What is up with Chad Hall?

Sub 5 wrote:

Altitude, brother who was pro(Ryan Hall), dad who knew a lot about coaching and running, extremely high mileage and handwork

Extremely high mileage = 180 to 200 a week

Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah -- people like Brenda Martinez.

GayNathanBrown wrote:

How is it that for Ryan Hall sucking in the Olympics, most of the blame went on his coaching but here most of you are ignoring it. Chad didn't have a coach that is good at having his athletes improve in college. Look at the times of the runners at Riverside and you can see that they recruit talent that doesn't develop.

It looks like he's been cycling a lot lately. Raced in the Cat 4 division at the UCLA road race this past weekend.

He was doing a good mix of running and swimming over the last couple years but it looks like he's mostly focused on cycling now.

https://www.strava.com/athletes/5838343

M Stew wrote:

It looks like he's been cycling a lot lately. Raced in the Cat 4 division at the UCLA road race this past weekend.

He was doing a good mix of running and swimming over the last couple years but it looks like he's mostly focused on cycling now.

https://www.strava.com/athletes/5838343

cat 4 doesnt seem that great for a national class athlete in running

I have a friend who's a very competitive Cat 3 cyclist, and he said Chad blew away the pack on a climb last weekend (including Cat 1, 2, and 3 riders). He has to earn his stripes in Cat 4, but he won't stay there long.

kvothe wrote:

M Stew wrote:

It looks like he's been cycling a lot lately. Raced in the Cat 4 division at the UCLA road race this past weekend.

He was doing a good mix of running and swimming over the last couple years but it looks like he's mostly focused on cycling now.

https://www.strava.com/athletes/5838343

cat 4 doesnt seem that great for a national class athlete in running

I heard a rumor that this guy Chad that I'm racing against was related to Ryan Hall, so I took to Google and found this.

I haven't had the chance to chat with him, but he's done a couple of the local mountain bike races in the pro class and finished well. Considering, from my understanding, he has no background in bike handling technique, that means relying on pure power and endurance to podium. Now, this is a relatively small field in a non sanctioned series, so there is no license. I would be interested to see what he could do with more dirt training and enter an actual pro race, but I think his interest is in road racing. He's doing pretty well there.

But I imagine it is a hobby only now. Not everyone wants to try and make a career out of it. Being in the limelight sucks, especially when you come to places like this and hear people talk about how untalented a person is they don't even know.

Sidewalk wrote:

But I imagine it is a hobby only now. Not everyone wants to try and make a career out of it. Being in the limelight sucks, especially when you come to places like this and hear people talk about how untalented a person is they don't even know.

If he could swim, he could be a phenomenal triathlete. Of course, we said the same about Alan Webb and Lukas Verzbicas once, too.

But does he lift?

We are racing the Grizzly100 mountain bike race this Saturday (62 miles, 9000' climbing). I think it is going to be a tough battle between Chad and Tinker for the win. He did a training ride two days ago and took several KOM's. It is a non sanctioned race, but a decent prize purse for a mountain bike race so it draws in a lot of local fast guys ($1200 for first, down to 7th place). Chad recently took some KOM's from Phil Gaiman. He must be loving it.

Chad won the race.

I chatted with him for a while after a race. His focus is road racing now, mainly for fun and the challenge. He really likes cycling.

I asked him how he got into cycling, and he said it was because he wanted to do draft legal tri, but just couldn't learn to swim competitively.

He was very humble and polite to everyone from his direct podium rivals to the random rider that stopped by to congratulate him. He had no problem admitting to crashing three (3!) times in the race. We talked about tri for a while, it is something I also love but suck at doing, hopefully I will get the chance to compare my tri (lack of) skills against his next year up in Big Bear.

My guess, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, is he had a goal to be a triathlete instead of strictly a runner, didn't have the talent, and faced the reality that most every athlete in the world has to face in that only a very lucky few get to make a living doing what they love, the rest of us only get to do it as a hobby. I race MTB as a pro...as a hobby. I still have to go to a day job to make money to support racing as a pro, and I suppose he has to as well. I think he has come to terms with reality and is having fun.

That's why we do this stuff right, because it's fun?

http://georesults.racemine.com/Team-Big-Bear/events/2017/big-bear-mtb-gran-fondo-and-grizzly-100/results

2nd at Mt Baldy today

runsignup.com

Mt. Baldy Run To The Top

The Mt. Baldy Run To The Top is on Monday September 5, 2022.

Link:runsignup.com/race/results/?raceId=119...

Cool. Good to see he is still out there running.

Pretty close to Jo Gray as well who is probably US's top runner for those type of events

Interesting. I did that race a few times 45+ years ago and didn't know it was still happening. Good for him keeping up with his running.

I spotted Hall in this week's RRW as he ran 62:45 at the San Diego Half over the weekend. Before you lose it, please realize the course is 711 feet downhill so that's like 2+ minutes.

But he's in pretty good shape. Tilatapaja lists two other halfs for him.
64:39 for 3rd at Long Beach on October 9
65:14 for the win on a downhill course in San Diego on August 15

We need him to run a marathon.

It's because Ryan got a hot wife early on and Chad didn't. Confidence plays a big role in professional sports

I assume he has a full time job, but still manages to run faster than his more muscular brother.

The better question is what happened to The Fake Hingle McCringleberry? LRC is in desperate need of quality posters of his caliber. Although, the mods seem to be against most efforts and expressions of fun these days.