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Lead Stories: Friday, July 4, 2008

Sara Hall: Sled Dog Racing
(Elite Athlete Blog Entry 12)

Posted June 28th, 2008 at 3:00 PM by Sara Hall

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Elite Athlete Blogs, Sara Hall

Welcome to the official blog of U.S. middle-distance runner Sara Hall. Sara’s list of running accolades include being a former NCAA All- American at Stanford, the 2006 USA 5K road champion, and the 2006 champion at the Continental Fifth Avenue Mile. Check back every other Friday for her latest entry at http://sarahall.thefinalsprint.com/

One night at pre-season camp in Mammoth the summer before my freshman year at Stanford, we had a guest speaker come talk to us as a team. The one thing I remember from his talk was his story of going for a ride on a dog sled in Alaska. The morning of the ride, he came out with the sled driver, and as soon as the dogs saw them, they just started going nuts, pulling at their chains and working themselves into a frenzy. One of the dogs was so excited he actually pulled on his chain so hard that he pulled the stake out of the ground! “You see that?” asked the driver, “They all want to be one of the ones that is picked to pull the sled. They were created to run, it’s what they love to do best”.
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Ryan Hall: The Countdown
(Elite Athlete Blog Entry 12)

Posted June 20th, 2008 at 7:55 PM by Ryan Hall

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Track & Field, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Ryan Hall, Road Racing

Welcome to the official blog of top U.S. distance runner Ryan Hall as he begins his quest for Olympic gold! Check back every other Friday for Ryan’s latest entry at http://ryanhall.thefinalsprint.com/

As I laid awake last night trying to fall asleep, I did what I have a tendency to do once training is clicking well and I feel my legs beginning to feel “alive” again after the initial callusing is complete from the first month of marathon training; I began the countdown. Only a little more than two months until I run in the Olympic marathon.

Countdowns are nothing new for me. When I was a little kid my siblings and I used to fight over who gets to open the next day’s door on a Christmas countdown board. I am not going to lie, it was the chocolate behind the door that we were really fighting over, but it did make Christmas all the more special once it finally arrived.
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Sara Hall: Learning Life Lessons Through Running
(Elite Athlete Blog -Entry 11)

Posted June 13th, 2008 at 4:00 PM by Sara Hall

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Sara Hall

Welcome to the official blog of U.S. middle-distance runner Sara Hall. Sara’s list of running accolades include being a former NCAA All- American at Stanford, the 2006 USA 5K road champion, and the 2006 champion at the Continental Fifth Avenue Mile. Check back every other Friday for her latest entry at http://sarahall.thefinalsprint.com/

There are many lessons that I’ve learned from running that I have applied to my life outside of the obvious- “perseverance” and “goal-setting”. The idea to write about this came from my coach at Stanford Dena Evans. (Dena is a perfect example of this herself because she has taught me just as much about life outside of running as she has about running itself).

Investments: Ryan and my first year out of college, we were ultra frugal. Neither of us had any money before we signed our contracts, and having lived on campus all four years at Stanford, eating in the dorms and rarely spending money, it was a huge transition year for us to be writing big checks for life expenses. We felt strongly that the money we had been given was not ours, but entrusted to us by the Lord to manage wisely. However, I think we took it to the extreme, reusing ziploc bags and eating Thanksgiving dinner leftovers for a month.
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Kate O’Neill: My Dad, the Ultimate Sports Fan
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry 10)

Posted June 9th, 2008 at 1:30 PM by Kate O'Neill

Section: Elite Athlete Blogs, Kate O'Neill

Hi, this is my blog in TFS’s Elite Athlete Blog Series. Bookmark kateoneill.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Monday for my latest entry as I strive for the 2008 Summer Olympics!

I ended my blog four weeks ago by talking about my mother’s support of my running. With Father’s Day approaching, my dad needs a proper tribute! My dad has been equally supportive, but in a different way. Like my mom, he never ran competitively. He has, however, played sports for his whole life. Throughout my childhood, I had the chance to see his pure enjoyment of all sports. By watching him, I saw the importance he placed on participating in athletic endeavors at any level and the importance of learning to work with a team. These lessons did not translate into success in any of the sports that he actually played (as I have mentioned in past blogs, I was terrible at any sport involving a ball), but they did apply to running.
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Ryan Hall: The Team
(Elite Athlete Blog Entry 11)

Posted June 7th, 2008 at 11:30 AM by Ryan Hall

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Ryan Hall

Welcome to the official blog of top U.S. distance runner Ryan Hall as he begins his quest for Olympic gold! Check back every other Friday for Ryan’s latest entry at http://ryanhall.thefinalsprint.com/

Eleven weeks to go. I go back and forth between thinking I have too much time before the games, and then feeling like there is not enough time. Eleven weeks sometimes feels like a long time to train at the intensity that I am now daily putting forth, but then when I think to myself that in two months I will be heading out to Beijing, I wish I could sneak in a few more weeks at altitude before then. I have found that it is usually a good sign to feel like I wish I had one or two more weeks of training. It is a sign that I am still fresh, still hungry, and still moving forward. Contrast this with my first marathon run at the 2007 London Marathon when I had been hanging on for a month after training for what seemed like an eternity.

Today I will be repeating the same workout I ran two weeks ago before I left for Bolder Boulder—a ten mile tempo run. Last time out it didn’t go so well. Waking up to snow was my second sign that I was going to have a tough day, with the first sign being my cranky ankle that had been bothering me after doing an hour and a half run on a rocky—yet beautiful—single track trail in Big Bear. So between my cranky ankle, snow falling, and being out there all by myself without my shuffle (which I forgot at home) I set myself up for a long day. Let’s not get too much into the specifics; we can just leave it at that I went out slow and came back even slower. Not to mention picking up my bottles off the ground didn’t seem to speed things up any. I left for Boulder concerned.
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Sara Hall: Getting Back Up
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry 10)

Posted May 30th, 2008 at 1:00 PM by Sara Hall

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Elite Athlete Blogs, Sara Hall

Welcome to the official blog of U.S. middle-distance runner Sara Hall. Sara’s list of running accolades include being a former NCAA All- American at Stanford, the 2006 USA 5K road champion, and the 2006 champion at the Continental Fifth Avenue Mile. Check back every other Friday for her latest entry at http://sarahall.thefinalsprint.com/

Part I: Last Week

During a recent visit to my hometown,Santa Rosa, CA, when Ryan and I were speaking at a local running shoe store, Ryan said to the crowd of young runners, “Someone once asked me ‘What describes an Olympian?’ and I said, ‘It’s the person who just keeps getting back up.’” I had heard him say this before, but this day it stuck with me. I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs in my professional career. This outdoor season has been no exception.
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Kate O’Neill:
Taking the First Steps
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #9)

Posted May 27th, 2008 at 2:30 PM by Kate O'Neill

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Track & Field, Elite Athlete Blogs, Kate O'Neill

Hi, this is my blog in TFS’s Elite Athlete Blog Series. Bookmark kateoneill.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Monday for my latest entry as I strive for the 2008 Summer Olympics!

For the first few weeks after the Olympic Marathon Trials, I was not able to run at all, but I thought about running constantly. Worries about what I had done wrong filled my head and doubts made me question all of my decisions leading up to the race. As my knee improved and I progressed toward running again, those thoughts quickly changed from the past to the future. I kept wondering what those first few steps of running would feel like. The first run loomed over thoughts and I wanted to do everything I could do to make sure that it went well.

I have been running for 13 years. In an ideal world, all those years of experience would make the act of running instinctual. I would not have needed to waste energy with all these thoughts. Instead, I felt sick with worry that my feet would no longer remember how to support me, my arms would start flailing, and my knees would buckle forward into each other.
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Ryan Hall: I Can Be Beaten, But Not Defeated
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry 10)

Posted May 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 PM by Ryan Hall

Section: Elite Athlete Blogs, Ryan Hall

Welcome to the official blog of top U.S. distance runner Ryan Hall as he begins his quest for Olympic gold! Check back every other Friday for Ryan’s latest entry at http://ryanhall.thefinalsprint.com/

While on a run a couple of days ago I found myself laughing at Kai (our miniature Siberian Husky) as she tore off through the woods in hot pursuit of yet another squirrel, only to be left at the bottom of the tree peering up as the hot- tempered squirrel rattled off some expletives in its native tongue. I thought to myself, ‘why does she keep wasting her energy flying after squirrels when she has chased thousands of squirrels during her short life, yet has never, ever, even been close to catching one?’ But as I contemplated her spirit I realized that our spirits aren’t really any different. I have been trying to run with the best runners in the world ever since I was able to enter the same race in which they were competing, and while I have never won a race that would give the honor of being crowned “the best in the world,” I still find myself tearing off after the world beaters as if I have never been unsuccessful in beating them. When I watch Kai’s eyes as she spots a Squirrel I can see her come to attention as I though I put a fat sausage in front of her nose and then I see her wheels turning. I know exactly what she is thinking because I have thought the same thing a million times, “I am going after it.” Then the trigger is pulled and we are off to the races. I think this is what Coach Vigil means when he says that all that matters on the starting line is having big eyes. I love that saying. All that matters on race day is being ready to go after it, to go to war.
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Kate O’Neill: Mother Whales and Human Mothers
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #8)

Posted May 13th, 2008 at 12:30 PM by Kate O'Neill

Section: News & Results, Elite Athlete Blogs, Kate O'Neill

Hi, this is my blog in TFS’s Elite Athlete Blog Series. Bookmark kateoneill.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Monday for my latest entry as I strive for the 2008 Summer Olympics!

Happy belated Mother’s Day! On Sunday I went to a bookstore for story hour with my boyfriend and his mother. I had seen that the author of a book called Delta & Dawn: Mother & Baby Whales’ Journey would be coming to read aloud. The book tells the true story of two humpback whales that wandered into the Sacramento River last year. Humpback whales spend their winters off the coast of Mexico where they give birth and then travel along the coast up to Northern California for feeding during the warmer months. Somehow this duo got separated from the other whales and swam under the Golden Gate Bridge. Having lost their bearings, they continued swimming further up the Sacramento River toward the state capital.

This story hour was of course intended for children, but the event had caught my eye when I was looking at the bookstore’s list of visiting authors. My parents took me on whale watching boat trips when I was younger and the whaling industry had an enormous impact on the area in which I grew up. (Plus a whale played a very important role in a Seinfeld episode involving a golf ball, a little lie, and a walk on the beach. Seinfeld fans know what I’m talking about. All others should really rent the series DVD.)
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Ryan Hall:
More Precious Than Gold
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #9)

Posted May 10th, 2008 at 6:15 PM by Ryan Hall

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Ryan Hall

Welcome to the official blog of top U.S. distance runner Ryan Hall as he begins his quest for Olympic gold! Check back every other Friday for Ryan’s latest entry at http://ryanhall.thefinalsprint.com/

With three months to go before the Olympics begin I am now putting the finishing touches on a vision that birthed 10 years ago during a long, slow, painful, fifteen-mile run around the lake. Now, after all I have been through I have just 105 days to pour myself into my training and prepare for the biggest opportunity of my life. All the training, all the discipline, all the depression, all the sacrifice, all the joy, it was all part of the journey that has prepared me for August 24th.

I love the Olympics. I always have. Growing up I had Olympic rings scribbled all over my text books. I find the symbolism of the rings to be quite dramatic with the five rings representing the unity of man from each of the five continents. There is something powerful about the unity of man.
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