Ryan Hall: "The Future and the present American runner"

Ryan Hall was with the leaders on world record pace (1:02:13) at the half way point. After falling off the pace a little after 25k at the London Marathon 2008, Hall caught back up rejoined the leaders on the 21st mile before being dropped again. He held on to run 2:06:17, the 3rd fastest time ever by an American, to finish 6th and earn a $50,000 bonus.

Ryan said his training coming into London went great. He noted, "I like to escape up in the mountains and just train. That's what I did before the (Olympic Marathon) Trials and it worked out really well form me. I get a lot of confidence from my training. I find it is really hard to compete well at a high level when doing marathon training, so I find it very effective to just disappear for a while and come down fit."

He said, "I find that I love the training for it (the marathon). I love doing the long runs. I've always been doing high mileage ever since I was little. My very first run was 15 miles around the lake.
The longer I get the stronger I get ... I really enjoy the training, the racing, I love competing against the guys ... I'm glad I found that out at a young age."

Winning clearly is on Ryan's mind. "I've never stepped on the start of race and thought I had no shot of winning the race," he said.

Ryan enjoys competing against the best and said, "You learn more than about your competitors, you learn about yourself and how you can push yourself and when you can push yourself and (you learn) your own limits. That's what I'm trying to see how fast can I go, how hard can I go, how do I stack up against these guys?"

Don't forget that Ryan's marathon career is only 2 races old and that he hung with the leaders in London in his first marathon ever (he was behind the main pack at points in the race, but bridged the gap as the pace was a bit slow for London, and then he hung with the leaders until the final miles, even taking the lead).