My thought is that it was an obvious misspeak. If you are in a fish bowl and were going to intentionally exaggerate something about this, you would do so in a more believable manner (3 and a half hours, for instance) rather than saying something that would attract disbelief and fact-checking.
If Ryan were still running marathons then it would be hard to justify such an error, since he would be more aware of what is merely a decent time and what is an incredible time. But apparently he only ran one marathon and that was over 20 years ago.
Also, this wasn’t a tidbit thrown into the middle of a prepared speech. When i first saw the headline, i thought that it was a part of his convention speech, a part which i had missed for whatever reason. So i was thinking how stupid, for if it had been an innocent error it should have been caught and corrected ahead of time.
Instead, it was him speaking off the cuff about something that occurred years ago. These things happen and happen innocently in most cases. Certainly his mind has been focused on much more important things in the intervening years. The only thing that would be worrisome to me is if there is a pattern of him claiming a sub 3 hour time.
well at least he hasn’t written 2 autobiographies filled with “composite” characters and stories.