Q&A: Getting to Know Two American 'Kenyan-Born' Runners
And why that phrase makes them crazy.
This past week we chatted with Johanna Garton about her book, ‘All in Stride’ — which follows the stories of two runners, Shadrack Kipchirchir and Elvin Kibet, who were born in Kenya and came to the U.S. to run in college and then joined the U.S. Army’s World Class Athlete Program, along with the story of a third athlete who was part of the program, Sammy Schultz.
For a lot of our members this book was one of their favorites that we’ve read because it was written in the style of a novel (though heavily reported non-fiction), which allowed a unique chance to really get to know two athletes you otherwise might not know much about and to follow their stories from small villages in Kenya, truly growing up running barefoot to and from school, to the complete culture shock of coming to a large four-year U.S. university.
And it’s always easier to follow and root for athletes once you know them!
Here’s the Q&A from our Book Club this past week.
How did you first meet Shadrack Kipchirchir and Elvin Kibet, and decide you wanted to tell their story?
I love this part, because there’s always a story within a story. I’m a long-distance runner. My last book was about a mountaineer, a badass female mountaineer, but this time I wanted to do a running story. And I was speaking with an Olympic historian, who mentioned the World Class Athlete Program, that’s part of the US Army. He was sort of describing the program and that there was a distance running component and the runners were based in Colorado Springs, and he said, ‘You’re a runner, this is really up your alley, you should look into it.’
Then I went to one of their workouts, in 2021, and they were getting ready for the U.S. Olympic Trials, and I met a bunch of the athletes, including Shadrack Kipchirchir. And he just started telling me his story, and I just got absorbed in his story and it sort of unraveled from there.
It took a long long time to sell the book. I have my theories, and of course one of them is that it’s the story of two Black Americans. Once I had a supportive publisher, I just knew that, as an author, I had to do the best I could and I didn’t want to sugarcoat anything, because there are so few opportunities, there just aren’t any books out there about Black American long-distance runners. I wanted to be as authentic as I could in telling their stories.
Once you met them and wanted to write a story about them, how do you report that? Did you go to Kenya, talk to their families — there was a lot of stuff from their childhoods, etc?
I go really deep when I write a book. From beginning to end, the whole thing took two-and-a-half years; the writing itself probably took about six months. I went back and forth to Colorado Springs more times than I can count, because that’s where the three athletes live, and just spent an enormous amount of time interviewing them. And interviewing their friends and families and teammates, their college coaches. That was mostly by Zoom.
And then I did go to Kenya and spent about three weeks on the ground with Shadrack. It was during one of his training blocks, so that was fantastic because I was able to meet all of the family members who still live there and travel to both of their villages, which was so instrumental. It really helped me write all of those Kenya scenes, what that looked like, smells, sounds, what people looked like. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do the book justice if I didn’t get to spent time in Kenya.
It’s interesting, on the one hand, it’s almost a stereotype at this point of ‘oh, in Kenya, they run to school barefoot,’ but that’s actually what they did.
That was one of the things I was kind of intrigued by, because I thought it was hyperbole, or just kind of an urban myth. And I think now it is the case that that doesn’t happen so much anymore because of technology, but you have to remember this was 10, 15 years ago, even 20 years, because they’re in their mid-30s now.
At that point that really was what happened. They really did run back and forth to school, including back and forth at lunch, so every day they had 15, 20 miles on their legs, which is crazy.
Elvin and Shadrack talk about how they grew up in poverty and came here, but is there a sense that their story was unique in Kenya? Was that considered extreme poverty or was it more the norm?
Yeah, that’s a great question. That was very much the norm. What was out of the norm was that all the pieces fell in place for both Shadrack and Elvin to be in the right place at the right time in the right physical condition, to be at tracks with these American college coaches doing recruiting and be seen on the day they had a great race, and then off they go to the United States. So that part was a bit of luck. But in terms of their environment and how they grew up, that was totally normal and on some level still is to a certain extent.
When you say it’s luck that makes it sound like there are a lot of people in Kenyan who are trying to do it and it doesn’t quite line up for them.
Yes, that is very true. I think a lot of Kenyan teenagers assume ‘If I’m just really good at running that’ll be my meal ticket.’ And for a lot of them it is. But for the majority of people who get to the U.S. there is a component of luck, and there also has to be a pretty high academic level. They have to be incredible students to get into American universities, because of course they’re not just coming to run, they’re coming to study. So there are a lot of factors in play.
I hadn’t thought as much about the academic element until I was reading the book, but I could see how that would be a factor.
Definitely. A lot of them actually start in community college because they can’t handle the academic rigor that United States’ universities require, but they’re these fantastic runners. So they come in on a two-year scholarship, and then they transfer into an American four-year school their last two years.
It was also fascinating the lack of running some of them did seriously before they were able to get scholarship. I feel like Elvin just put in three or six months, or something like that, of serious training. I can’t imagine that. Was she just really good, or does that happen more often than I realize?
I think a little bit of both. You’re right that she ran back and forth to school, so she did have miles on her legs, but she never considered that running, she just considered that a mode of transportation. So in terms of actually running competitively and trying to learn about pacing and eating, you’re right, it was really only a few months.
The thing I always come back to is that the longevity of her career has been amazing. When you look at American kids who started running when they’re 10 years old and then go through middle school and high school, and by the time they finish high school or college, certainly if they’ve run in college, they’re often kind of burned out. Whereas Elvin was really just starting when she was 19 years old, so I think that longevity piece has been important.
Is she still running? I couldn’t tell.
A little bit. She ran the U.S. Olympic Marathon Team Trials, and that was her last big race. Now she’s transitioning, I think, into nursing school and into running for fun.
In the book, we got a lot more about her story, when she came over here and was trying to get her bearings in Arizona. And I hadn’t really thought, either, about how many things you wouldn’t know about — like central heating, ice water. In my head, I’m thinking ‘oh well there are phones and computers when I’ve been places where I didn’t know the people or language,’ but that wasn’t really the case as much for them. How did they kind of handle that amount of culture shock?
It was a lot. I think for Shadrack it was slightly easier because his brother was there, and kind of took him under his wing and that helped a ton. But when Elvin came, she was a duck out of water really for many months. And had great roommates and teammates, who kind of shepherded her along. And then Shadrack, of course, came into the picture about six months after she arrived and he was a big help. But it was a lot.
Was there a thing here where she was like ‘I just don’t get it, it just does not make sense to me?’
She really did not understand the eating thing and the food thing. She really didn’t understand why, when she came to the United States, and was with her team and they would go out to meals, why they wouldn’t just eat as much as they possibly could. Because she had come from a culture of scarcity, where food was really hard to get. And so when she was here and could eat anything she wanted, she did. She just ate everything, which was good to a certain extent because she was competing at this high level. And she watched her teammates eating salad, and she just didn’t understand that from a nutritional standpoint and from a pure opportunity standpoint.
It was also interesting how the concept of institutionalized racism, the way it exists in the U.S., just wasn’t something they understood. I’m sure there are different groups of people that have similar biases in Kenya, but it’s not the same. And it’s hard to explain to somebody.
I talked a lot about that with Coach Li because the moment it really came up was that moment Elvin went out for a run and this little tiny four-year-old girl was using racist slurs and screaming at her, and she literally didn’t understand what that was. Her coach was the one who sort of had to say, ‘this is racism.’
And she needed a big explanation, then started from square one and took all of these classes in college to kind of understand for herself where this came from.
Does she feel, do they feel, like they have a better understanding of the U.S.? Now that they’ve decided to stay here and live here, and they’ve had to learn more about it that someone who necessarily grew up here, do they feel like they really understand the U.S. now?
I think they feel like they understand big important things, like racism, a lot better than those of us who have white skin and were born and raised in the U.S. I think that’s probably true.
I don’t know that they would say one country is better than the other. I get this question a lot: Where do they consider home and what is better. And that was one of the things I really wanted to focus on in the book that they came to the U.S. and their life isn’t dreaming and peachy, they really had to struggle. They had a wonderful life in Kenya, as you could see from the first part of the book, so it was really just a matter of exchanging one set of challenges, like poverty, for another set of challenges, like racism.
Why do you think they decided, after college, to stick with running and to stick with the U.S.?
A lot of their friends who came over here on running scholarships didn’t stay after college. In fact, Elvin’s brother, the instant he graduated college, was on a plane back to Kenya the next day. I think, though, they saw the opportunity that this country could provide, and knew they’d probably have more financial opportunity in terms of running if they stayed in the U.S. rather than going back to Kenya. They also both had families who were really pushing them to leave Kenya, and had siblings in other countries all over the world, so they kind of had a blueprint for what they did.
The Army World Class Athlete Program: I actually thought they were always good at running. I didn’t realize the distance running component was as new as it is. And now it does seem like it’s attracted a lot of runners who came from other countries and want to be a part of this program. Do you think that was the intention? How is it working now?
The World Class Athlete Program, itself, has been around for many decades. The distance running component really did only kind of bubble up and become prominent at that 2016 Olympic Trials. So 2014, ‘15, ‘16 is when it kind of exploded and that was because at that time there was a program in the Army fast tracked individuals who came into the Army with special language skills, and one of the languages was Swahili. So a lot of Kenyans could enter the program and get citizenship like in a matter of months.
Then, they could also join the WCAP program, if they met the standards, and keep running. So it kind of met a lot of different needs.
I think, now, why it continues to attract a lot of foreign-born athletes — even though the special language skills program in the Army has been disbanded — is still because the path to citizenship is very enticing. I also think it’s very difficult for foreign-born athletes of color to get sponsors or get on teams, for better or worse. It’s harder for them, because of the color of their skin, to get sponsored.
And then, also, I do think a lot of them really do feel indebted to the United States and really do want to serve this country. That’s certainly why Shadrack joined in the first place, before he knew that running was an option and that the WCAP program was an option. He really did join to serve the United States. And then a lot of them stay after their four-year contracts are up.
Is he still running?
He finished his four-year contract with the Army in 2018, and then had a choice and took a contract with Nike through 2022. And now he’s running for Puma. He ran the Olympic Marathon Trials in February, but he’s not doing track right now because he’s moved onto the marathon.
I feel like part of the reason you were writing the book was to tell the stories of some of these runners. I know a lot of running fans have a hard time keeping the “Kenyan-born” runners straight and don’t know their stories. Which makes it harder to follow them.
That was part of the impetus in writing the book, because I wanted to showcase that there aren’t just “Kenyan-born” runners, because we hear that all the time and it drives them insane because they do love Kenya but they’re American. So having “Kenyan-born” next to their name forever makes them crazy.
I think it’s just we have a hard time distinguishing people of color. And they’re all tall and skinny. The first day I showed up at the track, that’s how I felt, I was trying to understand and keep track of who was who. And it’s just because my eyes and brain are not adjusted because I live in a community that’s full of white people.
Has the book helped get their story out? Have they had a response where more people now are like ‘Oh I know who you are, so now I can follow you?’
They have, especially Elvin, which has been great. Now the trick is to sustain it and to hope the media picks up on the incredible stories that aren’t being told.
I was also looking at the list of world rankings recently, going into the Olympics, and it’s like ‘Kenya, Kenya, Kenya,’ 10 of the top 20 runners in the world are from Kenya. Do they feel a pressure with that? At home, are they just another fast runner? I can’t imagine being from a country where you’re that good at something and you’re doing that thing, but for a different country.
I don’t know, I’ve never asked them how that feels in terms of pressure when they go back to Kenya. I do know they’re celebrities when they go back, because they’ve “made it” in the United States, and they have money. So they’re sort of getting pulled in different directions and people want money from them, etc.
But I think, on some level, it’s also kind of nice because they’re able to blend in a bit more and join these big training groups where there are lots of runners who are at their level and they all look the same, so they’re not sticking out as much as they do here.
I went to one of Shadrack’s long runs in Kenya, with him and one of his training groups, and it was just the most beautiful magnificent thing I’ve ever seen to have them out running on those dirt roads and they’re barely breathing and they just have these gorgeous strides. It’s impressive.