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By Bob Padecky

Friends who ran together now cry together
Years ago Sara Bei and Alicia Craig were high school kids,
juniors actually, who found each other at a national track meet in Arcadia.

Sara was from Montgomery and Alicia was from Gillette, Wyo.

They were among the best in the nation. They could have been bitter rivals. Instead,
they clicked right away, the way instant forever friends click right away. And that's
what made Saturday hurt all the more for Sara. You don't feel this rotten inside for
just anyone.

Sara and Alicia wanted to go to the same college, so they decided on Stanford. And
when they competed for the Cardinal, often in the same event -- Sara as a six-time
All-American, Alicia a 10-timer -- they defined their relationship in a way rarely seen.

"We would race side-by-side," Sara said. "And we would finish side-by-side. We didn't
want to beat each other."

When Sara married Ryan Hall, another celebrated runner from Stanford, in 2005, Alicia
was a bridesmaid. And when Alicia married a world-class runner, Ryan Shay, on July 7
of this year, Sara was her bridesmaid.

So when Sara found out the news Saturday from the Olympic marathon trials in New York,
when she searched and finally found Alicia, she could do only one thing.

"We just cried together," Sara said.

What possibly could Sara say that had any meaning?

Ryan Shay had collapsed and died five and a half miles into the marathon. Ryan Shay?
The Ryan Shay? The kid who once asked his coach at Notre Dame, when the coach told his
distance guys to run four miles, "Wouldn't six be better, coach?" Shay was the poster
boy for young and fit. Blood was in his veins but vitality was his heartbeat.

Doctors there still aren't sure what caused his death. His enlarged heart may have had
something to do with it. Friday, the day before, Sara, Alicia and both Ryans did a
casual four-mile run through Central Park. Well, the men did. The women went a couple
more miles because they didn't have a marathon the next day.

That's how healthy Ryan Shay was -- he ran four miles the day before running a marathon.

"I was completely floored," Sara said. "I felt a little bi-polar."

That's because her husband had won the marathon, first out of 130 men, and established
himself as a leading candidate for an Olympic gold medal next summer in Beijing.

"I was so excited for Ryan," Sara said, "but then there was this terrible news."

Words fail. Even among the best of friends, when the moment is truly horrendous, words
fail. Ryan Shay was 28, just four months married. Alicia, as if the moment wasn't sad
enough, had lost her high school boyfriend to cancer. Sara would have preferred to talk
to Alicia about her upcoming 10-day trip to Israel with her Ryan. Or how she is focused
on making the U.S. Olympic team next summer in the 1,500 meters. Or, failing that,
trying for London in 2012.

Sara is 24, one year younger than Alicia, and her life was on a similar course with her
friend's: Running, family and community involvement. One day Sara and Ryan plan to
adopt but not before teaching and coaching at an orphanage in Latin America. She still
has those goals but after Saturday, Sara doesn't use those binoculars to look off in the
distance at her life.

"Tomorrow isn't promised to anyone," said Sara, who has a degree in human biology. "What
happened made me value relationships I have. It's almost like there's an urgency to live now."

Stop and smell the roses, runners don't do that. Rather, runners run past those roses
as fast as they can. In quick order, Sara recites the list of countries she's competed
in as a professional runner: Japan, Russia, Spain, England, most of Western Europe,
actually. She was talking like a runner, acting like a runner.

Then she slowed down purposely, to say with great deliberation the next location:
Flagstaff, Ariz. That's where Alicia lives.

"I'll do what she wants," Sara said, "but in the back of my mind I am planning to be there."

To be by her friend's side, not ahead or behind. Just alongside. As they always have
been. The perfect companion in a most imperfect moment.

You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@ pressdemocrat.com.

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