DURING THIS LONG, HARD YEAR,
Ryan Hall’s long, hard runs have rarely posed a problem. It’s been the easy days, ironically, that have tended to explode. In Redding, California, for instance, late last year, Hall was just rounding into shape after a sharply disappointing 2012, in which injuries forced him to drop out of the Olympic Marathon around the 10-mile mark and to withdraw from a muchanticipated appearance at the New York City Marathon. Thus ended a five-year run in which Hall had logged 10 consecutive world-class marathons, including a 2:04:58 performance at Boston in 2011, the fastest ever run by an American.
But by December Hall had started working with a new coach, Renato Canova, and he and his wife, Sara, had just moved into a house on the…