Olympian Linkletter Looking for New Guidance after Ryan Hall Decides to Leave Coaching

The New York City Marathon is a mere 10 weeks away, and Flagstaff-based runner and Canadian Olympian Rory Linkletter now finds himself without a coach.

Linkletter announced Monday that Flagstaff’s Ryan Hall has decided to leave coaching altogether. Hall has coached Linkletter for about two years, in addition to other elites, such as Biya Simbassa and Hall’s wife, Sara.

Linkletter said Monday that he found out two weeks ago. He credited Hall with reviving his marathon career in the past two years. The apex of Linkletter’s time with Hall was last spring’s Seville Marathon, in which Linkletter ran the Olympic standard of 2:08:01. He had a rough go in the Olympic Marathon, placing 47^th in 2:13:09.

With New York fast approaching, Linkletter said he will employ a “hybrid” approach to training, using three coaches from the Flagstaff-area to discuss training plans. He won’t hire a new coach until after the holidays, and he said he is not averse to leaving Flagstaff (“though my preference is to stay”), but said he would not return to Utah under his college coach Ed Eyestone.

“There are a lot of things I have to consider moving forward, but I’m more in the holding pattern until after New York and make a finalized decision after that,” he said. “With there not being that much time between now and New York, I’ll probably do stuff with soft guidance and people who’ll help me in town that I trust. But they aren’t necessarily my next coach.

 When Hall informed Linkletter two weeks ago, Linkletter said he sat down at a computer, got “the juices flowing,” and wrote his own New York build-up plan.

“Then,” he said with a laugh, “next thing I did was find a handful of people to share that plan with, to help me rip it apart and make it reasonable. I don’t want to coach myself, if I’m being honest. I like to turn things over. But since I was in a situation where I wasn’t ready to hire a next coach, I wanted a hybrid approach, giving myself the creative juices to write something and then basically show it to someone else and say, make it your version. Give me feedback.”

Linkletter said he has received great feedback on his training plan from the three Flagstaff coaches – “they asked me not to publicize their names” – and he feels confident he will bounce back in New York.

“There’s going to be one person in town who’ll be a little more hands-on and involved in the interim,” he said. “Then, after New York, we’ll make a more concrete decision about the future.”