A community searches for answers after Shay's death

Olympic hopeful Ryan Shay will be laid to rest Sunday in northern Michigan. He died while competing at the Olympic qualifiers Nov. 3. AP

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Someday there will be healing. There is always healing in the end. Ryan Shay died in Central Park six days ago during the U.S. Olympic marathon trials and he will be laid to rest Sunday in his native northern Michigan. That is a place, he often told his coaches and training partners, where he dreamed of building a cabin in the woods and living quietly with his family when his professional running career was over.

For now in the running community -- millions strong, make no mistake -- there is pain and confusion. The collective memory of the sport cannot recall an elite distance runner dying in competition; it is something that does not happen. Now that it has, it shakes distance running to its roots.

There is hope that Shay's autopsy will give answers that provide closure. "I hope we'll know soon what actually caused Ryan's death,'' says longtime coach Bob Larsen, who worked alongside Shay and his coach, Joe Vigil, in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., for more than three years until Vigil and Shay moved to Flagstaff, Ariz., last fall. "I think it's really important that we do find out. This just goes so far against the grain.''

There is a contract between the runner (or any endurance athlete) and his body: I will punish you and it will make me stronger. The worst that I will endure is pain.

Every runner -- every cyclist, every swimmer, every triathlete -- understands this credo. Ryan Shay lived it. "Ryan was a pusher,'' says Meb Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist who trained in Mammoth with Shay. Keflezighi has more natural talent than Shay had, yet it was Shay who accompanied Keflezighi on nearly all his punishing tempo workouts and endless long runs. "He had such tenacity and such pain tolerance,'' says Keflezighi.

"He came ready to go every day,'' says Larsen. "I always used to tell my runners: 'Come to run hard in your workouts, but don't be getting psyched up for workouts the night before. I think Ryan was the kind of kid who used to get psyched up the night before.''

Now many runners find themselves evaluating the faith that they put in their bodies. It must be said that Shay was not punishing himself on Saturday; he was running at a comfortable pace early in a long race. But the larger issue is that Shay had run very hard for a long time. Only when his autopsy results are made public will the running community know exactly what happened. For now, even elite runners are caught wondering if they are pushing too hard, if perhaps their bodies are hiding a problem that distance running will find.

Alan Culpepper, 35, made the 2004 U.S. Olympic team in the marathon before dropping out of Sunday's race at 16 miles; his wife, Shayne, is a world-class middle-distance runner and two-time Olympian, who has struggled with overheating issues in races as short as 1,500 meters. Together they have discussed the dangers of their sport. "We've had conversations,'' says Alan. "In a marathon, you take yourself to a level of depletion and exhaustion -- the way that Ryan Hall looked last week is not normal -- that really is like nothing else you experience. I definitely have thought about it since Saturday; it gets scary to keep pushing and pushing.''

Last Saturday Shayne Culpepper was in the finish area when she heard news of Shay's death. Her husband was still on the course, and struggling. Alan dropped out near the finish line, with 10 miles to run, battered from the effort but unaware that Shay had died. The couple have two small children and a long life ahead of them. "Shayne was relieved to see me,'' says Alan. "Nothing to do with the race. Just to see that I was okay.''

In the days since Shay's death, Keflezighi has fallen often into reverie, summoning up their days running together among the towering pines and craggy rock formations at Mammoth Lakes. "He talked about being a chiropractor someday,'' says Keflezighi late this week. He learned of Shay's death just seconds after crossing the finish line Saturday in eighth place.

"Did you hear about Ryan,'' a friend said to Meb.

"Ryan Hall?'' said Meb. "He won, didn't he?''

Not Ryan Hall the friend told him, and delivered the terrible news. Keflezighi immediately began sobbing.

Like Culpepper, Keflezighi also began to question how hard he might ever run again. "I've never been able to push myself to the limit,'' Keflezighi says. "Some people, they go beyond, go beyond and then they get to the finish line and fall down with nothing left. I think about Hendrick Ramaala and Paul Tergat fighting in the New York Marathon [in 2005]. I have never done that. I have always had something left at the finish. Now I don't know if will be able to do it, when I get to Mile 24, Mile 25.''

Dathan Ritzenhein, who finished second to Hall in the Trials to make his second Olympic team after running the 10,000 meters in Athens, is a pusher like Shay. He probably has more talent than Shay had (more than most people, in fact), but shares Shay's disregard for pain and takes his body to extreme levels of discomfort.

Last June at the USA Track and Field nationals, Ritzenhein ran near the front of the 10,000 meters for 24 of 25 laps, before hitting empty in the final 400 meters and shuffling around the track and collapsing at the finish. "To push yourself so hard that you come up one lap short, that's a particular kind of runner,'' says Culpepper. "I know for me, and I think for a guy like Meb, we always make sure we can finish.''

Now Ritzenhein, the father of a five-month-old daughter, is putting his rare effort up for examination in the context of Ryan Shay's death. "You know, it's almost hard for me to think about it too deeply, because it hits a little too close to home,'' says Ritzenhein. "It's such a shock that this happened.''

On Saturday, Ritzenhein was told of Shay's death five minutes after the finish, but had to break the news to Hall and third-place finisher Brian Sell just before the three of them walked into the post-race press conference. "Nobody else had told them,'' said Ritzenhein. "I didn't want them walking into that situation not knowing.''

Sell said, "The three of us were standing next to each other and Dathan leaned over and whispered in my ear, 'Did you hear that Ryan Shay died.' I thought he meant, died in the race, like he blew up. I started laughing and Dathan said, 'No, I mean, he really died.''

Ritzenhein says he can't remember his last physical exam that wasn't running-related. "By the nature of the sport, you tend not to be proactive,'' he says. "If you do go to see a doctor, it's almost always running-related. We tend not to worry about things until they happen, like with Alberto [Salazar, the former marathon great who had a heart attack last summer].''

This approach is common for runners. Nearly all of their medical treatment and testing is performance-related, not health-related. Says Culpepper, "Most of us operate under the assumption that we are healthy, just by virtue of what we do every day.''

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