What An Amazing Final Race For Meb Keflezighi

Meb is my hero. I'm 36, I had a hero last when I was 10. My respect for Meb just keeps growing and growing. I'd love to meet him. Meb! Meb! Meb!

Island wrote:

Congrats Meb on such a great running career! You did a great job today running a time of 2:15 for your final marathon. I’ve always looked up to you and never missed a race ran by you! Congratulations and perserve to your hearts content!

+100

The guy has so much class. In Sacramento in 2000 during the trials, he and a couple of guys were stopped on the parkway at a water fountain messing around with geese. I knew they were distance guys from the trials but didn't know exactly who they were. I just joked with them that if the didn't watch out, those geese would eat them for lunch. They laughed and said "na, we are too skinny and won't taste good". Then one of them pointed to meb and said "do you know who this is? It's your US 10k champion". I was like "holy crap, i was at that race and was blown away when you started popping 55 sec 400s in the last mile". as i was running away and the guy told meb "i promise i won't embarrass you again like that". he was just so humble.

What An interesting story to hear hehe! I wish I could meet Meb one day. He is very humble and strong spirited for sure. He always puts America on his back too for each race. If that’s not a true American then idk who is then.

would be cool if this thread turns into a multi-page recollection of great Meb stories- he deserves it in spades.

Meb represents what every runner should strive to be. He is honest, hard working, driven to succeed, meticulous, and he gets the most out of his extraordinary talent. He consistently shows up when in counts. And he has and will continue to give back to the sport. Happy to have met him, his family and his 'team'!

For anyone interested in knowing more about him and his career you should check out the documentary done on his coach, Bob Larsen. A good 50% of the film centers on Meb and his work with Coach Larsen. The film is called "City Slickers Can't Stay With Me: The Coach Bob Larsen Story". It's available on both iTunes and Amazon (basic video).

In that vein, I’ll Always remember going out for a Sunday 10mi trail run at Montana de Oro when I was in my senior year of high school. It was about 98 or 99 and he was in town training with James Mennon a pretty quick guy in his own right and at the time the quickest guy to come out of my HS. I think Dan Browne may have been around as well. Anyway, we were clicking off 6min pace or so and of course I’m hanging on for dear life while they’re just chatting away. Fun to just listen in and experience the level of training they were doing. Meb was so nice and so humble, even back then.

Congrats Meb! Fantastic ambassador for the sport! Remember, shape is temporary but class is forever.

Island wrote:

Congrats Meb on such a great running career! You did a great job today running a time of 2:15 for your final marathon. I’ve always looked up to you and never missed a race ran by you! Congratulations and perserve to your hearts content!

I agree, lets give a big congrats to Abdi as well, 2:12 at age 40......awesome.

Meb, cool dude!

.... it was started by the village idiot.

He's OUR idiot

I don’t understand the need to retire from something that can be done at anytime. Ok stop training like a nut and just run while slowly falling back into the pack...this isn’t the NBA or MLB. There’s no such thing as retiring from running, walking, sleeping, or eating.

I second this - the movie is FANTASTIC. It was originally expected to be about the various people Bob trained. Then Meb crushed the olympics marathon in 2012 ..... and then won Boston in 2014 and this film captured all of that. Even the stories that aren't about Meb are incredible ...... WORTH THE WATCH!

concur.... wrote:

Meb represents what every runner should strive to be. He is honest, hard working, driven to succeed, meticulous, and he gets the most out of his extraordinary talent. He consistently shows up when in counts. And he has and will continue to give back to the sport. Happy to have met him, his family and his 'team'!

For anyone interested in knowing more about him and his career you should check out the documentary done on his coach, Bob Larsen. A good 50% of the film centers on Meb and his work with Coach Larsen. The film is called "City Slickers Can't Stay With Me: The Coach Bob Larsen Story". It's available on both iTunes and Amazon (basic video).

I was in my Algebra class in high school while the 2014 Boston Marathon was run and I was following the Twitter flotrack feed for news on the race. I was so excited about what was happening- Meb had put what 20 secondss? on the guy behind him. And he was catching him but he did not get close to Meb. That was incredible and absolutely poetically just after the events of 2013.

I remember seeing David Torrence's live tweets about the event too because he was giving really exciting commentary. Rest in peace miss you David !

Cool story, bro. I mean this non-sarcastically too, thanks for sharing.

I’m just glad to see that Island made a thread that’s not about himself. Congrats on the maturation, bro.

Not a Meb fan but nice career congrats to him.

Will Meb take over the role that Bill Rodgers has been fulfilling the last umpteen years?

Meb has had an impressive career, one of the best of any American distance runner. He made 4 non consecutive Olympic teams spanning 16 years. Every Marathon he ran was either a US Team Championship, Olympics or a WMM and he finished in the top 6 all but a handful of his 26 Marathons. He was never afraid to race the very best in the World.

Personally, I have met him several times and he even invited me to run with him once. His easy run was a hard tempo for me and put me in oxygen debt at 7000ft, but I gutted it out to say I ran with him. He is a genuinely happy and humble man. He is a great representative for America. He works hard, he never quits, he lets his actions speak for him and he respects his competitors. Meeting him you would almost forget what a fierce competitor he is.

I am a fan of US distance running and I was a fan of him before I met him. After meeting him, I rooted for him in a whole new way.