The Next Lake: How Ryan Hall became a high school coach

By Dave Devine for DyeStat

When the e-mail arrives in the middle of summer, it comes as a relief. 

Ever since learning, at the end of the school year, that their previous coach would not be returning for the fall, members of the University Prep cross country team in Redding, Calif., have been awaiting word of a replacement.

A phone call, an e-mail, a text, a tweet…something. Some indication of what was coming next.

Of who was coming next. 

Derek Younkers, a rising senior and 2016 boys’ team captain, is as impatient as anyone.

“We’re sitting there,” he says, “wondering what’s gonna happen next season. There’s no coach…we’re kind of getting worried.”

Though decidedly understated, the e-mail subject line suggests this might be the communication Derek and his friends have been anticipating: 2017 UPrep Cross Country Season.

Derek scans the e-mail, eager for information about the upcoming season. It’s barely 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, not exactly the time you’re expecting big news.

On top of that, the laidback opener couldn’t be more subdued: Hey guys, the e-mail begins.

Subsequent sentences fail to reveal much more — the requisite polite question about how the summer’s going; some promising notes about pursuing excellence this year, about everyone achieving their full potential; an assurance about looking forward to meeting everyone, to the exciting season ahead; a gently phrased inquiry about summer mileage. 

And although the opening paragraph promises an introduction, the sole offering is this terse, upbeat sentence: I love running, having fun and going after big goals, all at the same time.

The only additional indication that things are about to change significantly for Derek and his buddies is the e-mail’s closing line:

I'm in Ethiopia for the summer, so please forgive me in advance for a slower than usual reply.   

That, and the name of the e-mail sender.

Derek goes back to that name several times, still in disbelief.

He re-reads the entire e-mail — twice — then immediately opens a group chat named “XC-Men” that he maintains with several of the top returners on the U-Prep team.

He fires off a single line.

   Its ryan hall guys

A friend named Andrew misunderstands the text, assumes that Derek must be out for his weekend long run and has bumped into one of Redding’s best-known citizens at a popular local trail. 

   At the Diestelhorst Trail?

Derek responds immediately, punctuating his reply with a laughing, teary-eyed emoticon.

   No as our coach.

After a brief delay, which likely includes several half-awake Redding teenagers scrambling to open e-mail, the replies come fast and furious.

   Yes!!!!!

   dude that is so awesome

   Got it.

   This year’s gonna be lit!!!!!

 

*    *    *

    

Ryan Hall wasn’t actually looking to become a high school coach.

At least not this season.

Recently retired from his own competitive career, Hall and his wife, Sara, were simply seeking the best academic fit for their eldest daughter, Hana.

The Halls adopted Hana, now 17, and her three sisters — Mia, Jasmine and Lily — from an orphanage in Ethiopia in the fall of 2015. Hana spent her freshman year at nearby Shasta High, and while she thrived on the cross country team, winning Eastern Athletic League and CIF Northern Section titles in her first full year of running, she faced understandable struggles in the classroom.

“She’d never even been to school until she came to the U.S. two years ago,” Ryan says now. “She started in eighth grade, even though she was just learning to read and write.”

As their daughter prepared for her sophomore year, Ryan and Sara sought a smaller school that might better assist Hana with those academic gaps. After some research, University Prep emerged as a likely candidate.

“It takes a special place to be able to facilitate these kinds of needs,” Ryan says. “Shasta’s the bigger school — something like 2,000 kids — and they’ve got their hands full, so we just decided we’d give U-Prep a try. It’s a much smaller school, 500 kids (grades 9-12), and the staff was super excited to work with Hana. It made sense academically.”

As a public charter school in the Shasta Union district, U-Prep has a sometimes-lengthy waiting list. Shortly after the Halls were notified of Hana’s admittance, and as they were still getting used to the idea that she’d no longer be running for Shasta, a second overture was extended.

“I was talking to some of the staff before school started,” Ryan says, “and they were saying that the cross country coach didn’t want to return. And they were like, ‘Are you interested?’”

Hall decided to float the idea past Sara.

“I wasn’t putting my resume into play or looking for jobs,” he notes, recounting the factors he considered in discerning the offer, “but I’d get to coach my daughter, get to coach a team and run the training exactly how I want — it just seemed like a really fun, really exciting way for me to give back to the running community that’s given me so much.”

Even as his interest grew, Hall worried he lacked the necessary time.

While no longer maintaining a calendar of races, he still has endorsement commitments with long-time sponsor Asics, as well as Second Skin, a line of compression apparel at Dick’s Sporting Goods. 

He makes appearances at running stores and industry expos and road races.

And he’s helping coach Sara as she continues to transition from mid-distance runner to marathoner, with a pivotal October marathon in Frankfurt, Germany, on the table.

Ryan was transparent about those commitments as he discussed the position.

“He laid his schedule out for us,” University Prep athletic director Steven Schuster says. “We know he has a lot of demands in the marathoning and running world, so he sent us a schedule and said he’d love to be involved if we can make it work with what he’s already got going.”

Acknowledging that Hall could draw heavily on the support of returning assistant coaches, all sides agreed the arrangement could work.

In late June, the two-time Olympian and fastest American marathoner in history became the new boys and girls cross country coach at U-Prep.

“Any time you can get somebody with Ryan’s talent and knowledge,” Schuster says, “you want to do everything in your power to make that situation work.”

 

*    *    *

 

It’s the first day of practice.

No one knows quite what to expect.

Some things are familiar, like everyone changing into running clothes and then meeting in Coach Bird’s classroom, just like they always have.

The comfortable chatter and inside jokes.

The new faces and the returners, milling around, buzzing about school and classes.

Outside is familiar, too. The predictable Redding heat — 107 degrees. Haze from wildfires raging to the west.

If the new coach downplayed his credentials in that initial e-mail, he’s also walking into a roomful of kids who —hard as it is to believe — only came to the sport in the twilight of his career.

Some of the top returners are well-versed in running lore, but Derek Younkers figures that’s the exception, rather than the rule.

“I don’t even know, still,” he says, “if a lot of the kids really know how good his career was, or like, how good he was in high school.”

When Hall eventually walks in with Sara, he’s no longer the lanky, sinewy marathoner of running magazine photos. He’s surprisingly muscular — thick biceps, barrel-chested. The result of a relatively recent shift toward more intensive weight training.

He spends a minute introducing himself — the same humble, laidback tone from his e-mail, putting on no airs, chilled drawl, no mention of trophies or times: Just a guy who loves to run, looking forward to helping you all pursue your goals.

And then things take an interesting turn. 

Hall looks around the room, gathers eye contact with his audience, and makes a seemingly odd request. He asks everyone, the entire room, to recite aloud, even scream if they want, two simple words: It’s hot.

Reading the room, Younkers is caught between laughing and following the first instructions his new coach has ever given.

“We’re looking around like, Okay, this is kind of weird, we’re all saying ‘It’s hot!’ together, but we did it. And then Coach says, ‘Alright, you said it once. And that’s it.’”

To assist his new team in remembering the directive, Coach Hall imposes a 15-burpee sanction on anyone overheard uttering the dreaded phrase.

“He’s basically trying, from the beginning,” Younkers says, “to not let the heat affect us. He wants us to be hardened to that.”

The team understands Hall is aware of the precautions needed to run safely through the Redding summer. Later, they’ll receive careful instructions about hydration; there will be occasional water balloons for cooling off, regular soaks in the Sacramento River after long runs. 

This is a lesson in mindset. 

The coach doesn’t want his new charges fixating on the thermometer, using it as an excuse.

But if this U-Prep team is destined to be hardened by 100-degree days, the remainder of Day 1 suggests they’ll soon be inured to a whole range of discomforts.

After introductions, the team reconvenes on the track for a variety of stretches that Hall introduces with an insistence on precise form. There’s a discernible shift from laidback classroom introduction to detail-oriented track technician.

Next, he dispatches them on a 12-minute warm-up. Not a four- or five-lap jog around the track, which had been the typical warm-up last year. Not a meandering 10 or 15 minutes.

Twelve minutes, stick together.

And he insists it happen on a soft surface — grass or dirt.

“So, we’re running around on our softball field for 12 minutes,” Younkers says. “That was definitely different.”

The soft-surface warm-up is followed by a complex series of dynamic stretches and plyometric exercises. A-skips…B-skips…other skips…all of it completed with intentionality and focus.

“It feels like we’ve done the workout by the end of the dynamics,” Younkers says. “We’re not used to that, either. So we’re drenched in sweat, and he goes, ‘Everyone is going to start off with a mile hard.’ And we’re like, ‘Uh-oh, we’re getting thrown right into it.’”

That one-mile hard effort is followed by a brief recovery, and then an 800.

Another recovery, and then 400.

Recovery. 

400.

“A lot of the guys,” Younkers says, “they hadn’t run at all over the summer. That was a killer workout.”

Many on the team are bent over, hands-on-knees; the staggering dance of the truly exhausted.

Day one, done.

Almost. 

Practice ends with a 12-minute cool-down.

“Same thing,” Younkers says, “on the grass and stuff.”  

The year might be lit, but it’s not going to be easy.

 

*    *    *

 

The story has been retold so often, it’s at risk of becoming apocryphal — something akin to a Ryan Hall creation myth.

But the central narrative has never been in dispute: a determined boy and a daunting lake. 

In eighth grade, the story goes, Ryan was growing frustrated riding the bench on the basketball team, and asked if he could join his father, Mickey, on a triathlon training run around Big Bear Lake, where the Hall family lived. 

The lake is 15 miles around, at an elevation of 6,700 feet. 

Ryan had done zero training.

He shared an early version of the tale with DyeStat’s Steve Underwood for the seminal “Distance Gods” series in June 2000.

“I remember one day we were in the car,” Ryan, by then a junior, told Underwood, “looking out at the lake, and I said, ‘I think I want to give running a try.’”

It took some convincing, but eventually Mickey agreed to let his son join him on the loop around the lake. The younger Hall set off ambitiously, wearing basketball shoes and a jersey.

“He made it all the way around,” Mickey recalled, laughing. “He was pretty sore, but he understood at that point that he had some ability.”

Ryan remembers collapsing on a couch at the end.

Mickey remembers his son’s refusal to back off, to let go of the idea that he could do this difficult thing.

The unyielding determination and grit, even when the finish seemed in doubt.

It’s become a frequent touchstone for Hall when he speaks about his career, that ragged, portentous run that eventually propelled him to national high school glory, an American record in the half-marathon, two Olympic Games, and the fastest marathon ever run by an American, his 2:04.58 at Boston in 2011.

But if Ryan’s career began voraciously, grinding out 15 stubborn miles at his father’s side, his daughter Hana’s early efforts unfurled somewhat more modestly. 

When the Halls adopted Hana and her sisters after years of relative inactivity in an orphanage, the girls struggled to complete a single lap around the track. Ryan and Sara were careful not to nudge them into running, but they did insist the girls be active and healthy.

“They never ran at all where they grew up out in the countryside in Ethiopia,” Ryan says. “And they were in an orphanage for three years, so they were just sedentary for those years. They were, physically, not in good shape at all.”

Of the four sisters, Hana has shown the greatest interest in running, but it took a year of consistent running – “slowly getting into it,” Hall emphasizes – for her to progress from barely managing 400 meters on the track to emerging as Shasta’s fastest girl last year, capturing the Northern Section individual title before placing 58th in her debut at the CIF Division 3 state cross country final.

“She’s really displayed the power of being able to transform your body,” Hall says. “Her being fast right now doesn’t have anything to do with her being Ethiopian. She didn’t have any advantages coming over here, but she’s created an advantage through consistent training, and it’s paying off.”

Hall is cognizant of the parallels between mentoring his daughter at U-Prep and his own beginnings with Mickey as his coach at Big Bear High.

“I’m very aware of what that dynamic can be like,” he says. “How it can — and cannot — work well. But so far, she’s navigated it really well. And I try to make sure I know which hat I’m wearing.”

One role both Ryan and Mickey remember the elder Hall serving was as the voice of moderation, a counter his son’s occasional tendency to push too hard, to punish without purpose.

“He is incredibly disciplined,” Mickey said, back in that 2000 interview. “He's always ready to do more. My job has been to not over train him. We've taken two years to build a decent base; we take a long-range view of things.”

It’s an approach the younger Hall is trying to take now, not only with his daughter, but with the other harriers on the U-Prep squad.

For perspective and context, he need only look inward.

His own frame has absorbed the hardest lessons. His body, an experiment in what works and what doesn’t.

A 20-year training log, authored on muscle and bone.

His mind contains insight from an astonishing array of coaches. He can literally rewind from Renato Canova to Jack Daniels, Terrance Mahon to Vin Lananna to Irv Ray…all the way back to Mickey Hall.

“I had amazing coaches coming up,” Ryan says now. “My dad was my high school coach; I had amazing coaches at Stanford and professionally, so I know what a big difference it can make to have a coach that really believes in you.”

He understands that his current runners come from a lower mileage background, but he hopes to gradually increase the effort and load — “create a healthy new normal,” he says — elevating mileage, expectations, self-esteem, and perhaps most importantly, strength.

On their many trips to Ethiopia, the Halls have grown accustomed to a certain phrase being shouted as they travel the streets, plazas and athletic fields of Addis Ababa.

“They have a saying over there,” Ryan says, “not really a saying, but when you’re running they’ll yell at you: Berta! for a boy, Berchi! for a girl. What that means is, ‘be strong.’ And I’d say that’s kind of their culture — be strong.”

It’s a virtue he and Sara intend to continue with their children, and one Ryan hopes to ingrain into the culture at U-Prep.

“I want my kids to look at themselves in the mirror and believe, ‘I’m strong. I’m capable of much more than anyone — including myself — thinks,’” Ryan said.

He’s talking about the runners on his team, but he could be talking to himself. 

To that frustrated eighth grader, tired of riding the bench.

The intrepid kid who circled the lake with Mickey. 

“When I look at them,” he says, “it is almost like I’m going back and coaching myself, you know?

 

*    *    *

 

The first meet is in the books.

After several false starts and cancellations due to wildfire smoke, U-Prep finally toes the line 100 miles north in Yreka, where the Panthers face off against a roster of league rivals in the NAL Preseason Center Meet. 

Both squads win handily, with junior Justin Matties pacing the boys with his third-place finish, and ninth-grader Grace Gaddy fronting a 1-2-3 U-Prep sweep on the girls’ side.

The first two wins of Coach Hall’s young career. 

Due to California state transfer rules, Hana has to sit out the first month, but there’s every indication her fitness (she recently dropped an 18:54 PR at a 5K road race) will make for a potent top four when she eventually lines up with her new teammates.

A full month into the season, team and coach are settling into a routine.

According to Younkers, fifth for the Panthers in the season opener, one of the hardest adjustments — besides simply increased volume — has been recalibrating from miles to minutes.

“We were used to running a mile-based system,” he says. “It would be: Go run seven miles…go run however many miles. And Coach Hall does it: Go run 50 minutes…go run 80 minutes. So that was first, trying to get used to that.”

Early on, every day seemed to bring a new version of fatigue and soreness.

“The first two weeks, we were really struggling,” Younkers admits. “We’re all out of shape, and not a single one of these days that we’re running feels like an easy day…I could go on any run, it didn’t matter if we were running at a slow pace, my legs were dead each day.”

Encouraged by some of his younger teammates, Younkers went to speak with the coach.

“It was basically like, ‘Hey look, Coach Hall, we’re not saying we shouldn’t be doing this, we’re just letting you know our bodies are screaming Uncle. We’re so tight it’s hard to run.’”

Hall let him know he appreciated the input, and then backed off the mileage until his charges can better acclimate to the load.

“It wasn’t necessarily complaining,” Hall says, recounting the same conversation, “it was just feedback, like ‘Whoa, Coach, we’re tired.’…I’m comfortable with a certain level of tiredness, that comes with the training. Right now, we’re kind of making up for lost time.” 

Even as he tweaks the training for his 30 athletes, Hall has had adjustments of his own to make.

“I know how to train the kids,” he says with a self-deprecating chuckle, “but talking about transportation to and from meets, eligibility, and all these physicals and stuff — all these things that have to happen — I’m just lost with all of that.”

As expected, his assistant coaches have been invaluable in helping with the logistics. 

That includes taking splits at practice.

A self-professed “geek” when it comes to workouts — wanting to know every split, the exact amount of rest, recovery rates, progressions for each repeat — Hall has found that level of record keeping a challenge in the swirl of high school practice.

“When you’re trying to do that for 30 kids, and half of them don’t have watches, it’s like controlled mayhem out there. I’m still trying to learn how to control the chaos a bit.”

Learning curve aside, Schuster, the athletic director, has been thrilled with his rookie coach.

“His parent meeting was phenomenal,” Schuster says. “The way he communicated his knowledge of the sport, and how that was going to look, he came across as a knowledgeable, passionate coach.”

Noting that Hall shared pro-level insights on everything from shoe selection to self-care, nutrition to hydration, Schuster was equally impressed with Hall’s ability to pass along the benefits of a running lifestyle to the parents in attendance.

“(He was) talking about running being such a tight-knit family, cheering each other on at races, building lifelong memories on road trips…different things that he experienced, and wanting to facilitate those things for the kids.”

As much as Ryan hopes to imbue his teams with strength and endurance, the new coach at U-Prep also wants to pass along the joy and fun that comes with high school running.

“All through my professional career,” he notes, “if I was having fun, I was usually running well… It’s just a good way to do life, too. You want to get the results, but if you didn’t enjoy the process along the way, then, in my mind, it’s not worth it.”

 

*    *    *

Somewhere in Sydney, Australia, sits a pair of empty black Asics.

They used to belong to Ryan Hall.

He left them at the finish line of a race back in January, the last marathon he ever plans to run.

After his 2016 retirement from professional racing, following four years battling chronic fatigue, Hall decided to tackle a few additional adventure-style races on far less mileage.

The most daunting of these was the jaw-dropping World Marathon Challenge: Seven marathons, on seven continents, in seven days.

He began in Antarctica and finished in Australia, with stops in Punta Arenas, Chile; Miami, Florida; Madrid, Spain; Marrakesh, Morocco; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, along the way.

On the seventh day, he disembarked the plane in Sydney with a pronounced limp from a sore right hip, and knew the final effort would be the hardest.

He set off expecting to suffer.

More than five agonizing hours later, he willed himself over the line, and then performed a ritual he’d long envisioned as the denouement to his storied career.

He removed his running shoes, left them on the line, and walked away.

“It was emotional…I was almost tearing up,” he says now. “Because it felt like closure for me.”

Closure, but not the ending he always imagined.

Before the fatigue rendered him incapable of training at an elite level, he pictured himself streaming home in a big city marathon, fans cheering him into retirement.

“Things didn’t end like that,” he acknowledges. “I got so tired and rundown, there was no official last race, no way for me to say goodbye to the sport that I love, that’s treated me so well for 20 years of running.”

But listen to him talk about that Syndey race, that final marathon:

“It was a long day, to say the least…it was clear (it) was going to be one of those days you just have to put your head down and find a way to keep moving forward.”

Keep moving forward.

He could easily be talking about another day, another time he set off for the horizon, uncertain of the outcome.

He began by running around a lake.

He finished by running around the world.

It can be easy to forget, all these years later, that what initially drew Ryan to ask if he could tag along on his father’s run that day, what first called to him, was an appreciation for the beauty of the lake. 

The simple joy of moving swiftly, under his own power, around a shimmering body of water.

It was just a beautiful loop, he said once, seemed worth running.

The World Marathon Challenge? That was just another lake, 183 miles around, instead of 15.

Same ambitious, unbridled beginning. Same experience wondering, somewhere in the middle, if he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Same shuffling conclusion.

But also, the same Ryan that Mickey remembers — stubborn. Wired differently. 

Drawn to the beauty and the challenge.

And this coaching opportunity?

It’s another lake, too. 

A familiar shape — a geography he’s been covering for years. A known contour, just slightly different from this angle.

Bigger around than he might have imagined. 

When he walked away from those empty shoes at the finish line, Ryan said it wasn’t merely a sense of closure he experienced.

“It kind of allowed me to move into this next season of my life.”

To find the next lake.  

Watch him now, setting off: A summer e-mail, sent early on a Sunday morning. The first practice. First meet.

A bus full of laughing kids, so many names to learn, too many splits to take.  

Chaos and joy. A lit year.

A coach turning a corner, leaning into a new adventure.