PUBLISHED 06/10/2008
The bedlam will begin with a hush as 24 of the country's fittest young women edge to the starting line. It's Friday night, June 27, the first day of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials. The 16,000 spectators in Hayward Field, there to watch the women's 10,000-meter finals, will crane and squint to find her. Soon their outstretched arms will point the way. A whisper will emerge in the stands: There she is. That's her, the tall one in the red uniform.
In moments, every eye will fasten on Alicia Shay. In the previous days, her story and photo will have appeared in national newscasts and hundreds of newspapers. The Trials are already the most stress-filled track competition on Earth. While many countries select their Olympic athletes, the United States requires its would-be Olympians to finish first, second, or third at the Trials--or else they don't go to the Games. Besides this pressure, Shay will carry an extra weight on her narrow shoulders. She will be running for friends, family, her Lord, and, of course, the too-fresh memory of her husband, Ryan Shay, who died last November 3 at the U.S. Men's Olympic Marathon Trials in New York City.
In the storybook world we'd all like to inhabit, this tale ends with a triumphant Alicia Shay sprint. She flashes across the finish in one of the top three positions, drops to her knees, lifts a transcendent face skyward, and gives thanks for all that she has. The stadium practically shakes loose from its foundation, the fans thunderously grateful for the miracle they have seen. It has been too long since Steve Prefontaine worked these parts.
This is not Disney World, however. These are the Trials. And nothing is guaranteed, not even to Shay, a young runner of surpassing talent and unshakable faith who has had to endure too much in her 26 years. Some wonder how anyone could face more. Shay herself remains calm. "When I think about all I've been through, especially losing Ryan and the future we had planned together," she says, "running in a track race is nothing."
Five months have passed since I've seen Alicia Shay up close. The last time was three days before Ryan's funeral, when we sat in a large room overlooking Six Mile Lake, in East Jordan, Michigan, where he grew up. She told me their love story, tears slipping down her face.
Now, in mid-April, several days before the Boston Marathon, we're sitting in a bright conference room at Saucony headquarters in Lexington, Massachusetts. She has just helped Saucony officials announce the Ryan Shay Memorial Fund and the Shay XC cross-country shoe. I'm hoping she will appear happier, with more smiles, more energy. But she doesn't. She looks tired. And sad. And bewildered. "My training is what keeps me moving through the days," she says. "But nothing can change the loss of Ryan and the sadness I feel over that."
Shay's training produced remarkable results from her earliest days in running. As a high school junior, she placed third at the Foot Locker Cross-Country Championships. At Stanford, she won the NCAA 10,000-meter titles in 2003 and 2004. But in December 2004, she fell hard from her dormitory bunk bed, striking her head on a wooden desk. The resulting concussion caused two years of misery, and she essentially stopped running. One bright development in a dark period: At the 2005 New York City Marathon, she met Ryan Shay, a tough young marathoner with Olympic possibilities.
