryan for taking the Trials seriously? Is he saying essentially, " I can't make it, so I'm going to help my wife" (?)

Why no up dates on how his training is going?

What happened to Sara Hall being coached by Steve Magness? Don't want to sift through the video; but does she mention him at all?

You guys read way too much into everything. Ryan Hall "coaching" her probably just means he goes to the track and cheers her on when she's running 400's while they still train the same basic way as advised by Magness, Daniels, or whoever. Running is not that complicated.

SlipperyPete13 wrote:

What happened to Sara Hall being coached by Steve Magness? Don't want to sift through the video; but does she mention him at all?

Yeah, I thought Magness was coaching her too!?!

Speaker of Hard Truths wrote:

Say it ain't so, Sara! wrote:

Fair enough, but Mahon coached him until the year before and he only ran one more decent marathon (2012 trials, which he ran injured) before burning himself out. That's not much of a coaching track record.

That 2 year period from 2010 to 2012 was the only time he was self coached, and ran 3 good marathons. Once he trained under Canova, Magness, Daniels, and a few others he never raced well again. His self coached period was quite good by comparison.

I think coaching is more valuable over the longer term and under the short term you can't draw any real conclusions. Look at Meb. Same coach for over a decade and Meb is still kicking butt. If you have a coach for a long period of time, you develop a good relationship with them, they understand your psychology inside and out, and have a lot of empirical data that they themselves recorded and can easily work with.

Regarding his period under Mahon, I think what's been said previously has been correct.. the work was done under Mahon. It's so much easier to build back to an old fitness than get to a new level, after all.

Also don't forget in Boston 2011 there was a huge tailwind, and it's a point to point course. That aided everyone competing.

Back to Sara... Coaching your spouse has got to be restrictive. You just don't have as many tools at your disposal if you are more worried about having a great relationship after all is said and done.