By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2026 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
(18-Jun) — Ryan Ford of the On Athletics Club in Boulder, Colo., is a 2:05:46 marathoner, and a 59:48 half-marathoner. That makes him one of just four Americans in history who have broken 2:06:00 for the marathon and 60:00 for the half-marathon, under all conditions (the others are Conner Mantz, Zouhair Talbi, and Ryan Hall).
But according to his statistics page at WorldAthletics.com his 10-K PB is just 30:22. That’s the stat next to his name on the start list for Sunday’s B.A.A. 10-K in Boston, a World Athletics Label race he’ll be running for the first time. Seeing that stat on the start list gave him a chuckle.
“When I saw that I said I guess I only ran one road 10-K,” Ford told Race Results Weekly in a telephone interview from Boulder yesterday. “And it was that one at altitude.”
Ford was referring to the Bolder Boulder 10-K last month where, at 1655m/5430ft elevation, he ran that time just five weeks after Boston. He also ran (and won) the 2025 Cotton Row Run 10-K in his hometown of Huntsville, Ala., in 29:04. That race is not on the World Athletics official calendar, so the mark wasn’t accepted for the W.A. database.
“I’ve run road races around there,” Ford continued, referring to the 10-kilometer distance. “I’ve run Manchester (in Connecticut), which is a little under five miles, and I’ve done a 5-mile road race (the Crazy 8’s 8-K in Kingsport, Tenn.), and much longer road races. But I guess I’ve never run a 10-K besides those two when I’m in good shape. That will be nice to race that for my World Athletics page.”
As more fast, top-level half-marathons, like the Aramco Houston Half and the Valencia Half, have taken center stage, an increasing number of athletes enter races at that distance in top shape and end up recording unofficial 10-K PB’s along the way. Ford is no exception. At the 2026 United Airlines NYC Half, he went through 10-K in 27:58 on his way to a 60:22 finish. He also split 28:18 at the Aramco Houston Half-Marathon last January (on his way to a 59:48 PB), and 28:46 at the same race the year before.
But at the race in New York, Ford barely noticed this 10-K split. That’s because he was focused on competing, not setting a time.
“I think I glanced over and I think I saw that it was around 28 minutes,” Ford said. “Just didn’t think about it too much, though. Didn’t think about what is that per mile, and all this stuff. I also knew that we had maybe started out the race, the first couple of miles, pretty fast. So, I didn’t know what pace we were currently running. It’s hard not to glance at the clock but I tried to not think about it too much, to be honest.”
Since joining the On Athletics Club last October after his previous training group, ZAP Endurance in Blowing Rock, N.C., folded, Ford has raised his expectations. He’s one of three men in the club’s road sub-group (the other two are Joe Klecker and Kenyan Patrick Kiprop, who is also running in Boston on Sunday). Under head coach Dathan Ritzenhein and his assistant Laura Thweatt, the 28 year-old Ford has become a world class athlete, a remarkable achievement for a runner who entered the NCAA system at the University of Tennessee-Martin in 2016 with a two-mile PB of just 9:21.18.
“Ryan has been such a great addition to the team,” said Ritzenhein in an e-mail. “He doesn’t think about what is on the plan, he just does whatever you tell him to do. He has complete trust and belief in himself and us.”
Ford said that adapting to Ritzenhein’s coaching has felt natural. The training isn’t that different from ZAP under his former coach Pete Rea. But the club has so many high level athletes –like Olympic and world medalists Hellen Obiri, Yared Nuguse, and Geordie Beamish– that the club mentality is different. The OAC exists to create national and international champions.
“ZAP is a little bit more laid back, and OAC is more like organized with the ways we are doing things,” Ford explained. “It’s very set-up, and we have a lot of stuff at our disposal that we didn’t have at ZAP. At the end of the day, the training is pretty similar.”
A big difference for Ford has been that long runs are anything but slow.
“At OAC definitely more steady, aggressive long runs versus at ZAP,” Ford said. “At ZAP we would do easier long runs but have maybe some one to two-minute pick-ups at the end of a long run to kind of get a workout out of it. But here the long run is a big focus. I’ll be running 5:15 to 5:30 pace for 20+ miles on any given long run, pretty much. Never really happened at ZAP.”
Ford has developed his talents slowly, both during his NCAA career and his three years with ZAP. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic he ran for six years in the NCAA system, five with University of Tennessee-Martin and the last year with Iowa State. That long incubation period gave Ford time to develop more intentionally. By the time he finished up at Iowa State, his 5000m best was 13:34.79 and his 10,000m best was 28:34.35. He finished 47th at the 2021 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships, the fifth and final scorer for the Cyclones who finished second to Northern Arizona.
“Everybody kind of progresses differently,” Ford observed. “Maybe some of these people (his OAC teammates) were doing more serious training in high school and that led them to maybe a bigger program as a freshman in the NCAA, versus I did six years in the NCAA because of COVID. It wasn’t until my sixth and final year that I transferred to a big program like Iowa State and actually that final year of college I improved 30 seconds in the 5-K and around a minute in the 10-K. I was thinking, wow, what if I was here as a freshman? But in high school my times were not good enough. I wouldn’t have been in that kind of program from the start. Maybe that slowed down my progression a little bit, but it got me to where I am now.”
Ford likes racing in Boston. Competing at the Boston Marathon in 2025 while he was still at ZAP, he ran 2:08:00 and finished tenth, a performance he called “the race of my life” when asked about it. He’s guardedly optimistic about competing on Sunday because over the last couple of weeks he has finally felt like he has his legs under him again. His recovery from the Boston Marathon has been slow due at least in part to those fast downhill miles early in the race where his quads got pounded.
“I feel like I’m mostly back now,” Ford said. “To be honest, this has been the longest my legs have felt beat-up after a marathon. This is my fourth marathon, but I ran a pretty aggressive race. I know the first half of Boston is easier, but my first half was very fast (1:01:52), much faster than I went out before, and I think that played into that last 10-K when I started to slow down a bit.”
Sunday’s 10-K is mostly flat. The course goes from Back Bay, into Cambridge, returns to Back Bay, passes through the Boston Marathon finish line, then finishes adjacent to the Public Garden and Boston Common on Charles Street. The highest elevation on the course is only six meters above the start line, Longfellow Bridge between Boston and Cambridge. Ford is almost certain to smash his official 10-K PB, but that’s not what he’s focused on.
“I’m starting to come around and starting to feel good again,” he said. “Just looking at the field I want to, again, focus on competing. I don’t know exactly how fast the course is or what time I would shoot for. I just want to feel like I’m in the race and relevant, hopefully be able to cover some moves and get back to practicing some racing tactics. Hopefully have a good day I guess. If I could be up there and place well I’d be very happy with the weekend.”
– – – – – – – – –
The 14th annual B.A.A. 10-K presented by Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute starts at 8:00 a.m. The professional start lists and prize money details are here: https://www.baa.org/races/boston-10k/pro-field/. The open division winners will earn $12,000, and a $7500 course record bonus is available for both men (27:19) and women (30:36). The race also has pro wheelchair and para divisions with separate prize money purses.
Sunday morning’s weather should be cool for late June, about 64F/18C, but with high humidity (about 70%). Boston Athletic Association officials are expecting a total field size of about 10,000 runners (the 2025 race had 7615 finishers when it rained and the race was nearly cancelled due to the threat of thunderstorms).
PHOTO: Ryan Ford of the On Athletics Club (photo courtesy of On)
ENDS
Ford_Ryan_October_2025_On_Courtesy.jpg
