He’s popping from foot to foot, bending and stretching. He rolls his neck, touches his toes. He needs to stay loose for the explosion to come—the start of the 2000 Foot Locker High-School Cross-Country Championships. Webb wears headphones blasting a loud rock beat. Hard, rhythmic, energizing rock. “I like music that gets me pumped up,” he says. “Music that psychs me up.”
The three are Webb and Dathan Ritzenhein, both 17, and Ryan Hall, 18. They are well known in high-school circles, but teen runners often produce brilliant efforts and quickly flame out. No one would dare predict that these three would become, as they did, the dominant U.S. distance runners of the next decade.
“For once, the big dogs all came together in one place to go after each other,” notes veteran TV commentator Toni Reavis. “And they brought such great stories with them—they all had these amazing running pedigrees but different personalities.” Webb eyes a runner just ahead of him but realizes it’s not Ritzenhein. Too tall, wrong form. It’s Wesley Keating, from Texas, who’s not a threat. Okay, let him go. Webb relaxes. He has no interest in leading. He only wants to cover Ritz’s every move. A half-mile passes. No change. Keating leads; Webb is still loping a few yards back. The pace couldn’t be any easier. “I felt like we were running slower than five minutes for the mile,” says Webb.
“The Internet fed a hunger that was already there but completely unserved,” says Reavis. “It was a new medium for these kids. They had a need, this was their time, and Dyestat opened the doors to their special community.” Hall, a chesty 5’11” and 145 pounds with close-cropped blond hair, deliberately didn’t match Webb in the early going. He lagged a little, trusting that it would prove the right tactic. Still, patience wasn’t his strong suit; he soon grew antsy. “My teammates and I got a little bit mired in the middle when the course narrowed,” he says. “It was hard finding room to move. And I couldn’t figure out what Dathan was doing.
The previous year, Mickey had kept Ryan out of the Foot Locker competitions, sensing that the long California season had depleted his son. He related stories of athletes who burned out from too much racing and speedwork, and of Olympic champions raised on long, moderate distance. Ryan was unmoved. “Coaching Ryan was like working a wild stallion,” Mickey says. “He always wanted to run as fast as possible. He always had that fire in his eyes. It was just something he was born with.
Fantastic performance, but I somehow missed the revival. I think I had to go to the DMV that day.