Talon took up running in the sixth grade. He knew he was fast from playing soccer as well, but when he won the first 5,000-meter race he ever ran, in a time of 21:21, “for a sixth grader that seemed pretty good,” he says, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Hull’s father is in the military and thus his family moved around frequently when he was young. When he started running, it was while living in Portland, and there was also a short time spent in Tacoma during middle school, which gave Talon a good impression of the Pacific Northwest.
Moving to Utah in eighth grade, Hull developed into one of the top recruits in the country. He made Foot Locker Nationals, one of the two premier national cross country championships, as a junior and finished 37th. The next year, Hull won the West Region title and was fourth at the national meet.
A runner that took fourth at Foot Locker Nationals, not to mention third in the 2-mile at the Brooks PR Invite, would typically have a trophy case packed with state titles. Hull was a little unlucky in that regard.
He happened to be in the same state and the same class as Casey Clinger, the 2016 Gatorade National Cross Country Athlete of the Year and the Nike Cross National Champion.
When asked about his high school rival, Hull was self-deprecating. “You could call it a rivalry but I never beat him so it was a little one-sided,” he says. “It was really motivating for me. Every single time I’d race him I’d never come in with a mindset that I would lose to him, but that’s always what happened. He was just better than me, and I did everything I could to beat him, every single time I raced him, but he was just better. So every single time I lost to him that just motivated me to work harder.
“So even though I never ended up winning any state races I ended up doing really well when I didn’t race him. I don’t think I would have been as fast as I was if it weren’t for him.”
Hull took visits to Washington, California, and Georgetown, but ultimately decided on UW being the right fit.
“Seattle’s a really urban area but UW is kind of outside of the city, and other schools I looked at were very central in the city and I didn’t like that as much, and neither area was as great for running as Seattle is,” he says.
He came in considering a Business major but now is planning to major in Public Health, with a goal of being a physical therapist.
“I’ve always been really interested in physiology and anatomy, and training and how that applies to running.”