Sara Hall - how do you explain her comeback?

Not unusual for a female distance runner to do really well after having children.

Ryan and Sara seem like genuinely good people. I have never met them, but friends who have dealt with them professionally reaffirmed that. I wish both of them the best of luck.

Sloinnorcal wrote:

Consistency, and never overtraining (maybe thats the benefit to staying on the track longer ---- easier to not get in recovery debt).

Wtf is recovery debt.

She is a very good Christian and lives by good principles!

With God all things are possible.

Spurious terminologies wrote:

Wtf is recovery debt.

Another made up term from people who don't want to work hard?

wow wow wrote:

She is a very good Christian and lives by good principles!

With God all things are possible.

The only religious aspect of running is the Church of the Saturday Longrun. Otherwise, Ryan wouldn't have fired God as his coach.

I would much rather have Sara Hall at the Olympics than Jordan Hasay. Yes, Jordan has a 2min PR advantage, but the chances of her actually making it to the start line aren't great. Sara has a family to help support..she us hungry for the win.

Yes. She trained hard and raced hard to win.

Sara fan! wrote:

Note also she doesn’t do the silly annual Boston and New York. Plus she races often...unlike most of today’s elites.

Hope she makes the team. Tired of Desi and think Hasay is a bust.

This is an underrated comment!! Americans need to realize there are other marathons than NYC and Boston. Both are not fast courses and I think doing the same thing over and over again is not beneficial.

She's run those times this year without a trampoline shoe too - the Asics Metaracer is far closer to a traditional racing flat than to the vaporfly.

God really cares about roadrunning. There's your answer.

No one is going to mention that Sara Hall and Emma Bates ran 4 minute PRs in their fall marathons while wearing the ASICS prototype flats?

They did. However, the flat is probably closer to an Adizero pro than the vaporfly.

I hope Asics release a last minute clown shoe for the trials to keep pace with Nike, Adidas, NB, Saucony etc.

Rupp Fan Boy wrote:

marathon results:

2015: 2:48 (debut with cramps)

2016: 2:30 (London)

2017: 2:28 (Tokyo)

2018: 2:26 (Ottawa)

2019: 2:22 (Berlin)

I don't think you could have a marathon progression that says "no PEDs" any better than that one. It looks like someone who has been relatively injury-free who has been putting in the work for years and making slow but steady progress. She was great in high school and won Foot Locker so it's not like it's crazy that someone that talented would eventually be a great marathoner.

The 2:22 is a bit of of an outlier for a person who has been a 4:10/15:20/70:00 hm person for a while. It is easy to say that going from 2:30 to 2:26 is just learning the event. The break through to 2:22 is a level that she has never shown. Maybe it is more consistant training. Maybe it is better shoes. Maybe that was just the race of her life.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:

Spurious terminologies wrote:

Wtf is recovery debt.

Another made up term from people who don't want to work hard?

A made up term based on reality, surprised it isn't in training lexicon. "Recovery debt" is a "real thing": You skip a meal one day, don't get enough sleep the next, and so on, meanwhile you're training hard and boom something bad happens like a sudden injury but usually you just burn out your endocrine system. Happened to me in college. It sneaks up on you. If you are the type of person with huge amounts of energy this is more likely to happen because you don't notice it as the "debt" starts to accumulate.

Read about where Bill Bowerman forced Kenny Moore to take two weeks off from training and Moore then ran his 2 mile PR.

Tokyo and Ottawa are slower courses than Berlin. She's said that she is better racing more and the focus was on her husband a few years back. I think with the faster times (and shoes) this doesn't seem unreasonable. Especially since someone just ran a 2:14 (and no one seems to be bringing that up much).

What has her career as a pro runner been like prior to 2015?

Is there a page with her yearly accomplishments as a Pro runner?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Hall

Desi and Molly Wiki page shows a list of Pro accomplishments from 2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiree_Linden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Huddle

2:22 is tough for me to grasp. If it was anyone else than Sara Hall, there would be more wonder of what changed.

She has the mentality.

Mentality > Physicality

Any reason except the usual one for big late-career jumps.