The Most Memorable Moments of the Decade – runnersworld.com

On April 18, 2011, Ryan Hall blazed down Boylston Street to clock the fastest marathon time ever run by an American, 2:04:58. Throughout the race, Hall took turns leading and reeling in the pack ahead, ultimately finishing in fourth while Geoffrey Mutai won in 2:03:02. Because Boston is a point-to-point course, Hall’s time didn’t count as an American record, but it still stands as the U.S. course record at Boston as well as one of the most impressive race performances by a U.S. runner to date.

The race may have been the pinnacle of Hall’s career. In the years leading up to Boston, the former Stanford standout set the American half marathon record (59:43) and won the Olympic Marathon Trials in 2007. From 2012 to 2016, he was frequently sidelined with injuries, and eventually announced his retirement in January 2016 at the age of 33.

Tragedy struck the running community and the city of Boston at large on April 15, 2013, when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The explosions killed three people and injured hundreds of others, including spectators and runners. Many lost their limbs in the horrific incident, such as Adrianne Haslet, who lost her leg.

In the aftermath of the bombing, Roger Robinson wrote for Runner’s World, “Every other year, we have looked down on a scene of mass but quiet jubilation and unity. Today there’s nothing moving out there, and the street is lined with back-up ambulances, fire trucks and police vehicles… I’m grateful they are there today. But it’s a sight I never wanted to see at a marathon.”

In the past six years, the Boston community has healed, but it has not forgotten the victims of the bombings. This past August, two memorials were installed on Boylston Street to honor the three civilians and two officers who were killed in the tragedy.

One year after the devastating bombings, a wave of hope and happiness was restored in Boston as American Meb Keflezighi broke the tape in 2:08:37. Though Keflezighi was not favored to win —he was up against several sub-2:05 marathoners, including Ryan Hall—he maintained his 2:08 goal pace throughout the race and eventually dropped all of the other competitors.

“I was comfortable out front. Before the race, I told Coach (Bob) Larsen I was going to draft, even in a tailwind. But I wanted a PR. You have to engage. I knew the course and I wanted an honest pace,” Keflezighi told Runner’s World after the race.

[10 Things We Learned Reading Meb’s Marathon Memoir]

The four-time Olympian ran his final marathon in New York City in 2017, then retired shortly after. But that doesn’t mean he left the competition completely—today, he participates in races as a celebrity running ambassador.

Throughout the decade, two runners racked up more championship track medals than anyone else in history: Usain Bolt of Jamaica and Allyson Felix.

Between 2008 and 2016, Bolt was unstoppable on the world stage, winning Olympic gold medals in the sprint triple—100 meters, 200 meters, and 4×100-meter relay. Because one of his 4×100 teammates was caught doping in 2008, Bolt was stripped of that medal, leaving him with a total of eight Olympic medals. He also collected 11 world championship gold medals. Bolt retired in 2017 and has since explored roles in professional soccer as well as the Champagne industry.

Meanwhile, Felix, an American 200- and 400-meter specialist, became the most decorated female track athlete in the world in the last decade. Felix won nine Olympic medals between 2004 and 2016, including a gold medal (2012) and two silver medals (2004 and 2008) in the 200 meters. In 2019, she surpassed Bolt’s world championship gold medal record, taking home a 12th gold medal as part of the mixed-gender 4×400-meter relay in Doha, Qatar.

Almaz Ayana of Ethiopia pulled off one of the best running performances of all time in the women’s 10,000-meter final at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. With a field that included defending champion Tirunesh Dibaba and U.S. Olympic Trials champion Molly Huddle, the race kicked off at a blazing pace, coming through the first 5K in 14:46.

In the second half, Ayana pushed the pace even more, leading by 20 meters with nine laps to go. She closed the second 5K in 14:42, winning gold in a time of 29:17.45, shaving 42 seconds off the record set by Wang Junxia of China in 1993.

While Ayana stole the show, eight runners set national records in the race, including Huddle, who finished sixth in an American record time of 30:13.17.

In 2016, Sydney McLaughlin, a teenage 400-meter hurdles phenom from New Jersey, made a sudden change to her summer plans when she placed third in the U.S. Olympic Trials and scored a spot on Team USA headed to Rio. At the time, McLaughlin was 16 and a rising senior in high school; she turned 17 a week before the Olympic track events began.

McLaughlin admitted to being nervous before Trials. “I forgot that this is a big meet and with a lot of cameras and a lot of people,” she told Runner’s World. “Sometimes I forget that I am just 16. I don’t get paid for this. I am just here for fun.”

After Rio, McLaughlin signed a sponsorship deal with New Balance and has since been on a tear: she finished runner-up behind Olympic champion Dalilah Muhammad in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2019 national championships, then placed second again to Muhammad in the world championships a few months later.

At the 2017 world championships in London, Emma Coburn, 26 at the time, and her Team USA teammate Courtney Frerichs, then 24, pulled off a one-two finish that no one was expecting.

The two steeplechase standouts were following a trio of Kenyans in the final lap of the 3,000-meter steeplechase when Frerichs, who holds the American record in the event, surged to the front with 300 meters to go. Coburn followed suit, passing her teammate to take the lead in the final turn. Down the homestretch, Coburn held her position all the way to the finish, winning America’s first world gold medal in the event in a time of 9:02.58. Frerichs finished runner-up just a second later.

“I’m speechless,” Coburn said after the race. “I don’t think anyone thought we’d have two medals tonight. I thought on a perfect day I could sneak in for a medal, but Joe [Bosshard, Coburn’s coach] kept reminding me anything is possible.”

Throughout the decade, American female marathoners have been steadily climbing on the world stage. Two performances stand out from the rest: Shalane Flanagan winning the 2017 New York City Marathon and Des Linden breaking the tape in Boston in 2018.

Flanagan’s win was the first time an American woman had claimed victory since 1977. Entering the homestretch in Central Park, Flanagan, 36 at the time, was overcome with emotion, pumping her fists in the air with tears streaming down her cheeks. Two years later, in 2019, she announced she was retiring from professional running and transitioning into a coaching role with the Bowerman Track Club.

Just months after Flanagan won NYC, Des Linden triumphed on a wet and miserable race day in Boston. After losing the race by just two seconds in 2011, Linden, 33 at the time, went into the 2018 race seeking vengeance. Gutting it out for 26.2 miles through icy rain and 25-mph wind gusts, Linden finally broke the tape in 2:39:54, becoming the first U.S. woman to win the race since 1985.

During the world championships in October 2019, news broke that Alberto Salazar, head coach of the Nike Oregon Project, was banned for four years for performance-enhancing drugs violations in regards to his athletes. Over the last decade, Salazar has coached a star-studded crew of distance runners, including Mo Farah, Galen Rupp, and Jordan Hasay.

The decision to ban the legendary coach was made after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) wrapped up a four-year investigation on the Nike Oregon Project, which Salazar started in 2015. Two independent three-member arbitration panels found that Salazar and endocrinologist Jeffrey Brown “trafficked testosterone, a banned performance-enhancing substance, administered a prohibited IV infusion, and engaged in tampering to attempt to prevent relevant information about their conduct from being learned by USADA.”

Less than two weeks after Salazar’s banning, the Nike Oregon Project was shut down.

The year of 2019 was a major year for opening up conversations in competitive running that were silenced before.

In May, a series of New York Times opinion pieces and videos revealed the lack of protections available for pregnant athletes from their sponsors. Sharing their own experiences, Olympians Alysia Montaño and Allyson Felix said they were denied payment from Nike and other sponsors at times during pregnancy and post-partum. Facing backlash, Nike updated its pregnancy protections for athletes this summer.

In November, The New York Times released another searing film featuring Mary Cain, a teenage phenom whose professional career ended early after a period of frequent injuries and emotional distress. Cain, who was coached by Alberto Salazar at the Nike Oregon Project, alleged that Salazar pressured her to be thinner and publicly shamed her for her weight, which caused Cain to develop an eating disorder and inflict self-harm on herself. After the piece was published, many pro and regular runners voiced their own experiences with pressure to be thin in the sport, calling for coaches and teams to #FixGirlsSports.

In the last 10 years, the idea that we slow down with time has been turned on its head. In fact, masters runners Jeannie Rice and Gene Dykes—who are both older than 70—have actually gotten faster with time.

Most of the 2000s was dominated by the late Ed Whitlock, who became the first person 70 or older to break 3:00 in the marathon back in 2003 and went on to break 4:00 in 2016 at the age 85. In 2017, Whitlock died because of prostate cancer. Along the way he set a path for other runners after rewriting the masters record books.

Rice, a 71-year-old from Ohio, made headlines last year when she crushed the 70-plus women’s marathon world record in Chicago, crossing the line in 3:27:50. A year later, she snagged another world age-group record in the half marathon (1:37:07) and lowered her own marathon record in Berlin (3:24:48).

Pennsylvania runner Dykes, 71, is also the fastest over-70 marathoner of all time, at least unofficially. Last December, Dykes ran 2:54:43 at the Jacksonville Marathon, which beat Whitlock’s long-standing world age-group record by five seconds. Unfortunately, the course was certified, but not sanctioned by USATF, so the record didn’t count. Still, it was a remarkable achievement for the man who’s gotten faster with age: at age 65, Dykes had a marathon PR of 3:16; then five years later, he ran marathons in 2:57:43 and 2:55:17.