A purpose fulfilled

Ryan Hall is the fastest American ever to run a marathon, finishing the 2011 Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 4 minutes, 58 seconds. Yet the spry 33-year-old abruptly retired in January with Olympic trials looming. Once training 100 miles a week, Hall struggled to go out, run for 15 minutes, and walk back.

“I’m as happy now as I’ve ever been,” says Hall. After a 20-year journey, Hall’s identity is not in his performance as a runner.

Hall’s atypical career puzzled onlookers. He once “hated to run.” But after a spontaneous 15-miler at age 13, he dropped other sports and began training “Rocky-style.” Some run stadium steps, but Hall at times ran black diamond ski slopes. He cracked one hour in a 2007 half-marathon, an American record. He’s a two-time Olympian.

But Hall failed to finish the 2012 Olympic marathon because of an injury, a microcosm of the next 3½ years of struggle. He’s always had clinically low testosterone, so that can’t explain the fatigue that “felt like death.” Many think he overtrained. “It’s just like my body gave me everything it could give me for 20 years,” he told me.

What made Hall’s decision to retire easy, though, was his purpose for running: He describes himself as “gripped” when he was 13. He says he felt that God told him “one day I would run with the best guys in the world—and I’d do that so I could help other people.”

That purpose remained even in depression as he briefly dropped out of college, with his identity in performance. “I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror,” he said. Finding his identity in Christ refined his view of failure throughout his career, which he shared with others. “You can influence and help shape the sporting culture of our world through being a part of the best of the best runners,” he said.

And believing his purpose accomplished, he felt “released” to look forward.

Despite the 2011 Boston Marathon and qualifying for London 2012, some wonder if less experimentation would’ve saved his strength. Hall himself dealt with questions as prayers weren’t answered at his charismatic church with a healing ministry. “I’m comfortable not having all the answers,” he said. “But I still always believe that God is a good Dad.”

For now, Hall spends time as a dad in Redding, Calif. He and his wife, Sara, adopted four sisters—ages 5 to 15—from Ethiopia after training there last year. Hall’s job now is coaching his wife toward her own Olympic marathon dream, with Olympic trials Feb. 13 in Los Angeles.

A short-term outlook is fine with Hall. His sudden-onset running bug at 13 has run its course, he says. A faithful God’s next bug will grip him soon.

Unhealthy competition

Males who say they are women can compete with females without surgery, according to new International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines. Those guidelines now head to the various world bodies that govern the individual sports competing in the Olympics. Their rules for the 2016 Olympics are likely to follow suit. News of the November decision from a panel of mostly Westerners went public last month. Females can declare themselves men without restriction. Males can compete as women if testosterone is below a certain level for a year. Previous rules required surgical and hormonal changes before at least a two-year waiting period. While not everyone in the world believes in “autonomy of gender identity,” the IOC says, requiring surgery is unnecessary for fairness. Rules may change with “developing … notions of human rights.” —A.B.