Ryan Hall out of Mammoth

kakapoian - I am perplexed at posts such as yours. Your views on his critical thinking skills or lack thereof are irrelevant.

Hall is in an incredibly demanding endeavor, and he makes choices as what works for him. I respect them, even though I am not in the least bit religious. You also have no earthly idea as to whether improving his critical thinking skills would improve his running. So your post is merely an emotional rant against a person who is religious, and charitably, is gratuitous at best.

Cheers.

letme wrote:

My bet, he'll coach himself.

I'm thinking he'll do something like that as well. He's always been close to Irv Ray (the coach at UC Riverside where his brother is now). So perhaps he tries to go it alone and gets advice from various people.

Christine O'Donnell wrote:

I'm not a coach but i'm also crazy about Jesus and i will have plenty of time soon.

Ahahaha - Exactly what I was talking about.

the blunt blunt truth wrote:

kakapoian - I am perplexed at posts such as yours. Your views on his critical thinking skills or lack thereof are irrelevant.

Hall is in an incredibly demanding endeavor, and he makes choices as what works for him. I respect them, even though I am not in the least bit religious. You also have no earthly idea as to whether improving his critical thinking skills would improve his running. So your post is merely an emotional rant against a person who is religious, and charitably, is gratuitous at best.

Cheers.

I was being slightly trollish, but critical thinking skills translate well into all areas of your life - even running. His mind is clearly stunted through his indoctrination, and having been there myself, I can tell you that being Jesus crazy is a form of mental illness.

Kakopoin,

In all seriousness, please explain how a religious belief means ones "mind is clearly stunted" or stop being intolerant of others reasonable views. No one is attacking you for having stopped thinking about religion all together (slight sarcasm there). Why attack those who continue to pursue that line of think in one way or another?

I applaud the change. I hope it goes beyond just switching coaches. Ryan needs to take a break from this post-Beijing routine of Boston, NY, Boston, Chic--there is way too much pressure and he has been forced to sell himself as "America", something I don't think he ever planned for.

He honestly needs to cast it off and find humility again. The Ryan Hall of now "appears" very different than the athlete who solo'd 59, debuted @ 2.08, and dropped jaws with a fiercely competitive 2.06.

People who bag on Jesus are unlighted beings. Truth.

Truth- There is no truth.

Ryan's religion honestly works extremely well for someone in his position. He needs nothing but motivation to endeavor for his running goals with every effort he can make. His religion keeps him from swaying in that motivation.

Why does he need a coach? Frank Shorter did fine without one. Doesn't Wanjiru(sp?) coach himself now?

Looking for magic maybe ? Seeing the level of competition this fall with neck to neck races at 2:06-2:07 pace maybe drove the final nail. TM is still new to world class racing , Deena was already there when he took over the reins. TM is a good coach but a learning coach as well.

Ryan wants it now , a slight arrogance was apparent in Boston , a case of the small town kid making it to the big time , poor management had him running around doing promo loosing focus. Sponsors hoped for the great white hope to win a big one , another form of pressure not easy to deal with.

Going solo or one on one coaching will not work for this kid. He needs his butt kicked and to listen . Im not a Nike guy by no means , but the OTC program might do him well , he needs that level of support to get where he wants to go , to the top.

You can't be serious about OTC which has only 1 major medal since Osaka. MTC, BATC, and Dr Li have a magnificent set of accomplishments and athletes.

Not to lead this thread astray from the original topic (I'll give my input on that in a moment), but as a theology student, people on this message board have good reason to question the "religiousity" of Hall and his relation to running. I make no attempts to belittle those who claim to "be religious" (or even "spiritual", for that matter) but, and this is just to cite just one compilation of studies by Gary Lea:

"studies...found the more religious studnts to be more anxious, to have lower self-esteem, and to feel less adquate than the less religious students. Dreger found that the most orthodox church members in his study scored higer on ego-defensiveness and dependency than the most liberal members."

"Religion is inversely reltated to self-actualization."

According to a list of specific parameters, Hall's faith could be defined as "immature," and thus debilitating to all walks of personal life.

Anyway, to steer the thread back and provide my input, for what it's worth:

Hall NEEDS a coach. Shorter had an amazing self-coaching experience; yet, in his autobiography, he credits much of this to the methods that his collegiate coach fostered. He was trained to be self-coached; that, and the amount of volume he could sustain guaranteed at least natiional success. Hall is not this type of runner, which is not necessarily a bad thing. As for who I think he'll end up with, I'd rather wait and see. However, my heart strings tend to Daniels, just to see what he could do with this kind of talent.

Am I the only one who thinks the whole idea of Hall leaving Mahon by choice doesn't make sense?

I don't think should I have to recount his career to this point, but let's look at it all laid out.

They've been working together for 5 years:

2007 - 59:43 - U.S. Half Marathon Record

2007 - 2:08:24 London - fastest American debut

2007 - 1st Olympic Trials

2008 - 2:06:17 London, 5th - Big PR and #2 US.

2008 - Olympics 10th, 2:12:33 - under performed, but not a total disaster in my opinion

2009 - 3rd Boston in 2:09:40 - one tough gusty race. He ran about as good as any one could.

2009 - 4th NYC Marathon - 2:10:36 - another consistent performance

2010 - 4th Boston Marathon - 2:08:40 - Pretty incredible to run the fast time ever by an American at Boston and end up getting crushed and finishing 4th. What the hell else could he have done? Another a great gusty effort.

So, summer and fall 2010 go poorly for him. One bad training cycle and the whole system is suddenly not working? I don't buy it. He bounced back from his poor race at Beijing with three very very strong performances. I don't know how else you define success, but that to me looks pretty damn successful. So he has his really only terrible training cycle over the last 3 months and that erases the 4 years Mahon has coached him to be incredibly tough and consistent? You don't get good and you don't get better by giving up because you have one little setback. You learn, regroup, and try again. Persistence. Everyone has bad periods of training. May be after a few of them you start think something isn't working, or you see other guys having more success, but no one who is currently running, other than Meb, is having greater success at the marathon. There are plenty of great coaches, but would they're system be that different and what would guarantee any better results that what he's already achieved? I don't know what reasons from a training/racing perspective would compel him to just up and leave.

It seems incredibly shortsighted that Hall would panic after one bad training cycle. That's what doesn't make sense. There's some information here only Hall and Mahon know, and I'm not saying we're entitled to it, because we as the public aren't. It's ultimately between them, but there's more to it that just a stretch of bad training.

+1

I also think there is more to it than is being said

His own words:

http://blog.thestepsfoundation.org/

whonamestheirkidgerman? wrote:

His own words:

http://blog.thestepsfoundation.org/

I will be using some different sources to shape my training. Over the past 14 years of running I have developed a keen body awareness, which I will use on a daily basis, as well as advice from various experts, and prayer to ultimately shape my training. I believe that operating in this manner will allow me to run with a new level of faith and excitement.

Wow.. he really does plan on training himself. I predict that approach to change soon when he realises how much he relied on coaching and support from a team.

I hate to say it, but I think Hall's done now. Unless he gets a quality coach.

I think he needs to go by some Pfitzinger and Douglas training books. Led me to my PRs, and can do the same for Ryan. Self-coaching is where it is at.

My theory is that Ryan's debut performances benefitted a lot from his college training. He then added the tempos and mileage to suit him to a higher distance and did well because he still had that college training. He's too far away from that college training now. What worked four years ago isn't going to work now because the last several years leading up to now involve very different training than the last several years that led up to those awesome debuts.

Michael Scott wrote:

My theory is that Ryan's debut performances benefited a lot from his college training. He then added the tempos and mileage to suit him to a higher distance and did well because he still had that college training. He's too far away from that college training now. What worked four years ago isn't going to work now because the last several years leading up to now involve very different training than the last several years that led up to those awesome debuts.

I agree to an extent, but I think it is less to do with training and more to do with the new post-collegiate attitude he had. What was exciting then, I'm sure, has faded to a routine now.

Professional athletes often lose the purity of their sport. Here is a quote from Hall, taken from the linked article

"It's going to be really hard and I'm expecting it to be more challenging than anything I've ever done," said Hall of his first marathon experience. "I'm just going to go out there and stick my nose in it."

He's trained specifically for 26.2 miles for the past three years. New season of refreshing. Rest in the shadow of the cross.