When Ryan Hall arrives from California tonight to run in Monday’s Bolder Boulder, he will be traveling with a Bible he takes wherever he goes. In it is a picture of him rubbing shoulders with the late Ryan Shay on the starting line of the Olympic Trials marathon last November.
“It’s my daily reminder,” Hall says.
For a few euphoric moments on that ultimately tragic day in New York, Hall was on top of the world, having fulfilled his 10-year dream of making the Olympic team. And he had done it in spectacular fashion, breaking a trials record and thrilling thousands of spectators who were in town to run the New York City Marathon the next day.
Hall had reinforced his stature as one of the most exciting talents in American distance running. But moments after finishing he got the sickening, shocking news: Shay had collapsed about 30 minutes into the race and died, apparently of a heart attack.
How does a man process the swirl of emotions that spring on a day he accomplished something so special, only to lose one of his best friends?
“It took me awhile,” said Hall, who will be the marquee attraction in Monday’s race. “It wasn’t something that happened overnight. I still don’t know the big ‘Why did this happen?’ that everyone thinks about. I’ve definitely laid awake at night, thinking about that.
“It seems so crazy that it happened at the Olympic Trials. It was just a huge shock.”
Hall finished in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 2 seconds to break Tony Sandoval’s trials record from 1980 by more than a minute. Earlier in 2007, Hall became the first American to break an hour for the half-marathon and then ran 2:08:24 in the London Marathon, the fastest American debut marathon.
He also attended Shay’s wedding. Hall’s wife, Sara, was a bridesmaid. Hall had been a Stanford teammate of Shay’s widow, the former Alicia Craig, who grew up in Gillette, Wyo.
“I think I kind of processed it by (thinking), ‘How can I use what happened to Ryan to have it be an inspiration for me to carry him with me in my training, my preparation for the Olympic Games?’ ” Hall said. “Ryan was training to qualify for the Olympics. It’s kind of neat for me now to think about him when I’m out there training for the Olympics and think about how he would be preparing.”
Shay was known as a fierce competitor who ran with raw passion. That also describes Hall, who ran the fastest marathon by an American-born runner (2:06:17) in London on April 13.
“I’m continually inspired by (Shay),” said Hall, 25. “I think what helps me deal with it, a little bit, is thinking about how I’d want everyone to react if I were the one who’d passed away. I definitely would want people to celebrate their running and not have it be a totally tragic thing, but have it be something where people are somewhat inspired by it — and it changes the way they live.”
The fact the Bolder Boulder landed Hall is one of the biggest coups in its history.
“They don’t even know how lucky they are,” said Boulder’s Mark Plaatjes, who won the world championships marathon in 1993.
Hall grew up at high altitude (6,700 feet at Big Bear Lake, Calif.) but never has raced at altitude and has never been to Boulder. The Bolder Boulder intrigued him and fit nicely into his schedule, giving him a hard, short race between his London Marathon recovery and the Olympics. After Monday, he doesn’t plan to race again until Beijing.
“I had always wanted to run the Bolder Boulder, it seemed like such an exciting race,” Hall said. “This presented a really great opportunity to test myself against some of the better runners in the world.
“Really, I’m just looking to learn and do my best at practicing pushing my body to its limits, because that’s going to be what it’s all about in Beijing.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
