Did Ryan Hall just beat a bunch of Nobodies, or were these guys legit competition?

great rift wrote:

it is not about beating anyone, it is about the time you run. this is what kenyans understand and that is why they keep winning. run your time, don't worry about anyone else. how many guys run under 60 min? alot. last week alot of guys run under 1 hour. the guys who were setting the base for haile cross 21km with 61 min. hundreds of kenyans can run 61 min with their eyes close. stop building the guy, let his work build him. a lot of you put too much expectation on one guy which always turns into dissappointment. ryan hall is good but there are thousands who run the same time he did.

Typical lack of knowledge you see on letsrun. By official numbers, only 41 people have EVER run a half under 60 minutes.

there are about 140 people who have run faster than hall in half marathon in 2009. there are hundreds of kenyans who don"t have the oppotunity to run proffesional who can run 61 min half marathon. the fact that the guy run 61.52 is good but not something to celebrate.

great rift wrote:

there are about 140 people who have run faster than hall in half marathon in 2009. there are hundreds of kenyans who don"t have the oppotunity to run proffesional who can run 61 min half marathon. the fact that the guy run 61.52 is good but not something to celebrate.

I agree! That's why we should stop following slow runners like Ryan Hall and Samuel Wanjiru. I mean neither of these guys even broke an hour for the half marathon! There are literally 10,000,000 Kenyans out there that can run that time while holding their breath!

^ noob ^

uh what wrote:

time has nothing to do with getting out there and competing. he likely could have tried to run away from them from the gun, but that would defeat the purpose of him having shown up at all. He can run by himself every day of the week.

There must be some sort of time threshold though. What if Hall ran 65:03 but was able to churn out a 4:24 13th mile to pull away from the pack? Would that have satisfied you as well?

Someone else might say, what is the point of Hall showing to a race to run basically 62 minutes for a half. He can run that by himself.

Seems to me that a couple of mins off his AR is about right. The goal race is NY.

He should have toed the line yesterday with some fatigue in the legs.

RobC wrote:

[quote]uh what wrote:

Someone else might say, what is the point of Hall showing to a race to run basically 62 minutes for a half. He can run that by himself.

OK. He ran ~2 min slower than his PR, or about 3% slower. Take your half-marathon PR, add 3%. Can you run that by yourself? Probably, but why? The race gives you a great workout and invaluable experience against other runners. He ran what he needed to get the job done - nothing more. That's a smart race when building to a marathon.

Oh I have no opinion on Hall's Philly race one way or the other, really just responding to the guy who acted like "getting the win" trumped whatever the final time was. Obviously both have to be taken into consideration when grading Hall's performance as a tune-up for NYC.

Not to mention, $$$$$. I mean the guy is a professional runner, why do a 13 mile run on your own when you can get paid to do it?

hey, i see you know how to use sarcasm. congratulations. the guy run 62 min, it is nothing special. i don't see this is even a topic to talk about.

This is misguided. The true value of Hall's performance isn't his time or who he raced. It is that the US finally has someone capable of breaking the existing East African blockade and that he actually does it from time to time. The US needs more Hall's to win these types of races. Then maybe we can talk about winning against Kenya's B team and then eventually the A team?It's analagous to the Gators scheduling early season games against the School of the Blind in college football...

great rift wrote:

there are about 140 people who have run faster than hall in half marathon in 2009. there are hundreds of kenyans who don"t have the oppotunity to run proffesional who can run 61 min half marathon. the fact that the guy run 61.52 is good but not something to celebrate.

one thing is for certain....level of depth was CONSIDERABLY less than PDR fields of the past. Yes, I know it cost money to bring in Hall, but that being said, look at how shallow the fields were overall. Part of it is Competitor Group doesnt want to spend money like Elite Racing did, and Matt Turnbull is a great guy, but he must feel like his hands are tied. Got so many great opportunities for folks to race--and race fast, and if they give you a budget of 25K, guess what? got to put your eggs all in one basket, which in the case of Seattle, can bite you in the butt when someone (Tergat in this case) scratches at the last minute. Hard to develop exciting races when you bring in one superstar, then a bunch of B/C Kenyans to fill the field (which sadly, still better than 98% of the USA guys/gals to fill a field). Not sure there is an answer, just a shame that Elite Racing, and the legacy of Mike Long has been watered down to the point of being a one horse show...be interesting to see where things are a year of five years from now in the world of road racing.

Ace Broker wrote:

Did Ryan Hall just beat a bunch of Nobodies, or were these guys legit competition?

The thing is that year after year this race, like pretty much every open professional US roadrace, has been won by some east african that you've never heard of. No disrespect to the east africans and their obvious depth of talent, but it is note worthy when a native born American wins a race of even modest significance. It's good for the sport and in the long run is probably to the benefit of the journeymen african runners to have some white guy legitimately in the mix.

it has reached a point that kenyans and ethiopians have to pull back a little to allow other people to win too. it is sad really. it is like telling tiger woods, roger federer or kobe bryant to go easy on people. we need competition in our sport. we need alot of ryan halls. we need people who can get in there and mix it up. 62 min half marathon is good in american standard. it is better to run with tough competitors and loose than to run with moderate competition and win. i would have liked to see hall go to the netherlands compete with wanjiru, kitwara sammy, or go to join martin lel at the great north run. winning sopmetimes is a good thing. i am happy that ryan won. it builds confidence, nobody wants to come 2nd or 3rd all time.

i thought tilahun regassa was supposed to challenge hall, that would have been good competion.

Wanjiru finished ninth in Rotterdam, because he, too, isn't training set a new PB in the half. If he'd have broken his AR, you would have thought that something was off in his training for New York. Everything points to Hall being in phenomenal shape right now.

on the runs wrote:

Wanjiru finished ninth in Rotterdam, because he, too, isn't training set a new PB in the half. If he'd have broken his AR, you would have thought that something was off in his training for New York. Everything points to Hall being in phenomenal shape right now.

martin lel who is also running new york, also ran a half marathon sunday in 59:32, does this mean lel is not going to do well in new york?

last year wanjiru ran a slow (for him) half marathon before he ran a great marathon in london, now i read all the time that you will do better in the marathon if your half marathon race a few weeks before is slow, while that was true with wanjiru at london, i dont think it necessarily follows, i would like halls chances in new york better if he ran under an hour yesterday, i EXPECT lel to do well, and i HOPE hall does well, but if i had a choice of the 2 in which one will finish higher, i would pick lel.

You'd pick the 3 time London and 2 time New York winner who has a PR a little over a minute faster than Ryan Hall? Surprising...

Now who would you pick in a 10k, Bekele or Rupp?

great rift wrote:

there are about 140 people who have run faster than hall in half marathon in 2009. there are hundreds of kenyans who don"t have the oppotunity to run proffesional who can run 61 min half marathon. the fact that the guy run 61.52 is good but not something to celebrate.

Nobody's celebrating Hall's time. We don't need to. His AR was way under that. Hall himself could clearly have run faster in Philly if he wanted to and had to.

What we're celebrating is the effortless way he trounced three Kenyan runners to win the race. He won the damned race. He did so skillfully, easily, and conclusively. He beat the competition. Good for him. This was prep work for his NYC marathon, not a race he was peaking for. The runners he beat, for all we know, were peaking for it. Or--my suspicion--they're money runners who race semi-regularly, intended (each of them) to win this race, and didn't realize just how strong Hall would turn out to be.

What surprised me was how pitifully all three Kenyans responded to Hall's two moves in the final mile. Were they running flat out prior to that and had nothing more to give? Were they psychologically defeated when they realized that a mzungo was going to beat them for the first time?

Lots of ink has been spilled here at Letrsun about Kenyan dominance; I'm one of those who has argued that American runners (and especially the American kibbitzers-of-running who haunt this place) have psyched themselves out in the matter of Kenyans--in effect, handing the field away rather than, like Kennedy and Mottram, giving nothing away mentally.

Hall still hasn't proved himself in international championship competition, but this race is a clear sign that he's got the mental thing taken care of. It's even possible that Philly showed us a rare example of Kenyan runners feeling the heat, in psychological terms. I believe that they came not expecting to have to work as hard against a palefaced American as Hall suddenly, in that last mile, demanded that they work. He drifted behind the three of them for much of the race, biding his time. He played them perfectly. Bravo to Hall.