A Sea Of Red

Our resident harriers may have gotten a chance to check some of this out today but even though we didnt get any winners, we did have a couple American records:

http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/news/story?id=6381520

Ryan Hall is a name that has been mentioned a couple times on this board so I thought Id post about another fine showing...hopefully we'll finally break through in the other of the big races in NE.

This was incredible. I ran Boston twice and it is an amazing experience. I really wish I had been on the starting line today! 25 mph tailwinds for 26.2 miles would have done wonders for my marathon PR (personal record)!

I'll put this in perspective for all of you. The winning time was 2:03:02. That's an average of 4:41 per mile. Break that down and he was throwing down 1:10 second laps around a track for 26.2 miles. I don't care if the course has a net elevation loss (there are monster up-hills from mile 16-21) or if there was a hurricane at his back. That's just plain nuts.

And Ryan Hall's time would have been insane in any othe year as he set the American Record. Ryan is an outspoken believer who trains with our fellow FlameFan Josh Cox out at Mammoth in SoCal. Sam Chelanga even joked on Twitter that somebody needs to doublecheck Ryan's birth certificate to make sure he's not really from Sam's village in Kenya.

Former Flame runner Kalib Wilkenson placed 22nd in 2:19:53. That's 22 out of 26,000 guys. You can bet he finished ahead of some world class marathoners with that result in that race.

http://www.libertyflames.com/index.cfm? ... 58&TeamID=

Great job Kalib! Too bad they lowered the Olympic Trials qualifying standard from 2:22 in 2008 to 2:18 for 2012. He's still got a chance to get there with a good fall marathon. Good luck in the future, Kalib!