Unlike some elite marathoners Ryan Hall doesn't look to race results for confidence. He's more attuned to his training before a major marathon.He's feeling good on both counts prior to Sunday's 40th New York City Marathon, where he'll be one of the contenders in a strong men's field. About 40,000 runners will compete.
Hall, who took third in April at the Boston Marathon, doesn't compete much between 26.2-mile races. He was fourth in a half marathon (62:35) in New York in August and won the Philadelphia Distance Run half-marathon (61:52) in September.
"The races give me confidence not so much in terms of time but in how I ran them," said Hall, the only American to break 1 hour in the half marathon, "Being able to close well and try different tactics I'm not particularly familiar with."
Hall, 27, describes his training as "solid" at altitude in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. "It's come around in the last month. I think with marathoning it's a thing of timing. I don't like to be super sharp two months out or even five weeks out.
"I like to feel like every week is getting better and better. That's certainly how my training's gone. I've had some really big workouts the last month that went really well."
An 18-mile tempo run at 7,000 feet has become a Hall staple. He recently improved his best pre-Boston time on the run by one minute.
"You get an extra minute of fitness better than that, that's when special things can happen," he said.
Hall is running New York for the first time but has familiarity with the course. He was in the lead vehicle in 2006 and covered the last 20 miles of the course in previous visits to New York. In addition his coach, Terrence Mahon, has won New York.
"I feel like I've run this race," Hall says.
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