Weekend Recap: My Encounter With Ryan Hall

Seeing history, meeting history, seeing Operation Jack supporters, sleeping in two fleabag motels and exhaustion that actually caused me to fall asleep on one of my flights. Yep, another weekend of Operation Jack is in the books, which means it’s time for another weekend recap blog.

First, of course, I ran my third consecutive double. Finally, I only have one marathon a weekend until late September. YES! This stuff is exhausting. Whose great idea was this, anyways?

On Saturday, I really didn’t like the Country Music Marathon in Nashville (recap). Yesterday, though, I LOVED the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon (recap).

Contest For This Week
I’m not going to do the “pick my time” contest I normally do this week. Instead, I’m doing a contest with my dad. The Orange County Marathon is this weekend and he’s running (I use the term loosely) the half and I’m running the full, of course.

You all know what my time range is going to be for the full. He’s taken stats on his treadmill workouts and last week, he did an 8.02-mile workout that projected to a 2:59:41 half marathon. I think he’ll be slower than that, because it’s five miles farther, plus it’s outdoors, not on the conveyor belt. In fact, I think I’m going to beat him, period, and he only has to go half the distance.

So we’re still finalizing a bet, but we’re going to tie the contest into a bet and that’s what it will be this week. I’ll have full details tomorrow, but this was my heads-up!

Quick Pasta Dinner/Silpada Fundraiser Reminders
We’re having a pair of fundraisers this weekend. We’re having a Silpada party on Friday and a pasta dinner on Saturday. I’d love to see you at one (or both) of the events!s

Seeing History
I saw the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and the memorial that has been constructed. I spent a lot of time talking about it in my race recap. It was pretty incredible. What a tragedy, but what a unified city. I highly recommend running this race.

Meeting History
So I’m sitting there in the airport in Dallas, waiting at a gate where there was a flight to San Francisco before my flight to Oklahoma City, and I heard the voice on the PA say, “Will San Francisco passenger Ryan Hall please re-check at the counter?”

If you’re a marathoner, you know who Ryan Hall is. If, not, I’ll tell you. He’s the fastest marathoner in U.S. history. He ran a 2:06 in his debut in London in 2007, he dominated the field to win the Olympic Trials in New York City later that year and he’s been the fastest American finisher at Boston in each of the past two years. He’s an incredible runner, but on top of that, he has great character and is really easy to root for.

So anyways, I looked to see if it was that Ryan Hall. It’s a more common name than Sam Felsenfeld. But it was that Ryan Hall. So I stood a little ways away and let him take care of his business. I wanted to snap a picture with him, but I didn’t really want to bother him. I can imagine how annoying it must be for him to get pestered all the time.

He saw me looking his direction when he walked back and he was shaking his head. I was kind of bummed and asked, “Not in the mood to take a picture?” But he said no, he noticed my shirt from the race that day and was just saying bummer about the weather.

From there, we chatted about a bunch of stuff for a good 20 minutes. I don’t think someone can fake character for that long, so I’m pretty convinced he’s all he’s cracked up to be. Amongst the things we talked about:

– He sleeps nine hours a night, plus takes a two-hour nap in the afternoon. “I just can’t function without my nap,” he said. I jokingly told him he’s missing life because he’s only awake 13 hours a day.
– He was pretty happy with his run in Boston. He was a minute faster than last year, and he said there’s not much you can do when somebody catches a flyer like Robert Cheruiyot did with his 2:05:52.
– He laughed about how close my marathon PR is to a sub-3 (3:00:05). He totally understood why I started charity running after obsessing about those six seconds. “It’s so much better to make something happen, huh?” Yep, totally. He can’t imagine 60 in a year, but I told him it’s not like I’m running 60 2:08s. He thinks I’d be faster if I only ran two a year. I think he might be on to something.
– He has a grandfather who lives near me and he’s totally familiar with my running routes to the point that he was able to identify the name of the local high school I run by.
– He told me I really have to run London someday. I told him I’ll do it as soon as I find a sponsor.
– We were talking about his teammate Josh Cox’s half marathon in Nashville on Saturday. I thought it showed the level he’s at when he referred to it as a 67 and not a 1:07. I’ve never heard anybody refer to a half time as a number minutes instead of the hour and minutes.
– I told him he needed to watch his back, because I stayed within an hour of him in Boston and I might catch him. Duly noted.

I asked a woman to take a picture of us and she did. She knew I was going to Oklahoma City, so she asked me if I was running the race on Sunday and I told her I was. She asked him if he ran marathons, and he said he did, so she asked if he was running Oklahoma City, too. He said he wasn’t, that he was on his way to San Francisco.

She started talking about her daughter, who runs half-marathons and is into the whole “marathon” thing. She’s trying to get her son into running, too. Hall and I kind of looked at each other and grinned a little bit because she had no idea who she was talking to. That woman ended up sitting next to me on my flight, so a little bit later, I told her who that guy I took a picture with was, and that she needed to tell her daughter she had a conversation about running with Ryan Hall and didn’t even know it. It was pretty funny.

Fleabag Motels
You know what’s worse than your motel needing to have a security gate? Your motel having a security gate that doesn’t work and stays open. That was Nashville. There was some shady guy in front of me trying to scrounge up cash to pay for one more night. Oh well, it’s just a bed and I made it out of there safely!

In Oklahoma City, there was a guy at the check-in counter trying to get a quarter, nickel and dime for 40 pennies, so he counted them all out. I checked into my non-smoking room, but it had a terrible odor, because somebody smoked in there the night before.

After the race when I went to take a shower, the hot water wasn’t working, but the lady at the front desk swore it was going to come back on any minute. I didn’t have time, so I just started taking a cold shower, which is a miserable thing to do after your second marathon in as many days. About 5 minutes into the shower, the hot water came on, which was a relief. I told the woman the hot water came on when I was checking out, and she was excited, because nobody in the motel had a cold shower all morning.

I guess that’s what happens when you get a room and rental car for $65, including all taxes. I’m kind of enjoying these little dives, though. Makes me glad to know I’m not wasting much money when I make it out alive.

Yay! OJ Supporters!
I got to meet up with a few Operation Jack supporters over the weekend, which was nice. I saw an old fraternity brother of mine, Will Rigdon, who’s pretty excited about what I’m doing. I also got to meet his wife, Nancy. They both ran their first half marathon in Nashville on Saturday! Awesome!

I also caught up with Laura Sullivan in Nashville, who I met in Mississippi in January. She inadvertently found Operation Jack through a Google search and has been a loyal supporter for quite a while. We chat a little bit here and there and it was good to see her again.

And then there’s Ally Phillips, who I saw for the third straight weekend. I also saw her in Catalina in March. Ally’s great … yeah, that pretty much sums her up. Her husband is a pretty cool dude, too. I got to see him again, too.

That’s All For Today
Like that wasn’t enough. I ramble too much when I write my blog on the plane. Tomorrow, I’m posting what I ate last week. A lot of you wonder how I can run marathons when I just eat garbage like In-N-Out and ice cream. But I think I actually eat fairly healthy. I’ll let y’all be the judge.