TheFinalSprint.com | Premier Running Destination for Marathons, Track and Field, Race News, Podcasts, Training Advice and More!

Lead Stories: Saturday, July 19, 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”.
Read the rest of this entry »

One comment, add yours | Permalink

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

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

3 comments, add yours | Permalink

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

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

3 comments, add yours | Permalink

Sara Hall: In Definition
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #8)

Posted May 2nd, 2008 at 12:58 PM by Sara Hall

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

Recently I came across some comments on a video of Ryan where people seemed confused as to what he means by “glorifying God”. I don’t normally look at people’s comments because I don’t really like criticism, but for whatever reason I started to read some this day.

Some people were vehemently anti-religion, some people held a strong in-your-face religious stance, and everything in between, debating what Ryan was talking about. It made me realize the ambiguity of this term, “glorifying God”, and so this blog is an attempt to extrapolate on what we mean when we say
we strive to glorify God when we run.
Read the rest of this entry »

21 comments, add yours | Permalink

Josh Cox:
Forgotten Number Four
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #7)

Posted April 17th, 2008 at 12:00 PM by Josh Cox

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Elite Athlete Blogs, Josh Cox

Welcome to the official blog of U.S. marathon runner Josh Cox. Every other Wednesday visit http://joshcox.thefinalsprint.com for Cox’s latest blog entry and for more information, also please visit: www.joshcox.com

“Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.”
–Jesse Owens, 4 time Track and Field Gold Medalist at the 1936 Olympic Games

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
–C. S. Lewis

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”
–Charlotte the spider in EB White’s “Charlotte’s Web”

I get loads of email from strangers. When you write blogs, have Myspaces, Facebooks and a contact button on your website, it comes with the territory. My latest “Miracles” installment solicited a Santa sized bag of digital mail. For every public comment I receive, another five appear in the inbox. If a common theme arises I address it in the comments of the blog – years of blogging tells me this is the best course of action. This way the popular, pertinent issues get addressed. If I’m busy this doesn’t always happen. So before diving into this entry I’ll let the mail senders know I’ll be answering their questions and keeping the comment section of the last blog alive and kicking.
Read the rest of this entry »

14 comments, add yours | Permalink

Josh Cox: Miracles . . . A Runner’s Case for Theism (Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #6)

Posted April 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 PM by Josh Cox

Section: Elite Athlete Blogs, Josh Cox

“If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.” -Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist, Oxford scholar, author of “The God Delusion”

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
-CS Lewis, author, teacher, former atheist, and Oxford Scholar

“It is, of course, true that your success would be open to a variety of interpretations-perhaps such a miracle says nothing about the existence of God but demonstrates that clairvoyance is an actual power of the human mind and that you possess it in spades.” -Sam Harris, atheist evangelist and author, explaining away the miraculous

“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature, and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable.” --Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist

I wasn’t planning on writing this. Honest. I pondered the idea during my long run with Dan [Browne] last week, again during my 15 miler over the weekend and a final time as I responded to nearly half of the 17 emails asking what I believed and why I believed it – but not even those served as this blog’s impetus. Nope. The tipping point came when I stumbled across the poem I wrote for my dad’s funeral nearly two years ago. I didn’t read it all; I couldn’t read it all – didn’t want to. Tears, therapeutic as they may be, don’t lend themselves to productivity; and because I am busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest I figured I would spare my wife the Dick Vermeil impression.
Read the rest of this entry »

31 comments, add yours | Permalink

Ryan Hall: Keeping Perspective
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #4)

Posted March 4th, 2008 at 4:56 PM by Ryan Hall

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Cross Country, 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/

To be completely honest, I was bummed after XC Nationals. I was in good shape and ready to go, or so I thought. My expectations were high and I was hoping to kick off 2008 with a bang, so I was naturally a little bent when things didn’t turn out how I had hoped. Finishing fifth wasn’t a terrible performance and my hat goes off to Dathan and the rest of the guys on the team (I am sure we will all be proud of how they represent the US at Worlds), but it just wasn’t building the momentum I was looking for heading into London. Afterwards, there were lots of reasons, of which I constantly kept reminding myself, for why I didn’t perform well, but that didn’t keep me from getting a little bummed. Even so, I welcome these humbling experiences because they get me fired up. I had humbling experiences that preceded all of my best races.
Read the rest of this entry »

12 comments, add yours | Permalink

Ryan Hall: Confidence
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #3)

Posted February 16th, 2008 at 1:15 PM by Ryan Hall

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

TFS Elite Athlete Blog Series RYAN HALL 425x75 copy 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.

ryan hall winning 2007 olympic trials men's marathon in central park Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is the importance of confidence. When I am in Mammoth training I sometimes like to shoot hoops after our evening weight lifting is complete. When I am shooting around I like to work on my visualization skills. Just moments before releasing the ball I see the ball going in.

In my mind I become border-line cocky with each passing shot. If I miss I instantly shake it off and visualize the next shot going in, swish. I tell myself there is no way I will miss, swish. I see the ball crisply cutting through the net, swish. It amazing how much better I shoot when I am overly confident. I know this is kind of a ghetto experiment but it has definitely shown me that I am a lot more likely to perform better when I am confident than when I am unsure.
Read the rest of this entry »

19 comments, add yours | Permalink

Josh Cox: Carpe Diem
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #2)

Posted February 6th, 2008 at 3:15 PM by Josh Cox

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Motivation, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Josh Cox

TFS Elite Athlete Blog Series JOSH COX 425x75 copy Check back every other Wednesday for his latest entry and for more information about Cox, also please visit: www.joshcox.com

In ‘97 Cox ran and won a 50-mile ultra, in ’99 he ran his first marathon making him the youngest Trials qualifier. The following year he clocked 2:13, which opened the door for him to train with the world’s best in Kenya. Cox has tried his hand at Reality TV, been all over magazine covers and is a fixture in the sport.

CARPE DIEM

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist minister and civil rights leader

“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
- Francis Bacon, English philosopher and statesman

“Never, never, never quit.”
- Winston Churchill, Author, soldier and Prime Minister

October 1980, Paul David Hewson and his band - formally known as “Feedback” and “The Hype” - had just released their first full-length album, Boy. Their single “I Will Follow” climbed the UK charts and their star was born. Around that time, the band joined a religious group in Dublin, the Shalom Fellowship. Time passed and some of Shalom’s leaders began criticizing the bands “involvement in the world.” The leaders told the band that in order to please God they would have to give up rock ‘n’ roll.
Read the rest of this entry »

10 comments, add yours | Permalink

Ryan Hall: Vision
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #2)

Posted February 1st, 2008 at 1:45 PM by Ryan Hall

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

ryan hall winning 2007 olympic trials men's marathon in central park One of my favorite aspects of training in Mammoth is the “vision” that I get while I am up here. Let me clarify what I mean by “vision.” Vision is my mind’s-eye image of what’s possible. Vision is what inspires me to action, gives me the ample motivation to change, and – above all – gives me the belief of what is possible. On my runs these past two weeks I see London. I have a strong vision for the amazing opportunity that awaits me on April 13th and what could happen there.
Read the rest of this entry »

3 comments, add yours | Permalink