• Photos: U.S. Half Marathon Championships

Anybody who thinks winning is everything needs to have a serious heart-to-heart with Ryan Hall and Serena Burla. The only place is first place? Forget that. Hall and Burla would tell you second can rock, too.

The men’s and women’s runners-up in the U.S. Half Marathon Championships both toed the start line Saturday morning with a skewed perspective of what really mattered and what didn't. They were thinking far outside the normal athlete's box.

Hall, the American record-holder for the 13.1 miles with a 59:43 he delivered in Houston in 2007, got out-kicked down the stretch to finish three seconds slower than the Moroccan-born Mo Trafeh’s 1:02:17, but he was beaming afterward.

“This was a super weekend for the Halls,” he said. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Except, actually, he did change one thing. Friday he had arrived at the George R. Brown Convention Center sporting a bushy beard. By race time, it was gone.

“I started shaving it off at 11 o’clock last night,” Hall said. “Took about an hour. All I had was a pair of scissors.”

Besides celebrating his new, “more aerodynamic” look – and, better still, his wife Sara’s triumph the previous evening in the Melrose Games mile in New York - Hall insisted was he thankful just to be feeling like himself again after suffering through a fatigued few months in the fall of 2010.

As for Burla, thankful couldn’t even begin to describe her emotions. So what if she had gotten dropped late and crossed 24 seconds slower than 36-year-old Jennifer Rhines’ winning time of 1:11:14.

A year ago in Houston, when Burla also placed second in the Championships, she courageously competed with a terrible, inexplicable ache in her right hamstring that almost forced her to withdraw. It wasn’t a pull, either. It was a malignant tumor.

Before trying to explain the gamut of emotions she has been through since an MRI revealed the dangerous growth and a surgeon cut it out Feb. 26, Burla warned us: “I might start crying. God saved my life and my leg. There was a time when they would have amputated it.

“It’s a mystery to me how I can still run. Sometimes things can’t be explained. It’s been a pretty moving year. Please write how grateful I am to everybody in the running community for their support. The unknown can be pretty scary. But so many people were helping me, telling me to be fearless . . . To everyone who had a positive thought or said a prayer for me, thank you.”

More amazingly, Burla had already finished 19th in the New York Marathon in November. Other than “a little compensation pain,” the repaired leg feels normal. From her smile, you got the impression she’s already counting the days until she returns next January 14 for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, which will be raced on pretty much the same Memorial Drive-Allen Parkway-downtown course that was utilized Saturday, except with two additional eight-mile loops.

The half was set up as a practice run for the whole, with most of the runners planning to return to attempt qualify for London 2012. Rhines, however, was a conspicuous exception. The three-time Olympian will focus instead on shorter distances, most likely the 5,000 meters, despite admitting, “I think road-racing is growing on me.

Nan Kennard, who placed third in 1:12:03, drove the train for the women early on, but Rhines was always lurking. Once Kennard fell back, she stayed on Burla’s heels for awhile, then charged to the fore with less than two miles to go.

Given her age and the fact that she now has to train while keeping a watchful eye on three children under the age of 10, Rhines’ story definitely had its own strong feel-good element. Trafeh’s, too. The 25-year-old naturalized citizen, who maintains a home in Casablanca, recently got married and he has also been nursing a stubborn, painful case of plantar fasciitis, an inflammation in the arch of the foot.

“I wasn’t fit enough for the race,” he argued. “I was just hanging in there.”

That’s all he had to do. Early leader Patrick Smyth, the 2010 runner-up, couldn’t hold his pace and wound up third, 15 seconds back. And Hall, despite being a superb strider, isn’t known for his home-stretch acceleration. Further, he had warned beforehand that he wasn’t going to kill himself for a victory, given his physical issues of late.

The race had two purposes for him that outranked adding a third U.S. Half Marathon championship to his résumé. He wanted to reconnaissance the course for ‘011 and to make sure he’s where he needs to be prepared for the Boston Marathon in April.

“I got exactly what I was looking for,” he said, “a competitive race and (the opportunity) to stick my nose in it."

Because his wife has a long history of near misses, Sara Hall’s New York triumph had already made Hall’s day, no matter what transpired on the streets of Houston. Watching her win on TV, he admitted he got a little teary-eyed.

“This was exactly 10 years after she won that (Melrose) race in high school,” he said. “It was so satisfying for me. If one of us was going to win, it needed to be her.”

The missus was on a plane to Houston while he was running – they’ll be making promotional appearances at the Expo Sunday during the Chevron Houston Marathon - so she didn’t yet know how his race had played out. It won’t matter in the least, though. She was going to be delighted, and surprised, to see him.

“Sara,” Hall said, “never did like my beard.”

dale.robertson@chron.com