Sara Hall on For the Love of the Grind, Marathon Recovery, Motherhood, and Running Without Ego

Episode: S6E33 | Guest: Sara Hall, professional marathoner and author of For the Love of the Grind | Aired October 22, 2026 | 50 min

Author: Nick Klastava

Podcast Hosts: Nick Klastava & Amanda Katz

Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Sara Hall has been a professional runner for more than 21 years, she just finished her 23rd marathon in Chicago, and she joined Coach Amanda and me from the woods of Flagstaff about ten days later to talk about her new memoir, For the Love of the Grind. I finished the book the weekend before we recorded and I could not put it down. This episode took apart the stuff most pros never talk about: what she actually does after a marathon (spoiler, not ice baths), how she stacks a December marathon on top of a fall one, how she nearly retired in chapter six and is still at the top of the sport 15 years later, what becoming a mom of four changed and what it did not, and how she is learning to run without her ego in the driver's seat. Also, we talk about the mushrooms. You knew we would.

Key Takeaways

• Recovery after a marathon starts before the marathon. If you show up well fueled and well rested after a full build, you come out of the race in much better shape.

• Sara Hall's post race priorities are eat a lot and sleep a lot. No boots, no ice baths, no recovery gadgets. The basics work for everyone.

• Flat marathons in super shoes are easier to bounce back from than courses like Boston. Expect your recovery to depend on the course, not just the distance.

• A second marathon in a short window can work if the first one did not take everything out of you and you have a plan. Sara has run a strong December marathon after her fall race three years running.

• Becoming a parent does not have to end your running. Sara thought adopting her daughters would end her career. It was the beginning of her best years.

• Kids learn more from what they see than what they are told. Watching a parent chase a big goal, fail, and try again is a lesson in grit.

• Separating your identity from your results is what gives you freedom to perform. Sara credits faith, aging, and a lot of hard lessons for getting there.

• Don't be greedy in training. The best advice she has ever received, and a rule every masters runner should tattoo somewhere.

Who Is Sara Hall?

If you follow American distance running, you know the name. Sara Hall is a professional marathon runner sponsored by ASICS who has been racing as a pro for over two decades. She ran at Stanford, where she met her husband Ryan Hall during the first week of freshman year (their dorms were right next to each other). Ryan is the American record holder in the half marathon, and today he is also her coach. They have been married 21 years, they split their time between Flagstaff, Arizona and other parts of the US, and they are parents to four daughters they adopted from Ethiopia about 11 years ago.

Her résumé on the roads is long. A second place finish at the 2020 London Marathon. Fifth at the 2024 Olympic Marathon Trials at 40 years old, the highest she has ever placed at a Trials. Chicago in 2026 was her 23rd career marathon and her fourth Chicago. And now she is an author too.

When Amanda asked her to introduce herself, she listed the running, then her girls, then Ryan, and then said that was about it. I had to jump in and add author. Because the book is really good.

For the Love of the Grind: Why Sara Hall Wrote Her Memoir Now

Sara Hall started writing For the Love of the Grind back in 2020, right after taking second at the London Marathon. That was the year most runners lost all motivation because races disappeared. She did not. She had already learned to love training for its own sake, apart from whether there would ever be a race to show for it, and that let her capitalize on a year where a lot of people stalled out.

Her followers had been pushing her to write a book for years, and she wrestled with real self doubt about it. Did she have enough of a story? Had she accomplished enough to deserve a memoir? She joked that a lot of great memoirs involve escaping a cult or being raised by wolves in the woods, and she had a pretty good childhood. Not perfect, but good. So she was not sure it was worth writing.

What tipped it was the 2024 Olympic Trials. She was hoping that race would be the Cinderella ending. It was not quite that, but fifth place at 40 in tough conditions gave the book a real story arc. And she landed on something I love: her pro career will end eventually, but the grind does not. She wants to be a lifelong competitor and a lifelong athlete, so there was never going to be a single perfect endpoint to wait for.

What I loved most reading it is that the title fits. It is the full arc of loving the process. Super competitive and chasing it, then building a family, supporting Ryan, aging, dealing with injuries, and loving all of it through every stage. And in chapter six she is seriously asking herself if she should retire. Knowing she is still out here 15 years later at the top of her game, it felt like reading the beginning of a story that has not ended. Her line on that: you never know what is ahead in your story. She originally thought she would run professionally for a year or two after Stanford.

Sara Hall's Chicago Marathon and What Recovery Actually Looks Like

Chicago was number 23. She went in feeling fresh, maybe a little undercooked on purpose. She felt like she had gone into her previous two fall marathons a bit overcooked, so they changed some things in training. She felt ready for the grind. But she ran out of a little fitness late, and the heat and humidity got to her, which has historically been a struggle for her in Chicago. She called it disappointing, and she was honest that she hoped for more.

Then I asked the question every one of our athletes asks after a race. After decades at the elite level, what does recovery actually look like?

Her answer was refreshingly simple. She does not go deep into recovery mode with massage, compression boots, and all the stuff. The weeks leading into a marathon are so dialed for her that the days after are more of a mental break from all of that. Her number one and number two priorities are eating a lot and sleeping a lot. That is it. You can do both of those whether you are out celebrating or not.

Her post race life is also not exactly a spa week. This time she went from Chicago straight to Culver Academy to speak to students, then came home to a long eight to five photo shoot. Then her back flared up while she was bent over looking for something, a first for her, and she still had to get through the shoot with a crew that had flown in for it. Pros are human. Things go sideways for them too.

The part I loved most is what she does focus on: the people. If family and friends came to watch her race, she wants quality time with them. She is not doing ice baths. She is being present with the people who showed up for her.

Recovery After a Marathon Starts Before the Gun

Amanda nailed why this matters for everyday runners. You do not need to be an Olympian or a pro to lean into the basics, and the basics work time and time again. Take it from a 23 time marathoner. Eat a lot and sleep a lot so your body can recover, and you show up strong at the next start line. We are very pro both of those at Running Explained.

Sara took it a step further with a story about Julia Paternain, who took bronze in the marathon at the World Championships in Tokyo and trains in Flagstaff. Sara ran with her group the day before we recorded, and Julia asked her the same thing: how do you stack these buildups and recover so well? Sara's answer was that a lot of it comes down to how you go into the marathon. Were you well fueled and well rested through the entire build? If you go into a race depleted and on the edge, you will not come out of it well.

Her framing is that it is a lifestyle of not depriving your body. Elite training already pushes right to the edge of what you can handle and recover from. That means you have to be that much kinder to yourself in everything outside of training. I think that applies to every runner I have ever coached. You cannot under fuel and under sleep a build and then expect recovery to magically go well.

One more nugget for anyone planning post race training. Sara noted that flat marathons in super shoes are ones she tends to recover from fairly well. Hilly courses like Boston take her a lot longer. Over the years she has learned to roll with how recovery actually goes and to set expectations based on the course. She was planning her first hard workout about ten days after Chicago, which is a pro timeline, not a recommendation for the rest of us. Listen to your body, and if you want our full framework, our marathon recovery episode breaks it down.

Stacking a December Marathon: Sara Hall's Plan for CIM

Chicago is not the end of her fall. Sara Hall is building toward the California International Marathon in December, something she has done for about three years now: a fall marathon followed by a December one. Last year she ran CIM and took second in around 2:24. The year before, she ran Valencia in around 2:23, and that came after a 2:30 at Chicago on a tough day.

Right now the focus is listening to her body and not forcing anything. More than chasing times, it is about how a pace feels. She did some longer strides and a pickup the Sunday before we talked, and she was planning to jump into Julia's track workout the next day as a check on where her fitness was.

The piece I found really interesting is how altitude shapes her year. She spends the summer at very high altitude, and Flagstaff itself is high. She cannot get down to sea level much before fall marathons because Phoenix is brutally hot. So late fall and winter become her time to drop down as much as possible, run true race pace, and prioritize speed. Her summers are more strength focused. It ends up periodizing her whole year.

Mentally, she has figured out how to set aside whatever she ran in the fall and say, okay, I can do better in December. I love CIM. It is one of my favorite races of all time and where I ran my marathon PR. A second marathon in a short window can be a great move if the first one did not take everything out of you, you are being smart, and you have a real strategy.

Running Is About the People You Share It With

At the end of the book, Sara sums up her journey: she found Ryan through running, found her family through running, found her friends through running. I told her how much that resonates with me. I found my wife through running. I found a job through running. I found friends, courage, and honestly myself through this sport.

Sara said that is what makes running rich. She went through stretches of her career training alone a lot. She did not want to wait on anyone. She wanted to smash workouts as hard as she could, sleep in, and run when she wanted without coordinating schedules. Then she hit a point where she realized the joy is in sharing the journey. If you achieve a goal and nobody was part of the process, it is not as fulfilling.

She was also clear that you do not get her kind of longevity without a lot of people committed to helping you. Her team, her family, and her kids are a huge part of why she is still doing this. Her summary was simple: relationships are the most important thing, in running and in life.

Becoming a Mom Changed Her Running, Just Not How She Expected

Here is a fun piece of history. The Chicago Marathon that Sara and I both ran in 2015 was about a week after her girls came home from Ethiopia. It was only her second marathon ever, and she thought it would probably be her last. She figured adopting the girls was the end of life as she knew it. Instead, it was the beginning.

I had my own version of that. In 2016 I was about to become a dad, and I raced 48 times that year because I was convinced it was the end and I had to squeeze out every ounce of fitness. To be fair, a lot of those were small races, like a mile here and there. Sara said I may have topped Yuki Kawauchi. Ten years later, I am still running.

Sara thought motherhood would turn her into a different person. Mom clothes. Kid songs. Instead she is wearing the same clothes as her kids and listening to the same rap music. She still loved the sport and still wanted to compete at a high level. She did not know if she could, but she decided to try and adjust.

Her big insight: she did not stop doing the things that made her come alive, and that actually made the transition to motherhood easier. If you drop everything you love and try to be a martyr, that is a good path to not being very happy. She wants her kids to see her happy and chasing something. And with four girls, she wants them to see Ryan supporting her dreams, to see that mom is the one with the career and she is crushing it. That was not really modeled for her generation.

She also wants parenting to go both ways. The whole family supports the kids and their goals, and the kids learn to support their parents' dreams too. It teaches them to be considerate of other people instead of making everything one sided.

More Is Caught Than Taught: What Her Daughters Saw

Soon after the adoption, her daughters watched her drop out of the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials. Then they watched her pick herself up, train for London a couple months later, and go try to make the Olympic team on the track even though she barely raced the track anymore. They saw the ups and downs and what it took. Sara says she sees that grind and grit in them now.

Her phrase for it was perfect: with kids, more is caught than taught. They have traveled the world with her, been exposed to different cultures, watched her interact with fans, and seen her do public speaking. She gets to show them through what she does instead of lecturing them about it.

I told her what parenthood did for my running. No matter what happened in a race, my kids still loved me. I still wanted to chase big goals, but that took so much pressure off. I had been carrying a ton of pressure for almost no reason.

We also talked about the book's honest look at adopting older children from another country. Sara pushed back on the idea that it is harder than raising biological kids. It is hard in different ways. Plenty of parents have told her they went through the same things with kids who had easy upbringings, because the human experience is just hard. Her girls have been through real trauma and are incredibly resilient, and she talked openly about the ongoing work of building connection with a child who spent her early years in an orphanage, choosing empathy over getting frustrated or offended. There were upsides too. Her girls never learned they were supposed to be bratty American teenagers, so there was less angst than she expected.

One of her daughters is now a freshman on the team at Rutgers. She loves running but was not sure she wanted to run in college, and she is really glad she did. She came out to Chicago to cheer, which gave Sara a boost. She and Sara are the only extroverts in the family, so the house is a lot quieter now. Her youngest is talking way more to fill the space.

Sara Hall and Ryan Hall: Two Careers, One Journey

As someone who grew up a huge Ryan Hall fan, I had to ask about their partnership. Running professionally was Ryan's dream more than Sara's at first. When he got the chance, he was all in, and he had immediate success in the marathon. Sara admitted she knew so little about the roads back then that when he broke an hour in the half marathon and set the American record, she did not fully understand what was happening.

That kicked off an exciting stretch: world marathon majors, red carpets, and Ryan fearlessly taking the lead in races usually dominated by East African runners. What I appreciated in the book is how she wrote that chapter of her life. Early on, agents and others always looked to Ryan first, and you see her finding her place in that world. As the story goes on and Ryan retires, it shifts to her journey with Ryan supporting her. That is a side of a pro career we never get to see.

Sara said they were almost never thriving or struggling at the same time. It alternated, and someone was always able to lift the other up. Her first marathon was his last: the 2015 LA Marathon. She joked she probably should have put that in the book. Once Ryan retired, he became her coach and her daily training partner. When they lived in Redding, California, which is not exactly a running mecca, there was only one person in the city faster than her. She needed Ryan for workouts.

And yes, we talked about Ryan getting jacked after retirement. When those photos came out, my whole friend group was sharing them like, this is not Ryan Hall. Sara had the same reaction, basically, can you chill for a second? That is just how he is. He goes all in on whatever he is curious about. Right now that is meditation. He stopped coaching everyone except Sara so he could meditate about three hours a day, in total silence, no music, no guided anything.

Ego, Faith, and Learning to Race Without Fear

This was the deepest part of the conversation. Sara described going through stages of ego development that feel very age specific. As a baby, you only think about your own needs. As a kid, you see everything from your own viewpoint. She told the story from the book about skipping a mission trip with her youth group to race the Arcadia Invitational. It got rained out, and she decided God was teaching her she made the wrong decision. Her coach told her that would be a pretty elaborate move on God's part.

Later came what she calls ego deaths. Getting last place at US nationals while Ryan's career was taking off, feeling like a failure by comparison. Now in her 40s, she is trying to do the sport apart from ego as much as possible. She does not want to find her identity in what she does. She wants to be in the moment and accept whatever the moment brings.

Faith played a huge role in getting there. It is how she overcame the anxiety around performing, the fear of failure, and the habit of building her identity around success. She said she had to include those stories because they are directly tied to her longevity in the sport. Leaving them out would mean not really sharing how she found the freedom to perform the way she does now.

Interestingly, she said most of the negative reviews she has seen are about her faith, not the parts she expected to catch heat for. She understands that people can have a knee jerk reaction to evangelicalism, often from bad experiences, and she hopes readers stick around to see how her faith evolved. Her take on criticism in general is pretty healthy: if something rubs you the wrong way, it is just not for you. As I said on the show, we cannot be for everyone.

The Mushroom Chapter

Amanda admitted this was the part of the book she did not see coming. Sara writes about a psilocybin mushroom experience that became a before and after moment in her life. Her explanation is that psychedelics can dissolve your ego and let you look at your life without that lens, which is why it was so pivotal for how she sees things now.

She was nervous about sharing it. She did not know whether she would lose sponsors or what the fallout might be, since mushrooms are decriminalized in some places but not legal. She also made a point of noting it is not a banned substance in her sport, and that anything banned would be a deal breaker for her. So far, she has gotten a lot less pushback on that chapter than she expected. When I asked what surprises people most about her in our secret questions, she went straight to the mushrooms. And then teased that her next book might cover a DMT experience. Amanda, who apparently just read about DMT for one of her book clubs, needed a minute.

What Sara Hall Is Excited About Beyond the Finish Time

My last question before the secret questions: what is she excited about that has nothing to do with a finish time? Running camps. For a long time she tried to do as few appearances as possible, but in this season she loves meeting runners in a relaxed setting. An expo the day before a marathon is not that. This past August she hosted a camp in her hometown of Santa Rosa with 32 people, and she has another planned for Presidents' Day weekend in February around Scottsdale, plus a trail running camp in the Slovenian Alps in May.

She is also pushing forward with the Hall Steps Foundation, the family's charity work in Ethiopia. There are over 60,000 kids living on the streets of Addis Ababa alone, and they are working on job training, education, and housing. Bringing justice to people in extreme poverty is something she thought would be her whole career after Stanford. It ended up happening through running instead. Sometimes it feels like a drop in the bucket, she said, but when you look at her kids and see how they are thriving, you see what doing what you can for the kids you can reach actually means.

The Secret Questions

Every guest gets three secret questions. They are graded. Sara said she was feeling the pressure but confident in her ability under pressure, which is the most pro marathoner answer possible.

Best advice she has ever received: don't be greedy in training. I remembered this one from the book, and it is a mindset I associate with Colorado coach Mark Wetmore too. I have leaned into it as I have gotten older. Stop the workout one rep short instead of reaching for more. My younger self let ego drive way too many sessions. These days, less is fine.

What people are surprised to learn about her: the mushrooms. We covered that. Moving on.

What she wishes people understood about the professional running industry: there is a huge range in how pros train. She joked to Ryan that hopping on a treadmill at Crunch Fitness made her feel like Vinnie Mauri at Planet Fitness. Meanwhile she saw a Nike group at Buffalo Park in Flagstaff with an entourage of about ten people for one workout. Some pros train in isolation, coach themselves, and have no sponsor at all. Others have a full support team. You can learn from everyone on that spectrum, and she hopes it shows that running is what you put into it. Nothing is holding you back from finding your potential.

I added that some athletes do not thrive in group settings where they are constantly measuring themselves against teammates, and that social media now lets us see all of these stories, solo or group.

Guest Bio

Sara Hall is a professional marathon runner who has competed for more than 21 years and races for ASICS. A Stanford graduate, she finished second at the 2020 London Marathon, placed fifth at the 2024 US Olympic Marathon Trials at age 40, and has completed 23 career marathons, including four Chicago Marathons. She is the author of the memoir For the Love of the Grind. Sara is coached by her husband, half marathon American record holder Ryan Hall, and together they are parents to four daughters adopted from Ethiopia and run the Hall Steps Foundation, which supports children in extreme poverty in Addis Ababa. She splits her time between Flagstaff, Arizona and other parts of the US. Follow her on Instagram and Facebook at @sarahall3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Sara Hall?

Sara Hall is an American professional marathon runner who has raced as a pro for more than two decades. She ran at Stanford, finished second at the 2020 London Marathon, placed fifth at the 2024 US Olympic Marathon Trials, and is the author of the memoir For the Love of the Grind.

What is For the Love of the Grind about?

It is Sara's memoir about learning to love the process of training across every stage of a long career, from early struggles and comparison to motherhood, injuries, aging, faith, and racing for American records in her late 30s and 40s.

How does Sara Hall recover after a marathon?

She keeps it simple: eat a lot, sleep a lot, and spend quality time with the people who supported her. She skips most recovery gadgets and says recovery depends on going into the race well fueled and well rested.

How long should you wait before a hard workout after a marathon?

It depends on the runner, the course, and how deep you went. Sara, an elite with decades of experience, often returns to a hard session around ten days after a flat marathon, but courses like Boston take her longer. Most recreational runners need more easy running before workouts return.

Can you run two marathons in one season?

Yes, with a smart plan. Sara has run a fall marathon followed by a December marathon for about three years, using the weeks between to recover, run at lower altitude, and sharpen speed. The key is not going into the first race depleted.

Can you keep running competitively after becoming a parent?

Absolutely. Sara thought adopting her daughters would end her career, and it marked the start of her best years. Keeping the things that make you come alive can make the transition to parenthood easier, not harder.