Ryan Who?

It was an overcast Monday, and I was jogging back to Concord Academy with several runners from my team after watching them complete a hard workout on the dreaded Pine Hill. I happened to be chatting with Adam about plans for the rest of the week, and how we were training through our scheduled meet on Wednesday. Adam loves to run mileage, so he was happy to hear there were no easy days in the forecast. As our conversation continued, one topic led to another, and soon I was talking about the upcoming Fall marathons and Ryan Hall's decision to withdraw from Chicago.

And Adam asked, "who is Ryan Hall?"

Now coming from one of the other kids, I wouldn't have been surprised, but I never expected it from one of my best runners, a slender sandy-haired junior who thinks nothing of sneaking out on the weekend to do illicit 15-mile runs by himself on the trails of Concord. How could it be that he had never heard of Hall?

Well, clearly I have been failing in one of my responsibilities as coach, and that is to educate my runners in the history of their sport. I don't necessarily want them spending every waking moment on the letsrun message boards, but they should know who Ryan Hall and Meb Keflezighi are, and why they're important. They should know who Alan Webb and Bernard Lagat and Lopez Lomong are. They should know the story of how a soccer player named Andrew Wheating competed for a tiny NEPSTA Div III cross-country school and eventually became a pretty good runner.

They should know about the big meets in the Fall -- not just their league meet or the NEPSTA meet, but NXN and NCAA Nationals. they should know that the U.S. runs XC in the fall, and the rest of the world runs it in the winter, culminating with the World championships in March. I want them to know who Keninisa Bekele is. I want them to know about York and Fayetteville-Manlius, too.

Maybe we need to stop running for a day and watch "Without Limits."

Maybe we need to get in a van and drive over to watch a dual meet between Weymouth and Brookline.

Maybe I should show a YouTube clip every day at practice.

See -- here's Billy Mills kicking down the great Rob Clarke in Tokyo. See -- here's El Guerrouj holding off Lagat in 2004. See -- here's David Rudisha, the two-lap superman. See -- Usain Bolt, Tirunesh Dibaba, Seb Coe, Joan Samuelson, Zatopek, Bannister, Viren.

But there's so little time. And that raises the question, what constitutes "running literacy" anyway? What are the most important things that my guys should know, as they run happily, innocently, through their Fall season?