In 2009, Hall considered stepping away from competition. She had strong showings early in her career but was going through a series of challenges that had her contemplating what a future in running would look like.
“I always had success in the sport, and I didn’t realize how much I saw my self-worth and my belonging with other people contingent on that success,” Hall said of her mind-set then. “That period is when I went deep into my head and into my sense of belonging and stopped fearing failure, and felt more free to take risks in competition.”
Hall bet on herself and kept competing. She didn’t stop running even when “it didn’t really make sense on paper to a lot of people,” she said. She built a family with her husband, adopting four children from Ethiopia in 2015. She believed she had better days of running ahead of her, and when the times didn’t come, she chased “the feeling of flying.”
With the disappointments have come long-awaited accomplishments. After failing to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics at the U.S. marathon trials in February 2020, she shifted her focus to her next goal, written on a bathroom mirror: to set an American record. That fall, she ran the London Marathon in a personal-best time of 2:22:01, finishing second. Just over two months later, she raced in the Marathon Project in Chandler, Ariz., and finished in 2:20:32, then the second-fastest marathon run by an American woman.
D’Amato’s path took a different turn. She did leave the sport in 2009, her dreams for a professional running career dashed by a string of injuries. In the next eight years, she would begin a career in real estate and have two children while running recreationally as a way to meet people. In 2017, D’Amato ran a marathon with her husband, with a goal of finishing in under 3 hours 30 minutes. She finished in 3:14:54, signed up for another marathon and lowered her time to 2:47:00 that November.
She decided to go all in and took a bet on herself, too. “I sat on the sidelines for a decade wondering what if — what if I would have done things differently?” she said. “I lived with that for a decade, and then I finally found out.”