Ryan Hall broke the men’s marathon olympic trials record by over a minute in his dominating win over the rest of the field this morning. He ran 2:09:02, beating Dathan Ritzenhein by 2 minutes and 5 seconds. Brian Sell was another half minute back, securing a position on the Olympic team with a 2:11:07. That is over 3 minutes faster than his previous best.
The pack ran together for 17 miles, when Ryan Hall broke out with a 4:32 18th mile. Nobody in the race even came close to him after that. Dan Brown was running in 3rd place for a long time, but some cramping in his calves caused him to drop back. Khalid Khannouchi finished in 4th place to secure the alternate spot on the team.
I was a little disappointed with the streaming video of the race. It took me until after 9:00 before I could convince the website that I was trying to watch the race from the United States, so I only got to watch the last 8 miles or so. I am looking forward to the race highlights on NBC at 2:00 this afternoon so that I can see what happened in the early miles.
Update: My condolences to the family of Ryan Shay, a former Notre Dame runner who collapsed half an hour into the race and was dead on arrival at Lenox Hill Hospital. (Read more at NBC Olympics)
New England Runners:
- 07. Nate Jenkins, Lowell, MA, 2:14:56
- 19. Matt Pelletier, Warwick RI, 2:17:17
- 28. Patrick Moulton, Rochester MI (formerly of Pelham NH), 2:18:35
- 54. Steve Meinelt, Winchester MA, 2:22:40
- 61. Terrance Shea, Cambridge MA, 2:23:44
- 83. Casey Moulton, Pelham NH, 2:28:29
The full results are now available online at: USATF Olympic Marathon Trials Results
I was very disappointed with the NBC coverage/non-coverage too. I do live outside the US and got the error you were getting. I used a proxy which ran me through a US server, but most of the time the NBC server just spewed out errors. When I did get connected, there was no video. I had read that they were not supporting Mac or Linux machines to see the video. I use both.
Why would they not make it available outside of the US? Why are there many reports of people within the US not being able to see it? Why didn’t they have these server issues worked out? Why would they make it Windows only?
Very disappointing. I missed the whole thing. I was able to read the blog entries at The Final Sprint website to keep me somewhat informed.
So much for having gotten up at 5:30 on a Saturday to watch the event.