Hall takes third at Boston

The Boston Marathon was earlier today. The men's race started at 10am, and I tried my best to follow along on the internet. It was not easy. I've found that the most informative site is LetsRun.com, mainly because they have live updates on their message board. Unfortunately, during almost every big race, the boards crash. This was the case today. I surfed over to the official race website which advertised a live broadcast, but when I tried that, it also kept crashing. I think the longest stretch of coverage I saw was 30 minutes. The upshot of this is that I actually did some work (you know, that stuff my employer pays me to do) instead of continuously watching the race. It was still going when I took my lunch break, and I was able to get results shortly after it was over. Ryan Hall took third place behind an Ethiopian champ and a Kenyan runner-up. I think Hall had actually fallen off the pace and was closer to 10th or so, but he picked off quite a few runners at the end. 2:09:40, which is by all means an impressive effort. It is slightly disappointing because his PR is over 3 minutes faster and he didn't win the race, but Hall should definitely be able to look at this as a positive step in his career.