PUBLISHED 11/02/2007
At Thursday's big press conference, coaches Brad Hudson (Ritzenhein, Carney, Torres, Hartmann) and Terrence Mahon (Ryan Hall) were in attendance, as well as Josh Rohatinsky's college coach, Ed Eyestone. Following are several comments from each:
Brad Hudson: "I'm confident in Dathan's training. He trained very, very hard. I didn't notice that the baby had any effect on his training. It's going to be a very difficult race. Some very good runners are going to get left off the team. We haven't discussed strategy a lot. It's simple, Dathan's goal is to make the team. He doesn't have to win. He wants to be on the team, so he's going to proceed with caution. At the same time, if the main players go, he's going to go with them. He's a smart athlete, and he knows his body better than he did a year ago."
Terrence Mahon: "Ryan's training has gotten better and better each of the last six weeks. He's still on the rise. That's the way I like to time things. His fitness is about the same as it was before Houston in January. He might actually have been a little over the top when he ran London. He's been hitting better long runs than he did for London, and the last couple of weeks his intervals have come down to what he was doing for Houston. We've been working on little things like not being overly concerned about splits on this course. We're looking at the race more loop by loop rather than mile by mile. Ryan has incredible drive, but he has also become much better at understanding his body."
Ed Eyestone: "I don't actually coach Josh any longer. He's with Alberto Salazar. But we try to stay in touch. I know he had a really strong 18-miler here in the Park a few weeks ago--maybe it was too strong. He came away from it with a little pain in his tibia. After running the loop myself this morning, I know I wouldn't want to do five loops on this course if there was anything wrong with my legs."
