To My Friend Ryan Shay

I heard a story of Ryan doing a long run getting hit by a car and then finishing the long run into a ER. IS there any truth to this? And if so can you tell us more about it?

holy cow! i have known some elites, but those logs are crazy.

Story...maybe wrote:

I heard a story of Ryan doing a long run getting hit by a car and then finishing the long run into a ER. IS there any truth to this? And if so can you tell us more about it?

As far as I know, that is true. It was in his bio for the world cross championships this year. I don't know the details of the story though.

Those logs are legendary... RIP Ryan Shay

very much a true story. i lived with shay that year, along with watson. i remember kicking it in the living room watching tv when shay came back and told us the story of how a car literally ran over his leg yet he continued on for another 13mi to complete his run. i immediately called bs, but he insissted it was true and this is a man that didn't exagerate or lie. so i believe him. he had a giant lump on his shin that was bleeding. the thing you have to understand by shay was that he look at everything as a personal challenge and he took every challene very seriously. he was nails!

the part about him finishing in the ER isn't true though. he finished at our apartment and may have gone to the ER after to get it checked out. there was no fracture. i guess you can't break steal.

watson wrote:

Of course, it was West Side where Ryan really shined. His record of 48:xx for 10.1 miles will probably never be challenged.

Thanks to you and everyone here for posting these stories. It would have been great to have been on ND when you all were running.

(Sorry to digress here but what exactly was the "West Side" loop? I ran there way back in the 80s and would probably know the roads. Portage? Angela Blvd? Auten? Any part of the FCR loop?)

I definitely remember this week. The 22 miler on sunday was Bertrand Rd when one of the infamous one-steppers fired people up from the get go and the entire run turned into a shit show.

"You're averaging 6-minute pace...with the waterbreaks!!!!"

I also enjoy looking through that log and seeing his thursday morning-run at a pedestrian 510 pace...sounds about right

Story...maybe wrote:

I heard a story of Ryan doing a long run getting hit by a car and then finishing the long run into a ER. IS there any truth to this? And if so can you tell us more about it?

i was also there that day. i had graduated and came back to run an indoor meet and was crashing with shay, zee and nate. at some point during the weekend, ryan went out for a long run on his own. he walked into the apartment a bloody mess and told us how a pickup truck rolled over his legs. he got up cursing and running after the truck then continued on his run not noticing the bruises. i think it took all of us to convince him to at least go to the trainers to have his legs looked at. i don't know anyone else who could have walked, let alone run, away from that.

on another note, shay did the best impression of 'south park's' cartman. i remember a few bus rides to/from track meets where he had me crying with his rendition of cartman singing 'come sail away'.

Kober wrote:

on another note, shay did the best impression of 'south park's' cartman. i remember a few bus rides to/from track meets where he had me crying with his rendition of cartman singing 'come sail away'.

YES!! I forgot about that. He'd drop the Cartman impression at the weirdest random times too. "Screw you guys. I'm going home." It was the best when it was totally unexpected.

These stories are priceless, especially to those of us who didn't really know Ryan that well. Thanks for sharing everyone.

West side is when you start out normal like you're goin to the trails, over to the saint joe high school practice field by holy cross, and then you go down through the woods and that brown apartment complex to come out at the angela bridge. You take angela across and it winds up to the left and intersects portage and lincolnway and thats where it gets to where I can't give satisfactory directions but you weave through some less-than-reputable neighborhoods, past frankie's bbq (which is excellent), and come out on that north-south road with st. adalberts church on the west side of down town. You take that road down over the overpass- its kinda near where bruno's is at that point- and then you run back into downtown on western (past the jail, always a good oppurtunity for stories) all the way to main and shoot up to the east race path and find your way back to campus. I think Shay would finish up through the neighborhood south of campus and then cut back into ND at the ND ave intersection, but I'm not sure, Watson could tell you his specifics.

when the guys run westside now its generally to enjoy the love/harassment from the locals and just get in touch with south bend a bit, but when shay ran it it was a poundfest. The west side was sketchier a few years back, and I gather the general sentiment was "slow down at your own personal risk."

All that said, his record will never be touched.

this morning on my run i remembered another ridiculous week of training that shay did. in the fall of 2000 he was coming off a long track season during which he ran 28:26 and the olympic 10k trials. so he decided to redshirt cross season. in his efforts to build his base for track season, shay was experimenting with increasing his mileage. during fall break he decided to try three-a-days up at cannon's, running 5-5-12 each day (other than saturday when he went home to watch his bro at the mi state meet). i ended up running around 106 miles that week (most in my life) and i remember being pretty excited about that until i realized shay had logged over 140. he set the bar high for his teammates, that's for sure.

ND guy wrote:

when the guys run westside now its generally to enjoy the love/harassment from the locals and just get in touch with south bend a bit, but when shay ran it it was a poundfest. The west side was sketchier a few years back, and I gather the general sentiment was "slow down at your own personal risk."

All that said, his record will never be touched.

Thanks for that taking the time to post that description. It's good to have a picture of it in my head. It would have been great to have had the opportunity to go on a loop like that with those guys (though not at those speeds).

(As bad as those streets sound, the streets South of campus by the St Joe Medical Center were really scary in the late 80s. I once got attacked there in broad daylight in the middle of a run for no discernible reason. Ear was cut in half and I was bleeding all over the place. Had to hold it in place as I went back to the indoor track to get my bag. Bad as that was, I can't imagine someone continuing a run for miles after getting run over by a freakin truck.)

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I hope people continue to post stories. These are great to read.

sounds like the perfect place to have a memorial race.

I just mapped it on USATF:

http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=176098

It's funny, just after you cross Lincolnway, you have to cut through an alley... I had to zoom in to find it on the map...

We had 18 guys run West Side on Monday (Nov.5) in Ryan's honor.

Another hard-core thing Ryan would do, especially during the track season when he wasn't doing a lot of speedwork in afternoon workouts, was to run 20x200m as a morning run. He would do them in about 30-31 with 30-60s rest. We called it a "weasel workout."

In all of our days at Notre Dame, I don't remember Ryan ever doing a run that I would call easy. I would doubt if there was ever a run he did at ND that averaged over 6:00/mile pace. In his pro career, Ryan did learn to run easy, but I don't think he liked it.

watson - love it. westside is legendary. we should organize an annual road race. see you this weekend bro.

go irish at Regionals!

"The key to a good westside is ya gotta get out quick!"

Bump. These are terrific stories...