Ryan Hall's Performance The (fill in the blank) Best American Performance EVER

Before we call it the best let's wait for the test. Solo, early in the season, unexpected. The run has some duck like features. If it's clean and Hall stays clean for 2007 "give the man his credit he deserves". But in today environment I'll wait a little.

This is magic, absolute magic, and an inspiration for Ryan and his contemporaries to achieve greatness, not just in absolute terms, but relative to the East Africans. I think the psychological barriers are coming down.

Let me publicly scold myself for ever, ever, questioning Ryan\'s training, racing or heart. Those mysterious years at Stanford are a distant memory.

With Meb, Ryan, Ritz, Teg, Alan, surely others, we have some real metallic dreams in 2008.

I ran the Houston marathon today and would like to add that conditions were not ideal... The temperature was fine in the 50's but humidity was Very High and the streets were slick... This just adds to how impressive his run really was...

One of the top 2 or 3 performances ever by an American in terms of running for time.

Ryan--we always knew you could do it!!! (even though you +J couldn't make it to newport beach on blades:) )

to everyone else: Ryan is awesome, at running (obv.) and more importantly as a person--thoughtful and generous and praising God and a great baker. CONGRATS RYAN!!!

ps. if anyone wants old sneakers of Ryan's, let us know. sneakers go to highest bidder. :)

What type of "conversion chart" gives resolution to the nearest hundreth of a second? What a joke.

If you are simply talking about where a time stands on the statistical charts, you can answer how good it is pretty objectively. That answer is fairly indisputable unless you dispute the validity of the conversion chart. But when you invite people to fill in a blank about where it stands you're going to get more subjective opinions.

Rollerblading Buddies wrote:

Ryan--we always knew you could do it!!! (even though you +J couldn't make it to newport beach on blades:) )

to everyone else: Ryan is awesome, at running (obv.) and more importantly as a person--thoughtful and generous and praising God and a great baker. CONGRATS RYAN!!!

ps. if anyone wants old sneakers of Ryan's, let us know. sneakers go to highest bidder. :)

Why is he praising a baker? perhaps the candlestick maker will be next? silly American distance runners.

AMEN!!!!

Sarcastic Third Tit wrote:

No way wrote:

Not its not. His time/performance is on level with some of the most dominate African runners in history. It wasnt long ago we though only guys like Geb, Tadesse and such could go out on a Janurary day and run that fast of a time on a solo effort. Your acting like its an easy task to break 60:00 in the half, Virgin never could do it, Shorter couldnt, shit even the SILVER MEDALLIST Meb couldnt even come close to it. Put all these guys in there prime in this race at this distance and Hall would've destroyed them.

This is one of the reasons American running never progresses because you old farts cling on to the past too much. Just admit it Hall owns those guys.

AMEN!!!!

DEFINATELY. Even Ryun's 3:51 doesnt match up to this. Why? Its safe to say that Hall has the capability right now to run close to 3:51 mile, 3:51-3:53 AT LEAST...now could you say the same for Ryun? Could Ryun had ran this fast in a half marathon if he seriously trained for it? THE ANSWER IS HELL NO!

This was a fast and impressive time, NOT a WR. You can\'t seriously think this is the greatest run of all time by a non-African! Get your hand off it.

Great run by Hall. Stupid post by wisdomsitsinplaces.

Yes, I think that it was the best American Distance running performance of all time.

He was ALL ALONE out there!!! That fact alone is worth about 4 seconds per km. He can go faster in the half marathon. Kennedy and Khannouchi had pacemakers.

The only thing that it's comparable to is the Olympic victories of Shorter and Mills.

I think he'd be completely silly not to go to London for the marathon, or even Tokyo next month.

Jason

Billy Mill all the way

geez look how skinny he looks that may be a key

Did anyone notice that 60% of the top ten in the men's race ran PRs and 90%!!! of the top ten in the women's race ran PRs. Does that seem strange? How often is there that sort of incidence of PRs in a professional race? Am I wrong to question that accuracy of the course given that?

http://www.letsrun.com/2007/hallrecord.php

Why are some posters attempting to downplay certain performances going back several years by comparing runs? Let's just celebrate Hall's great run and let it go at that.

And, yes, I believe that most of us DO understand and appreciate what a great run it was.

lots o' PBs wrote:

Did anyone notice that 60% of the top ten in the men's race ran PRs and 90%!!! of the top ten in the women's race ran PRs. Does that seem strange? How often is there that sort of incidence of PRs in a professional race? Am I wrong to question that accuracy of the course given that?

Yes you are.

Americans, as a generalization, run very few half marathons, and when they do, run them poorly. Put together a National half marathon championship on a good course and conditions, and you'd expect that PRs fall.

You see the same thing at New Haven.

There was a long drought in the 90s when not one of the top Americans would run any races over 15k. Within the last few (4-5) years that has been reversed. Having designated National championships with REAL prize money has worked. It's exciting to see.

Why Curp's record wasn't broken until now is a shame. Most of us thought that at least a half-dozen Americans should have already been under than mark. In the numb 90s, instead of running 15k, 10miles, 20k, 25k races the top American runners were running 5k! No one ran road 5k's in the 80s except joggers.

I was so inspired after watching Hall's run on Flocast that I went out and attempted a record assault on my 8 mile loop...went out too fast and died but that is beside the point.

What Hall did was more important than any ranking system or conversion mumbo jumbo. Hall has officially just put an end to the nightmare that has been American distance running since the Early 80's. Back then Americans ran faster, raced and trained harder and put their life into the sport. We always had a full stable of Pre's, Virgen's, Curp's/Lindsey's, Meyer's, Salazar's etc who trained and raced like mad. We drifted away from that during the mid 80's until about 5 years ago. That's not to diminish the accomplishments of Kennedy, Scott, Williams. They had to do what they did all by themselves. To beat the world you need a stable full of stallions.

In one single race Hall has brought it all back. Wow!

Meb started it with the silver medal and Ryan validated it with his effort. Now we can start talking about beating some people on the world stage.

While I don't think that it was a top 5 performance of all time, I do think that it has the potential to be a Top 3 pivotal moment in the history of American distance running. The reason we are so excited is that the drought may be over and Ryan, Meb, Ritz, Teg et. al. can now stop second guessing their ability to compete with the Kenyan's. They need to start worrying about being the best American and hopefully, soon, that will automatically qualify as being one of the best in the world. Every single one of those guys are better because of Ryan's effort last Saturday...Awesome!