California's Ryan Hall is headed to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, where he's among the favorites to win a gold medal in the marathon. Running aficionados say he could be the first American to win the event in 26 years—since Frank Shorter did so in 1972.

That's a long time between gold medals. It's also been a long and winding road for Hall, who almost called it quits five years ago. But his faith, his family, and his girlfriend—now his wife—helped him through that difficult time, encouraging him to keep running the race and pressing on, as the apostle Paul would say.

But before Hall could run the race, he would have to beat an even tougher opponent: depression.

It was the winter of 2003, Ryan's sophomore year at Stanford University. He was so depressed, he could hardly get out of bed, much less go for a run.

It didn't make any sense. The guy was born to run and loved every minute of pounding the pavement. Nothing brought him more joy. He was a high-school All-American miler, and great things were expected of him as a scholarship runner at Stanford.

But great things were not happening. He didn't win a single race as a freshman, and though the Cardinal won the NCAA cross-country title his sophomore year, Hall finished seventh on his own team and failed to score a point.

Not only was he losing races, he was starting to lose his way.

"Nothing was wrong with me physically," Hall says now. "But my spirit was deeply distraught. I was questioning whether God even wanted me at Stanford." He also questioned whether God wanted him to keep running.

"It was a big identity crisis," he told The San Diego Union-Tribune. "Am I Ryan Hall the runner? Or just Ryan Hall?"

To find the answers, Hall took the winter quarter off from Stanford and returned to his family's home in Big Bear Lake, California.

That time away from school—and from the grind of training and competition—helped Hall to refocus. With the aid of his family and girlfriend Sara Bei, a track teammate at Stanford, Hall came to realize that he had been putting his feet before his faith, rather than simply putting feet to his faith.

"Running had become my God," Hall says in an autobiographical video at GodTube.com. "Even though I knew Jesus, I wasn't looking to him to find the satisfaction that I was so desperately seeking. My sense of worth and joy was totally dependent on how well I was running. The result was frustration, worry, depression, and discontentment with life."

Over the following weeks and months, Hall again found joy in running as he began to understand that "it isn't the records, championships, or medals that make life fulfilling. It's a life of following Christ. When I'm following Christ closely, there's a contentment and satisfaction in my life that is far greater and more enduring than any good race I've ever run."

Hall has run plenty of very good races since that dark night of the soul. So good, in fact, that at the age of 25, he's already the fastest American-born marathoner in history.

He's not going to the Olympics alone. Sara—whom Ryan married in 2005—is also Beijing-bound, at least as a spouse, and possibly as a fellow athlete. Sara hoped to qualify in the 1500 meters, but the trials were held after we went to press. (Find out if she made the team at usatf.org.)

Along with running, Ryan and Sara share a desire to serve God. "Our long-term vision is to figure out how to use running in such a way that we can affect other people's lives and inspire other kids," says Ryan.

One way they do that is as members of Team World Vision, helping to raise awareness and money to support children and families in Africa's aids-impacted communities (worldvision.org/team).