From 2:08 to 2:05 — Ryan Ford’s Massive Boston Breakthrough

“Dathan said: you didn’t run it perfectly, but the way you competed tells us your ceiling might be much higher than we even thought when we recruited you.”

My guest for today’s episode is Ryan Ford: a member of the On Athletics Club roads squad who just ran 2:05:46 at the 2026 Boston Marathon, finishing among the top Americans in one of the fastest and deepest fields the race has ever seen. Twelve months ago, Ryan ran 2:08:00 at Boston in 2025 in what was his breakthrough performance, the race that landed him his On sponsorship and got him training under Dathan Ritzenhein and Laura Thweatt. He came back to the same city, the same course, and went two and a half minutes faster.

What makes Ryan’s story compelling beyond the result is the trajectory. He was a 14:07 5K runner out of college at UT Martin, transferred to Iowa State, chopped 30 seconds off that in a COVID extra year, joined Zap Fitness, paced Clayton Young to a 2:08 in Chicago before he’d even debuted in the marathon himself, and has been on a straight upward line ever since.

In this conversation, we talk about the training block that built this performance — the aggressive long runs with Joe Klecker on the dirt roads of Boulder, the Scottsdale camp that reset the build, and the race plan Dathan drew up for a day everyone knew was going to be fast.

Ryan also walks us through the key tactical moments on the course and shares what Dathan told him after the race about just how high his ceiling might actually be.

Host: Chris Chavez | ⁠⁠@chris_j_chavez
Guest: Ryan Ford | @ryanford_chevy

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