BEST QUOTE EVER

Lots of odds and ends today.

If you haven’t seen the Saucony homepage, they’ve made a pretty classy tribute to Ryan Shay. You can’t even get into their site. The only link takes you to the letsrun.com tribute forum which was started by Shay’s dad.

I just ran an easy 7 miles this morning with some strides. It’s been a brisk 20-25 degrees during each of the last 3-4 mornings. A little chilly at first, but really not bad running weather at all.

Here’s my latest interview

I didn’t mention it in my recap, but the Brooks-Hansons group had a massive presence at the trials. As soon as we entered Central Park we were greeted with oversized images of each of their 13 runners. In addition, they were handing out life-sized headshots on a stick, t-shirts with the image of their racing jersey on the front and back, playing cards, etc.

Afterwards they had a post-race party and I was able to weasel my way in for some free grub and free beer. And they showed some cool video clips of what their group is doing in Michigan. All the team members were there except for Sell who was at the press conference. While all this was going on, I got to bend Mike Reneau’s ear and get his first-hand account of the group and his perspective on his race. Here are some things that I remember;

Out of all the runners in the field, Sell was his lock to make the team. Sure they’re teammates, but it’s still interesting to hear him say that.

Regarding the much hyped 26.2K simulator workout that the team did prior to the trials, he said it was enough to give him confidence, but he thought it was almost a false sense of confidence – because in the race, they’d still have 2 more laps to go.

Speaking of the course, Mike and Ryan Meissen ran a four lap training run on it prior to the race. It was described as one of those runs where’d you start out chatting thinking it’s no big deal. By the third lap all stopping talked. On the last lap the only thing being uttered were curse words.

Maybe the best part of talking with Mike was hearing him speak so highly of Brian Sell. I think most people want to know that people they’re rooting for are genuinely good people. I totally got that impression from Mike, who’s also one of the good guys.

By this point in the conversation, the party had pretty much cleared out. They announced that Brian was on his way, so I hung out a little longer in order to see him. Here are some photos from the afternoon.

Finally, thanks to Erik for sending what is probably the best running quote ever.

Quote of the day;

“I already started. I started when I was 15.” – Ryan Hall, in response to the question regarding when we would start training for Beijing