FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Olympic Trials Champion Ryan Hall, Dan Browne To Compete at San Diego
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Feb. 11, 2008 – Bob Larsen won't be on the starting
line, but the veteran coach will have a major impact on the USA Cross
Country Championships in San Diego as the entries of two of his top Team
Running USA athletes – reigning American Olympic Marathon Trials champion
Ryan Hall and 2004 Marathon Trials bronze medalist Dan Browne – have been
announced by race officials.
The USA Cross Country Championships are scheduled February 16 over a looped
course at Mission Bay Park. A series of seven races that begins with the
Road Runner Sports Community 4K at 9 a.m., the championships culminate with
the Open Women's 8 kilometer race at 1:15 p.m. and the Open Men's 12
kilometer race at 2:00 p.m.
Because this is an Olympic year and the two Open races serve as the U.S.
qualifiers for March's World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh,
Scotland, a strong field is gathering to run at Mission Bay. And, it
doesn't get any stronger in American distance running these days than Hall.
"He's the real deal," said Larsen, a Hall of Fame distance running coach
whose roots go back to the Jamul Toads in the mid-1970s, Grossmont College
and UCLA, where his teams won nine Pac-10 titles over 13 years.
"This will be a real treat to watch Ryan and the other world class athletes
run over a 2-kilometer course that makes several loops," said Larsen. "If
we get nice weather with this venue, well you don't get that many
opportunities for San Diego to be right there seeing Olympians competing.
I'm hoping that some young kids come down to watch and are inspired to take
up running because of what they'll see. You never know, you hear it happen
in other sports, and these athletes are the type that can inspire the next
generation."
Hall is certainly of that caliber. He is at the forefront of a continued
resurgence in world-class marathoning by Americans, sparked in large part
by the guidance of Larsen and Joe Vigil at Team Running USA, as well as the
personal coaching of Terrence Mahon. Training in the high altitude of
Mammoth Lakes, as well as at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista,
Team Running USA athletes broke a 28-year drought by winning two Olympic
marathon medals for America at the 2004 Athens Games – San Diego's Meb
Keflezighi taking the men's silver and Deena Kastor capturing the women's
bronze.
Hall seems poised to continue that trend at the Beijing Olympics this
summer.
On November 3rd, the 25-year-old from Big Bear, California, broke loose on
what was thought to be a slow and difficult course in New York's Central
Park to dominate the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials—Men's Marathon. Running
effortlessly late in the race, Hall shattered the U.S. Olympic Trials
record with his winning time of 2:09:02.
A year earlier, Hall made his debut on the world marathon stage, finishing
7th in the Flora London Marathon. His time of 2:08:24 was the fastest
marathon debut by any American, and the fastest marathon ever run by an
American-born citizen.
"Ryan is just a super talented guy," said Larsen. "You could see very early
on that he was special. He was a four-minute miler in high school and could
have run a world-class marathon while he was at Stanford. His coach was
sending me his workouts while he was in high school, and I was coaching
world-class athletes who would have been hard pressed to do them.
"He's like America's Kenyan runner," added Larsen. "Encouraged by his
father, he ran at an early age at altitude in Big Bear, just like the
Kenyans do. And, he's obviously very gifted with genetics, just as the
Kenyans are. The sky is the limit for Ryan. He's really got it. He can run
with anyone in the world."
On February 16, San Diegans will get a chance to see for themselves when
Hall, Browne and others line up for the USA Cross Country Championships at
Mission Bay.
Larsen, who coached his San Diego-based Jamul Toads to a team title in the
1976 USA Cross Country Championships, will be on hand to watch the best of
America's current distance runners and re-visit with his athletes from the
'70s.
"I'm sure I'll see some of the Jamul Toads down there," said Larsen,
rattling off names like Dale Fleet, Kirk Pfeffer, Thom Hunt, and Dave
Harper. "I do think of them from time to time, particularly when I run into
them. That was a special time because the team title back then was even
more important than the individual title. It probably overshadowed even the
NCAA championship back then. I still think about it."
More information about the USA Cross Country Championships in San Diego is
available online at www.usatf.org/events/2008/USAXCChampionships, or by
contacting co-meet directors Paul Greer ()
or Thom Hunt ().
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