Q&A With Tim Jeffreys, Director Of New Ryan Hall Doc ‘The 41st Day’ – Forbes

In January 2012, Ryan Hall had just made his second Olympic team, at the Trials marathon in Houston. He was just 29 and very much on the ascent. He held the American record for the half marathon, in 59:43, and in April 2011 he’d set the fastest marathon time of any American, 2:04:58, when he finished 4th at Boston.

At 5’10” and just 130 pounds, with an affable smile and a head of wispy blond hair, Hall looked like a SoCal surfer who’d somehow landed in the lead pack at races around the world, a whip of a man towering over his east-African competitors. Fans called him the great white hope of American distance running, a Bill Rogers for the new millennium. Within a year or two, whenever he toed the line at a race, the same fans just hoped he’d finish.

Hall’s downfall began at the London Olympics, where a hamstring strain forced him to pull out of the marathon after just 11 miles. “Honestly I’m a little bit in shock right now,” he said at the time. “There’s no positive.” Not only had he never placed lower than 10th in any marathon he’d ever run, he had also never dropped out of a race–of any distance–before that day. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Now 36 and retired from professional running, Hall keeps up with his wife, Sara, also a professional runner, on a bike. He’s packed on 40 pounds of muscle, and runs only for recreation. In 2016, just one year after he retired, Hall ran a trail half marathon, in Honolulu, and finished in an hour and 43 minutes. It was nearly 45 minutes slower than his personal best.

Almost eight years ago, a young filmmaker from North Carolina named Tim Jeffreys approached Ryan Hall with the idea of documenting his journey from the Trials to the Olympic Games. It would be very much a fan movie, geared towards other runners–people who’d want to see exactly how a phenom like Hall trains for such a major race. It would end, presumably, with a triumphant performance in London–if not a gold medal. Neither Jeffreys nor Hall could have anticipated the story it would ultimately tell.

The 41st Day, Jeffreys’ first feature-length film, premiered in New York on September 28th. I know Jeffreys from the New York running community, though we’d never discussed his documentary before now. I called him up after the premiere to talk about his experience filming Ryan over the course of five life-changing years. Below is a transcript of that conversation, edited slightly for style and length.

What was the genesis of the project?

I started pre-production late 2011. Ryan Hall was at the height of his career, and he was known as this larger-than-the-sport character. He was getting ready to run the Olympic Trials, in 2012, and I thought it would be really interesting if someone documented his journey from the Trials to the Olympic Games. As a fan of running, personally, I thought I’d love to see that, and that’s how I came to make the movie.

How did you approach him?

I pitched his agent, and he pitched Ryan, and I got on a call with Ryan at the end of 2011 and then I went out to meet him, because we had to determine if we got along. We had to be sure that we could be open and honest with each other. That meeting went well, and we started filming right after the Trials in Houston, in January 2012.

You structured the film chronologically, giving it the feel of a documentary about a current running phenom. Why structure it that way?

The film opens with a clip of him at the Olympic Games, and I wanted to set the stage of where it was going. For me it was kind of an overture, and with the organ playing, it was almost like a church service. You don’t really know if it’s going to start from there or go back, so for me, the beginning is really powerful. He seems kind of downtrodden, not very happy, and even the day was kind of a melancholy day. It kind of sets the stage, I think, and then the next scene is very cheery, in Big Bear, California, where Ryan grew up. The sky is blue and it’s very upbeat. Then I get into his backstory.

How much time did you spend filming Ryan?

Every day for eight months, and then about one week a year for the next four.

In your film, and elsewhere, Ryan has always come across as a very easygoing, take-it-in-stride kind of guy. It’s hard to imagine him struggling. Did you ever see a darker side?

No, and I wanted that. I wanted struggle. That’s great cinema! But possibly the most emotion you see in the film is after the [2012] San Diego Half, and he takes off his medal and just says, “I don’t know man.” He’d just run the worst half-marathon of his life, a 1:05, and came in second to Meb [Keflezighi]. But otherwise, he was always buoyant, upbeat. Even when the cameras were off, I never got any sense of anguish or frustration.

The film is heavy on runner lingo, which might alienate people who aren’t involved in the sport. I’m curious what role you want the film to play?

I wanted to make a film for runners, who know how granular and detailed training can be, but I also wanted to appeal to people who don’t know how long a marathon is. If you think about it, there’s not really a lot of running in the film. There are no specifics about his mileage or workouts, and the only time we show him at races is to give context. Like the most we show is, for example at the San Diego Half, he ran 10 seconds slower than goal pace, but we don’t say what the pace is. So for me, it’s really a portrait of a man, rather than a runner.

What do you see as the more universal aspects of Ryan Hall’s story?

How do you find joy in your life despite things going wrong around you? Ryan had his whole identity tied into running, right? It was his profession, his friends, what he loved to do. And he was experiencing extreme turmoil during those four years after the London Olympics. And yet, while his running deteriorated, his faith got stronger.

How did you see Ryan change over the years you spent filming him?

There’s a point in the film where I asked him if he was happier now than he was four years earlier. I mean, from the outside, here he is, retired, his career’s over, everything he’s done, how he made money, everything he loved to do–it was all suddenly taken away from him, and presumably he wouldn’t be happier. But he said, yes, I’m way happier now. He’s coaching Sara, he’s got four kids. Me personally, I’d have loved to see Ryan get gold, or medal, in London. But what we got instead is so much more. A very small percentage of people can relate to winning a gold medal at the Olympics, but everyone can relate to failure. And everyone can take something from his journey through that, how he worked through failure.

Did your understanding of Ryan change at all over the course of the project? Any presumptions that were challenged or upended?

He was just as kind, if not kinder, as I thought from what I knew of him going in. But you’ll get–and you won’t get a lot of it–but you’ll get glimpses of just how competitive he was, of how hard he worked, how hard he pushed himself. There was a time in Kenya when he was doing this core routine, and I thought I’d do it with him. And I’m not a world-class athlete, but I’m in decent shape, and some of the stuff he was doing I couldn’t do even a third of. And he wouldn’t be like, “I’m better than you,” but he was able to push himself harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. But you’ll only get that if you see it firsthand.

I’ve read that the thing that separates elite runners from top amateur runners is not any physiological difference, or even V02 max, but rather a higher threshold for pain. Did that seem to be true of Ryan?

Absolutely. Some of the workouts I saw him do–like when he did that 23-mile tempo at 5:18 pace, at 6,000 feet, that I included in the film–were just insane. I don’t know what was going through his mind, but there’s a strand of DNA somewhere in there that allowed him to ride that line.

Did you do any running together?

Yeah, we probably ran a dozen times together over that eight months. One of the most special runs of my life was this 8-mile loop around Stanford that he liked to do, and I was fortunate enough to do it with him. And he had stories for every moment of that run.

Did his retirement catch you off guard as well?

I knew it was coming. He first mentioned it in 2013, and I thought there’s no way he’s going to retire. And then he had that great buildup in 2014 in Ethiopia, and I was like, wow, he’s set. He’s back, Ryan Hall is back. He was going to win Boston, the year after the bombing. But yeah, he was going downhill for a while. I don’t remember when I first learned he was going to go through with it, but it didn’t come as a surprise.

You’ve made the definitive document on Ryan Hall, chronicling the rise, plateau and descent of one of the greatest American distance runners of all time. So this thing that you’re putting out there to help to define this running phenom, is it a bigger, better, more important film than you expected to make?

Yes, certainly. I thought it was going to be an eight-month journey and that would be it. And if that was the case, I don’t know what it would look like. But it definitely wouldn’t be as good. It’s not what I thought it was going to be, but it’s definitely much better. Once we saw that he was going through these hard times, I thought, what’s going to be the endpoint? How will we know when it’s time to stop? If it had fit the original scope, it would’ve been very much a running movie, versus now, it’s a super-relatable story.

The 41st Day will screen in Flagstaff, AZ, on October 6th (followed by a Q&A with Jeffreys and Ryan Hall), in Chicago on October 11th, and in Detroit on October 17th. Future screenings are to be determined.