A lot was made of the wicked early pace of this race. But the year Ryan Hall ran it they had some ridiculous early pacing as well and he still held on, so he was in incredible form at that time even compared to the guys who ran today. I think one of the early miles was 4:23, or else 4:26 or maybe both of those splits happened.
Then as the Brojos mentioned in another thread he likes to run his own pace now so it's easy to see him going out in 62:30 or even 63:00 and coming back strong. A win is not out of the question at all for him, this is one of the examples where his pacing strategy would have worked well.