What Happens After the Dream?

Marielle Hall grew up in Mount Laurel, New Jersey and became one of the most decorated distance runners in University of Texas history, winning the 2014 NCAA outdoor national title in the 5,000 meters. She turned professional that same year, went on to represent Team USA at the 2015 World Championships and the 2016 Rio Olympics, and returned to the World Championships in Doha in 2019. Over a decade as a Nike-sponsored professional, she became one of the more thoughtful and candid voices in American distance running.

For most of her life, Marielle Hall knew exactly where she was going.

As a kid, she wrote down a list of goals. She wanted to go to the Olympics. She wanted to run on the biggest stages in the sport. She wanted to see how far running could take her. The specifics changed over the years, but the direction never really did. From high school through college and into her professional career, running provided something many people spend their entire lives searching for: certainty.

When we sat down with Marielle, we expected to talk about contracts, injuries, and the mechanics of leaving professional sport. Instead, the conversation kept circling back to something much harder to define.

What was your final race as a professional? And did you toe that line knowing it would be your last?

Philly Half, 2023. And no, I didn’t know. I was chasing an Olympic Trials qualifier for the marathon by running the half, battling a hamstring injury at the time. 2024 was my option year, and the hints had started: if I wanted to stay on the roster, I should transition to the roads.

How did that hint sit with you, the suggestion to move to the roads?

I’ve never been someone who’s like, I gotta do this event or I don’t want to be there.

I’ve always had coaches and mentors, especially my high school coach, who were obsessive about opportunity over discipline. Meaning, opportunity over the event itself. It wasn’t about doing an event for the sake of it. It was about what that event would give you.

I’ve carried that attitude with me ever since. Who cares what event you’re doing? I want to be excited about how competitive I can be, and wherever that takes me, I’m open to it.

On the flip side, I really respect people who hone in on a specific event and just see how good they can get at that thing.I never gave myself the time to explore what really targeted training could do for me as an athlete. So there’s always curiosity there about what that could’ve meant. I admire athletes who approach the sport that way. Even when results aren’t showing up right away, there’s an intentionality to their training. Their coaches support it. Their brand supports it. That’s a special thing in the sport.

It’s a great quality, not being married to anything. It’s about the process. About putting yourself in positions to see what can happen, versus being so rigid: this is how I want it to happen.

I don’t want to be dismissive of my approach, because I think it was mature. At a young age, I was willing to try things. Like, who am I to run a 10K for the first time at the Olympics? I was open to it. I wasn’t scared. I was just like, alright, let’s see. I don’t want to put myself down for that, because it was a great thing I was willing to do.

But I also want to be reflective. I felt pressure to speed up my development. It was like, okay, this is the chance. Versus having the confidence to say, hey, it doesn’t have to happen right away. You can build differently. But sometimes you do just have to send it.

I feel conflicted about how I approached things. But that’s normal, right? A lot of people look at the decisions they made and think, wait a minute, could I have done that differently?

• Could I have been more confident?

• Could I have advocated for myself more?

  

Being older now, I’m more observant about what development looks like for different people, and how fragile the system is. There’s so much talent out there. So many people who desire to achieve in the sport, so many who are capable of it. I’m just much more aware of how fickle it all is. Some people get time, and other people don’t. That doesn’t necessarily have to be about race or gender. It can be brand value, how they’re approaching things, who’s in the room making decisions. You realize the people at the very top are also just reading LetsRun and scrolling on Instagram, seeing what looks good. They aren’t thinking about it in some dynamic, sensitive way. There’s a lot of luck involved. I see how fragile it is, and that makes me sad. Obviously, I’m grateful I was able to figure it out the way I did.

That’s a long-winded way of saying I wasn’t torn up about that being the reality. It was like, okay, it’s a new sport. It’s exciting. Roads are completely different. They give you a bit more extension to your career. The cadence is a lot less brutal than track. You’ve got to be in shape, but it’s different.

Between that final race and today, what's shifted?

So I was driving back home for Christmas, and I basically found out my contract wasn’t going to be renewed. Not a good time of year for that. It was sad.

I was also injured, so it’s a little different. Your contract ending doesn’t have to be the end of your career. You trade teams, you lose, things happen.

Everybody’s dealing with injury setbacks. But I just needed to give it the time I felt I didn’t have. Pro running is just patchwork, hopefully getting as close to 100% as you can.I didn’t always respect that sometimes you can’t solve quickly. You have to take the time. Sometimes the sport gives it to you. Sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why it’s hard.

At that time I wasn’t in a place where I was ready to sell myself to the next brand. I’m just not a bullshitter in that way.I feel confident because I respect my process, my discipline, and what I think I’m capable of. If I don’t really feel that, if I don’t have a connection to what I think I can do, I don’t want to sell it to someone.

I've lost a lot of my routine and community. I've lost a lot of that innate feeling of purpose. I remember being really young and thinking, wow, I feel lucky that I have direction. I had a lot of friends who dealt with what I'm doing now 10 plus years ago. Maybe I was wrong to feel bad for them.

I still feel grateful I had an original experience, my teammates, my family structure, the people I grew up with, my hometown. It was all so unique, and I wouldn’t have gotten that any other way than doing what I did. But it sucks to be in your 30s asking, what do I want to do? I don’t like that feeling. Everything’s a trade-off.

Pt2. Next week: She'll be back. So will we.

Interview by Jason Suarez. Edited by Aisha Qamar. Photography by Anthony Tran.