It's the race before the race that sticks with Ryan Hall. It wasn't supposed to be a memorable run, just a simple stroll through the park with his wife and friends before the biggest race of his life. That race, the one he'd constantly been dreaming about, was supposed to be the one etched into his memory forever, but our mind doesn't always follow our plans.

The day before the U.S. men's marathon Olympic trials in New York last month, Hall and his wife, Sarah, were running through Central Park with Ryan Shay and his wife, Alicia. The Halls and the former Alicia Craig were teammates while they were at Stanford and the couples had often trained together in California. As the Ryans and their wives ran through the park, they talked about the next day's race and how they would celebrate afterwards. They were in New York, after all, the city that never sleeps, the possibilities, much like their time together on this Earth seemed endless.

What transpired over the next 24 hours would leave Hall sleepless for days and it had nothing to do with his record-breaking win at the Trials that earned him a trip to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

As Hall, 25, broke ahead of the pack early in the race en route to a trials record time of 2:09:02, Shay, 28, had collapsed at around the 5-mile mark. After being given CPR by bystanders he was taken to a hospital where he would be pronounced dead an hour before the end of the race...