Dathan Ritzenhein--an American distance running legend who shares a birthday with Nick Symmonds, LeBron James, Gordon Mack, and me--will wait until 2020 to try to make his fourth Olympic team. After dropping out of the Olympic Trials marathon in February, Ritzenhein told the Grand Rapids Press that he would not pursue a last chance Trials qualifier in the 10K. After the ​Press ​headlined its story "Dathan Ritzenhein comes to grips that Olympic run is over," Ritz took to social media to clarify: ​

Just on pause for 2016! @Tokyo2020. @runmeb is my inspiration for that! https://t.co/vm3BepbwjF

— Dathan Ritzenhein (@djritzenhein) June 22, 2016

The Michigan-based Ritzenhein will be 37 in 2020; Keflezighi finished second in the Trials marathon and qualified for Rio less than three months before his 41st birthday.

Ritz qualified for the 2004 and 2012 Olympics in the 10K and the 2008 Games in the marathon. His best Olympic finish was 9th in the '08 marathon, though perhaps his most groundbreaking achievement in a career full of them was running a 12:56 5K in 2009. No American athlete had broken 13:00 for 5000m in thirteen years; after Ritz's new American record, Bernard Lagat, Galen Rupp, Chris Solinsky, and Matt Tegenkamp all went sub-13:00 in the next three years. 

That's just my favorite Ritz moment, though. You could easily pick his 2001 world junior cross country bronze medal--at a time when Americans simply weren't competitive in such races-- or 2009 60:00 half marathon. The man has spent an entire career doing impossible things, and he has four years left to do one more.