Hall To Coach Self

The problem with Ryan Hall is not that he is religous. I am not religous, but I have no problem with religous people professing their faith so long as they do not condemn others or claim superiority for themselves. As far as I can tell Hall does neither of these things. He appears to be a genuinely decent, caring, hyper-Christian dude.

I think that the problem with Hall is that he is at a crisis point with his running. Forget that he may or may not be able to beat the Africans - the problem is that Mr. Hall of 2009-2010 cannot beat the Mr. Hall of 2007-2008. I have my doubts about his self-coaching decision but I hope (pray?) that it works out well for him. I would love to see Ryan get closer to his ultimate potential. If that brings a medal with it all the better!!

So the disappointment is really about racism, then. You can´t accept that someone from our advanced, scientific culture gets beaten by some primitive Africans. This entire idea that Hall has "failed" is really stupid. He is not the best marathoner in the world - period. When he broke through and ran 59,43 and 2,06 you all thought he was going to be the best man on the planet, but you seem to forget that there are legions of runners running those times every year.

quote]

Holy S**t! Can you be any more melodramatic? Hall is a great US runner in an era when that ain't quite good enough. No shame in that and certainly it should not induce psychic injury in anyone. Grow up!

Right, but our wins will come when some shack dwelling cold pizza eating 27 year old from Boston with nothing better to do than log 160 mile weeks with his old college buddies comes out and doesn't know he isn't supposed to beat the Kenyans or that "ooooh" this guy ran 2:04:48 last fall or "yikes this pace is .03743667485% beyond my max V02 capacity so I'll only last another 5.47 miles". He just goes out and throws it down on his home streets to see if hes got what it takes, what absolute limits he can drive himself to and beyond every man around him until he's the last one left. A guy with as much faith in God as Ryan has but also a little faith in the power of will he gave us.Then the science people are left scratching their heads and wondering how their American record prodigy who spent the last six months training on a precisely calibrated alter-G treadmill and sleeping at exactly 71.8 degrees with a simulated altitude of 9453 feet, 7 inches got his ass handed to him by a bunch of guys that owned their first pair of shoes at 17 and a guy who's idea of a classy ride is a beat up '84 Impala with the bumper tied on with bailing wire...

While that sounds nice and romantic, you don't win a major marathon just because you have "nothing better to do". All of the shack-dwelling, cold pizza eating, 27 year olds from Boston who are running because they have nothing better to do can't break 2:20.

coaches cut through bullshit.

ever try to run fast carrying bullshit?

Seems all opine on what he aight to do, but in the end he has the best scope of his running. T lover might be a great coach, but at the end of the day, our boy Hall is an artist, a poet and deems it neccessary to build his reality on his own observations and experiences. I don,t know what happened with those guys, but Hall is on track to establish a process that might be what he needs. Can never tell with these things, but lots of greats did it on their own.

Agree. One also must wonder why elite coaches aren't lining up outside his Mammoth Lakes home with resumes in hand --- putting themselves out there to sink or swim with such a talent. Coaching an athlete of such talent takes courage -- you don't want to be the one who coaches them down to a sub-par performance. Risks such as this doom coaching careers in the eyes of other runners. That's why I respect Coach Salazaar taking on Alan Webb.

"For myself, losing is not coming second. It's getting out of the water knowing you could have done better. For myself, I have won every race I've been in."

Ian Thorpe

This is what athletics should be about at every level, in every sport. The satisfaction of wringing every last ounce of "try" out of one's body should far exceed a superficial, simplistic desire to show you are better than another human at something.

If you have advanced beyond the level of a teenager in your emotional development, your desire to get the best out of yourself, regardless of it's comparative worth to another, should reach deep and really put your soul on the line to get it all out there.

In the best of races, in the best of efforts, you should cross the line an emotional wreck for plumbing depths rarely touched.

I don't know if Hall is capable of this or not, but if he is looking for "existential reward" as one poster put it, in my humble (and sure to be derided) opinion, he's at least on the right track.

Do you realize what an self-involved little turd you are? If you have no chance to win, there's no reason to run? Jeez, what an immature, entitled point of view to have. Distance running is one of the few sports where Americans are actually at a disadvantage, and this upsets you. You know, because Americans should be the best at EVERYTHING, dammit!

Running is not that important. Especially if you don't happen to be making a living at it. So you are obsessed about something that isn't really very important. Figure it out, dude.

And your racist characterization of "hut dwelling teens" is beyond the pale. I swear to god, twenty year old males are the worst people in the world.

Ryan Hall's biggest problem isn't talent or good coaching it's the fact that he is somewhat of a spoiled little boy.

He was successful in high school, he was successful in collge, he turned pro imediately afterwards, he secludes himself on a mountain with his beautiful wife, rarely ever races, has is own personal massage therapist, travels the world working on his charity. None of those things are necessarily bad but it has made him somewhat soft mentally.

Ryan, you can rectify this by:

1) racing more often so you knowwhere you stands on a regular basis, and his mind is hardened to the all out efforts of racing.

2) assign someone else to spearhead your charity and instead concentrate on 100% on running, after all that will make more money for your charity than anything else.

3) stop taking weeks off from running all together. Your body is starting to have a hard time (understandably so)with the significant ramp up that you give it coming from a couple of weeks of no running and ramping up to 120+ mile weeks with 2-3 full workouts. Really 2-3 easy weeks of 50-60 miles all done at an easy pace should be sufficient to recover from a marathon especially for someone with your mileage background. I mean you do 18-20 mile runs at marathon pace and come back a few days later with another hard workout yet you think by adding 6 more miles to it requires you to do nothing for 3 weeks? Think about it. Consistency rather than significant peaks and valleys.

4) come up with a training philosophy/coach you believe in, understand why you do, buy in 100% and execute. This "I'm going to listen to my body and pray alot" stuff sounds good but really isn't a sound philosophy, just a wishy washy excuse for a spoiled kid to do what he wants. God gave us an intellect, capacity to reason, understand and formulate plans, all as great gifts, be a good steward of those and use them to help you be a good steward of the gift of running that He gave you. Whether you formulate your training philosophy yourself or use a coach (I recommend using a coach or objectivity and an additional persepctive), don't go willy nilly into things saying God will lead you, because what you are really saying is I am turning my back on the gift of intellect He gave me just to do what I want to do and call it "His will".

Wake-up Ryan and don't waste your gift playing games.

Conservative political correctness is fully on display when criticizing a religion is considered "bigotry", as if empirical and religious truth claims need to be accorded some respect and deference that other truth claims are not accorded.

"Christians and Jews have by and large been the atheists' best friends for two centuries. Take note; no one flees eastward in a time of crisis. Artists, atheists, non-conformists and those of other faiths hurry toward the bastions of those who believe"

I have no idea what the hell this means. It is we atheists who extend toleration to the religious, not the other way around. No country worth living in is a "religious" country and every country got more liveable to the extent that it becomes less religious, that is, less beholden to an ideology of all encompassing world-view truth claims (North Korea and the Soviet Union are as religious a state as any theocracy, of course - neither showed a surfeit of Jeffersonian skepticism and inquistiveness but rather substituted one set of rigid truth claims for another).

Get it through your head, religious folks - you don't run this country - you are tolerated here. Our laws do not permit legislation based on revealed religion. No more special rights for you! You have to play by the same rules as everyone else, that is, you have to have evidence for your claims or we can happily ignore them.

Hall's failures are discouraging because he has every physiological aptitude and advantage to compete for major titles, yet doesn't. Where his body can succeed, his mind fails. When racers begin to pull away from Hall's tempo pace, he cowers.

We all know of runners who would go with a break until they cannot. Consider Wanjiru in Chicago; things were looking grim for him many times but he simply refused to give in. Just once, we'd like to see Hall take a chance in one of these races and compete beyond the first 10 miles. We'd respect him more if he went with a break containing the eventual winners, but he fizzled out in the last few miles because he just didn't have it physically. Instead, he's content to run steady-states and have plenty left over to spread his arms out playfully like a child (Boston) or pout like one (NYC).

The frustration comes from the fact that Hall is squandering a talent capable of competing with east Africans; all he needs is competitive drive - something many of us less-talented runners enjoy in excess

He does 18-20 mile runs at marathon pace?! You cannot be serious!

I wish him luck, but I wonder if he might be the sort of guy who'd benefit from a group. Hall sounds like he's almost overthought things and is psyching himself out. Perhaps he needs to remember how to have some fun running.

On a related note... anyone who slags his invocation of God in his reasoning is being ignorant of the way a person of faith makes decisions. A person who puts God at the center of their life is going to pray about any significant decision they make.

Articulate thoughts; they struck a chord - thanks.

Uh, Sam, buddy - hate to tell you this but there is a difference between an olympian god and Jesus; Jesus was here. It is not a Greek myth, nor a fantasy. Check it out, using only secular sources if you like, say from Hebrew, Greek or Roman history. [/quote]

Lol. No. Here is not the place to argue this, but there are no historical records of Jesus existing outside of the "gospels" which were written 200 years after his supposed existence. The Josephus entry was forged and added at a later date. I know this is a running forum, but there appears to be a great deal of historical illiteracy going on here.

I agree. I've defended Hall's God-talk for two or three years, but it's becoming clear that although his faith will enable him to live a good life regardless of how he races, it's not helping him race well.

Nothing wrong with a strong faith. I couldn't help but notice that both Wanjiru and Kebede crossed themselves as they finished. Very common, almost de rigeur, for East African athletes to do that. But I think Hall has got something wrong; he hasn't come up with the right equation. Faith can be turned to the purposes of narcissism if one isn't careful. The phrase "God loves me" is the entry-point for that.

I wish Hall well. I also wish that he'd race the way Ritz did in the world half-marathon champs last year. Now THAT was a race to make any American proud, and the fact that Ritz didn't win was irrelevant. He raced like a badass. He took it right to the leaders when the going got tough.

Hall flirted with such a posture in Boston a couple of years ago with that bursting-out-of-the-chute insanity, but that wasn't smart racing.

I wish him well.

Let's hope Hall can ultimately marshall this sort of LR coverage:

http://www.letsrun.com/2009/homepage1012.php