January 9, 2008
By LetsRun.com

On Monday, it was announced that 2008 US Olympic Marathon Trials champion Ryan Hall will run the 2008 Flora London Marathon. Considering that one of the reasons given for moving the men's trials to the Fall rather than its traditional Spring date was to give the athletes a larger window to properly prepare for the Olympics, we're sure his decision will be second-guessed and criticized in some quarters as being greedy. In fact, it already is be second-guessed on our very own message board.

Let it be clear, however, that LetsRun.com believes Ryan Hall's decision to run the 2008 Flora London marathon is the correct one. He certainly needs to do something between the Trials and Beijing as a 42-week buildup is too much.

Running a spring track season makes little sense in our minds. From a training standpoint, the track season comes too late in the year for a proper Olympic marathon buildup. From a confidence standpoint, we doubt running track would help. Even if Ryan did amazingly well on the track, it's unlikely to make much of a difference in bolstering his confidence.

Ryan's 59:43 half marathon, his scintillating debut in London last year and his destruction of the US Olympic Trials field (more here), show that he was born to run the marathon. On a good day, he has shown that he can compete with ANY marathoner in the world. On the track most likely his times wouldn't be amazing by world standards and thus it might only dampen his confidence, as his subpar performance at the Gate River Run did last year.

The only other option viable to Hall besides track...