Fast Running Blog

After reading his blog at

http://www.thefinalsprint.com/2008/08/ryan-hall-olympic-memories-elite-athlete-blog-entry-15/

I want to go on record and predict that he will medal. I am not just saying this out of "Team USA win" hype. He has the base speed, and he appears to be doing everything right. 

Any idea what happened to Hall?  Ritz even beat him...  I can't seem to find any news yet...

It looked to me like Ritz and Hall (and Sell) all ran their own races instead of going out at the insane pace the leaders ran....the heat was in the mid 80s and the humidity pretty high.  There was a short interview clip after Hall finished where he basically said about the same.  Plus, I think this was Hall's first marathon experience where he basically ran alone for most of the race.  Ritz is no slouch and he keeps getting better, so I wasn't too surprised to see him ahead.  In any event, they finished pretty close together.  Any other year, Ritz and Hall's times would've made them pretty competitive for a medal, but this year was quite a demonstration in fast marathoning in tough conditions.  Hats off to the medalists...when the first two guys break the previous Olympic record in those conditions, that's saying something!

Ritz's and Hall's times were both faster than the average winning times of the previous Olympic marathons.  Given the heat and humidity, I imagine they just went out at the place they planned.  You never could have expected that the blistering pace the lead group set would have held up the whole way- it was probably a world record time, adjusted for conditions.  They finished 9th and 10th, which seems good to me.  They didn't run bad races, there were just a few guys who ran amazing races.  

Given the chance to do it again, I bet they would have gone out more aggressively.  But if they had, they might have died and finished further back- who knows.  I'm happy and proud of how all 3 of the Americans finished.  A medal would have been nice, but they made a very respectable showing.  They just got outrun by some guys who had amazing races.

Here's their post-marathon thoughts in their own words...

http://2008olympics.runnersworld.com/2008olympics/mens_marathon/index.html (http://2008olympics.runnersworld.com/2008olympics/mens_marathon/index.html)

I was amazed to see how many of the olympic runners failed to finish...is that normal?  Sure, it was hot, but these are world-class runners.  Unless I'm missing something, it seems like poor sportmanship to me.

I think the combination of heat and blistering early pace cause more people than normal to drop out. However, in any weather, there will be lots of dropouts at this elite level. Take a look at the results of the U.S. Marathon Trials back in November. Although temperatures were really nice, about 25% of the field dropped out. Why? Simple: these runners are pushing themselves to the brink of their limits for 26 miles. It's one thing that separates the elites from the casual runner, the drive and ability to push through limits and boundaries. Sometimes this results in victory and world records, but it also often results in blow-ups and injuries. Remember, these guys are running 4:45/mile, not 8:00/mile.  I do not think a DNF at that level is poor sportsmanship at all; rather, the runner has no choice in most cases, and may face danger to his/her body if they continue. Also, many marathoners at this level rely on their running in order to feed their families. Literally. Hobbling in at 2:35 and not being able to race again for up to a year would do them no good, whereas dropping out will allow them to recover quickly and get into another marathon in a month or two. Poor sportsmanship? I don't see it that way; nothing more honorable than providing for your family.

I'm sure most were probably injury related.  Martin Fagan had to drop at around the 35-40K mark because of a hamstring injury and wound up getting checked out in the hospital.  I'd be willing to bet most of the other drops were for similar reasons.  Look at the Women's Marathon last weekend....Team USA had 2 of 3 drop, both because of injuries.  It's the Olympic Marathon and only happens every 4 years.....these people are pushing themselves way outside of their comfort zones by-and-large.  Add in the conditions and I'm almost surprised there wasn't more carnage.

With a race like this where you really want to get one of the top 3 places, most of the guys give it their all for as long as they can.  Once they realize it isn't going to happen that day, they will sometimes choose to drop out like Paul said.  Wisely. 

If I were at the Olympics and had a realistic 5% chance of medalling, I would go for it even if there was a 95% chance I would blow up and have to drop out, rather than play it safe and go slow enough such that I knew I would finish but not medal.  If I had no realistic chance of medalling (i.e. if I were a random runner from, say, Bazermenjania) and was just there for the experience, then it would be a bit different.

I agree with Paul and Jon. One other thing is that everyone has good and bad days. If a lot of these guys were out of the hunt after 13-15 miles there is no reason to keep hammering just to finish. They don't need to finish the marathon to prove anything. These guys have all ran in major races before and have accomplished many goals. It's one thing for a guy to get injured and limp across the line in a 100m, 400m, or even a 10k. But 26.2 miles comes at you pretty hard when your not feeling it. Pulling out to run another day is the choice I'd make. These guys can't run an event every other weekend. These marathons are major races for them and they some elite's only do one or 2 marathons per year because it's so hard on their bodies.

On another note this was a way fun event to watch. We (the STG running club and our wives) all had a big "Super bowl of running" party last night to watch the main event. It was a lot of fun to watch the Olympians of our sport doing what they do. I only wish the media network would have shown more footage of the Americans. I never even got to see Brian Sell. Did he have handlebars? 

Here is his photo from yesterday, Clyde:
http://rodale.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/24/sell_brian_olygame08.jpg

thanks for educating me...your replies all make sense.

Hall was the tallest in the top 10 - 5-10. The next tallest was Gharib - 5-9. Everybody else was 5-7 or shorter.  Gharib has dark skin. Hall is fair-skinned. 80+ degrees is much harder on a taller fair-skinned guy. He was OK through the first half (1:04:29) when it was still under 80 in the shade. Then it got warmer and he really felt it. To be only 6 minutes off PR in those conditions for a guy his build is quite an accomplishment. So nothing really went wrong on his end - just bad luck with the conditions that gave a fairly heavy advantage to the short dark skinned competition.

Wow.

Yeah, wow. How do you come up with this stuff?

I figured Sammy Wanjiru had the advantage because he's been training in Japan for so long, which has both hot and humid conditions.  Beijing probably felt downright balmy compared to Japan in the summer months....

So a 4-foot tall, dark skinned pygmy should be the fastest of all?  What about if he raced against a 3-foot tall, fair skinned pygmy?  We need to thoroughly test this!

Or maybe Wanjiru just ran an awesome race that was a much faster pace than the American's and almost everyone else had expected, so they didn't try to stick with the lead pack.  Some days you just fire on all 6 cylinders...

Anyone running that fast for that long under those conditions is a freak of nature no matter what color he is.  I stand in awe of Sammy W's performance.

Don't argue with science.

You just blew my mind.

Skin tone can't train. Height can't train. People train.

Rothlin beat both Ritz and Hall, is slower than Hall by more than a minute, and was the only representative of Switzerland in the marathon.  He was 35s out of bronze, and 11s off of Lel who has run more than 2 minutes faster than him. He's ~5' 9". I'm pretty sure he's lite skinned- he's Swiss man! In 2000 he ran 2:20 for the olympic marathon. In 2004 he dropped out. Both were in less than ideal conditions. 2008 he runs 2:10 hot. Somebody learned to train for the conditions (or unfortunately learned where to pick up some not so legal aide).

Ryan Hall didn't have a great day. Period. And he knew it was coming from the first mile when he couldn't take it out. If you are running in an elite race against people you've raced against before, and you know they aren't dumb, and you aren't in that top 10 lead pack where you know should be because your skills are similar- its over for your chances of winning. Hall should have been up there with the guys he's raced against before, doing his thing. But he couldn't (or wouldn't, if you accept his race was planned). I think that if in the first 10k we had seen him mixing it up in that lead group he would have found his rythmn and placed at least 5 spots higher. He was never on the offensive this race (due to heat, due to loss of rythmn, due to being off pace, whatever you want) and you can't expect a person like Ryan Hall to race well off of a defensive race plan.





 

Ryan Hall ran as well as he could on the day. If he tried to follow the leaders he would blow up and drop back badly, like Martinez and Ramaala did. He simply wasn't ready for 2:06-2:07 in those conditions. It also could be that he did not fully recover from London (only 4 months prior). We have to remember how exceptional this marathon was. If the conditions were cooler, we very well could have witnessed a world record. Wanjiru wasn't exhausted when he finished, he ran at least couple of victory laps and did not look distressed. It's not unreasonable to assume that he could have run in 2:04 or under range if it was cooler. He probably could have run under 2:06 in this race if he had to. I don't know what the NBC commentators were saying, but the BBC guys were all in shock and kept repeating themselves that this is not the way to run a marathon, that they all going to die, etc., etc. They couldn't get over the insane pace, and even tried to stop themselves from repeating this every minute, but they didn't know what else to think, or say. They also said "how could Lel, so experienced, allow the young Wanjiru to set such a pace??!!".

Victor Rothlin did the best from the main group, by far, and I wished that Hall and Ritz latched on and stayed with him, but they could not. Hall and Ritz did very well under the circumstances, but medals were just not in the cards the way the race went.

I think we'll see 2:03 or faster in the next year or two. The more I think about it, the more amazing this race seems. But perhaps not so amazing. Perhaps it is the new standard.

http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/BIO/Athlete/3/209813.shtml

Rothlin is 5-8 and has dark hair.

http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/BIO/Athlete/6/241346.shtml

Wanjiru is 5-4. Pretty close to the 4 footed pygmy Jon was talking about.

 

The NBC announcers commented on both of these matters. In Hall's first mile they said that his game plan was to run 2:09 pace. When taking past olympic marathons into account, this pace should place him in the medal hunt and that they felt it was an achievable pace given conditions. They also noted that they felt the pace was too fast, that Hall would catch back up to the lead pack as the lead pack began to drop. Of course, as the race continued on they also noted the insanity of the pace, but that they were beginning to think that at least a few looked like they'd be able to hold it.

Sasha...IAAF has him at 1.74m but I still did my math wrong with that. Sorry. But, weren't we talking about skin tone, not hair color? Or are you grouping those together now?

And I really don't think we can say Ryan Hall would have blown up if he had gone out with the leaders. He is a leader. If he was unprepared for the heat (which I think he was), then yes he probably would have blown up. But I still believe that his blow up would have been less dramatic than the others. For a person who has run under 1hr for a half, split a 1:02+ second half on a hilly marathon course, the second half on this race should not have been as slow as it was given his 1:04:30 first half. He was well within himself but could not pick up the pace.

Some food for thought. Sell, Hall, Rothlin and Ritz paced themselves reasonably.

Sell and Hall have identical height and weight, and both have light hair color. Both finished 6 minutes off their PRs.  Rothlin and Ritz are very similar in height, weight, and hair color, and both are Caucasian. Rothlin was 3 minutes off his PR, Ritz was less than a minute, but his PR was in the Trials - he's never run a nice flat record conditions marathon. Projecting it to London course, this would give him 2:08, so it would be fair to say he was 3 minutes of his true PR as well.

"All" that Hall had to do to get a medal was close in 1:05:30 after opening in "only" 1:04:29. He obviously tried at least that, and he could not do it. His 5 K from 35 to 40 was 16:57. Consider that in the context of what he said about his last mile in London - "I never thought I would have to work so hard to run a 5:10". Sell was down to 17:59(!). Ritz was 16:27, while Rothlin ran 15:57.

Why couldn't he? Not because he had not trained for the heat. He says in his blog he's been doing a lot of heat training. There is a reason tall blond guys historically have preferred to live in a colder climate :-)

There is even a song I heard while growing up about that situation - in this case a Russian being wasted by an African runner on a hot day:


The key event of the program is the marathon, and the temperature is 30 degrees (C, that would be 86 F). But he is used to the heat, so he is showing his class. I want to see him race in negative 30, and now, good luck catching him, all one can do is just swear.


The funny thing is that the name of that African runner in the song is Sam Brook, and it was Sam in this case as well, Sammy Wanjiru that is.

I think this is the truth.

Wanjiru's 2:06 is incredible, it completely blows my mind. He definitely raised the bar for marathoning with that race. If I were an Olympic marathoner looking forward to 2012, I'd be pretty nervous knowing that there's a guy who can run 2:06 in tough conditions and other guys that can give chase, like Gharib showed. I'm with Paul in thinking that there are more revolutionary runs to come in the near future.

Looking back, it seems like Geb more or less started the change in marathoning standards when he talked about 2:03 being possible. Back in the '90s he changed 5k and 10k standards by single-handedly lowering the world records by huge margins, and it looked like he was going to do it by himself again in the marathon. Especially with his two sub-2:05 races. But then Wanjiru quietly popped up with phenomenal races like his HM world record and this Olympic marathon. Like he's saying "This isn't the Haile show, people. I'm in it, too" It's exciting. The two of them should do amazing things in the next few years. I'm sure that others will follow.

It seems that with Hall's 2:06 in London that he's got the potential to follow these guys up the speed ladder, but he's got a long way to go. I'm not counting him out for future Olympic medals, but I feel like Wanjiru's run raised the bar for the next Olympics. Hall will have to be that much better to be in medal contention.

The good news is that Hall is a Marathon Rookie with potentially a huge ceiling above him.

And so is Wanjiru... hopefully we see many marathon world records from all the runners in years to come.

... I am a Ritz fan -- so I have to chime in "so is Ritz" (a marathon rookie).

There is definitely truth in the fact that taller runners suffer more in the heat. But to extrapolate this to the hair color is a bit too much, I think. At least I'm not aware of any scientific studies that confirm this. See this report for discussion on runner size vs. heat subject (there is a link to the detailed discussion within the report):
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/08/beijing-2008-men-marathon-report.html (http://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/08/beijing-2008-men-marathon-report.html)

That is a good link, Maria.  I read that article earlier this year, too, and really like it.  Although I think it is mass (weight) rather than height that is the important factor, though certainly taller runners usually weigh more.  Extrapolating to skin color or hair color is outside the scope, I agree.  Except if skin color means you come from the East African Rift valley and hence have amazing genetics and are likely shorter/smaller.

And, you can always dye your hair to get it darker.  Would Just for Men Gel get on the list of banned substances?

Only in the court of public humilation!  I had a HS teacher who used this stuff.  Friday, grey hair...Monday brown hair and a brown bead of sweat rolling down his face after writing furiously on the chalkboard!  LOL!

Gharib was the second tallest in the top 10 (5-9), and the heaviest (145lb). This guy is chunky for a marathoner, chunkier than me (5-10, 145). Yet Gharib was only 13 seconds off his PR (2:07:02). His true PR is probably a little higher, maybe a low 2:06/high 2:05, but still even then it makes it only a minute. Clearly there is more than weight/height that affects heat tolerance. One thing I've noticed  that  Moroccan, Kenyan, and Ethiopian runners often are able to run within 2 minutes of their PR in conditions that slow down Caucasian runners of any size from anywhere between 4 minutes and infinity.  I also noticed that a more Moroccan-looking Caucasian runner (Ritz and Rothlin would fit into that category) runs very decent in the heat as well, although not as well as a true Moroccan.

I wonder how much of it was psychological? Who got intimidated by the heat, vs. who just went for broke anyway, without fear.

Near zero. Your attitude during the race is in a state of flux, and responds to the feedback from the body. If you are more fit than you think, your body will cheer you up and tell you to go faster. If you are less fit than you think your body will demand that you slow down and if you do not obey it will eventually rebel to the point that you really have to slow down.

I've had it happen just about every way. Optimistic from the gun, good race. Optimistic from the gun, bad race. Pessimistic from the gun, bad race. Pessimistic from the gun, good race. You cannot force something that is not there. At the same time, short of a conscious  decision to fail (blatant self-sabotage), as in purposely slow down or stop and walk to let a competitor pass you, it is next to impossible to hide your fitness even if you do not start the race exceptionally motivated. How many times have you heard a competitor say he was not feeling good at the start and was just hoping to make it to the end only find him gap you by a large margin at the finish with a PR?

Ryan Hall gives his explanation: http://www.thefinalsprint.com/2008/08/ryan-hall-post-olympic-blog-entry/

The American's achieved a great accomplishment, and they had a set plan to run at their own pace in these conditions.  I don't think Ryan Hall would have finished 10th if he would have went out with the front pack.  He's still learning how to run marathon's and once he gets a few more in, who knows what he could do in the 2012 Olympics.

Wow!  Every time I see something or read something about Ryan Hall I am inspired!  Reading this entry brings tears to my eyes!  Thanks for posting this link Adam.

Ooops!  This is really Kim.  That last entry was me.  Tom must have been logged on on my computer and I didn't notice.  I don't want anyone thinking Tom was getting too sentimental about Ryan Hall here.