- June 23rd, 2008, 9:55 am
#182344
I'm not sure who else he is training with this summer up in the Colorado Rockies. But I'm sure someone on the board could fill us in. And I'm liking his summertime eyewear ...
Kenyan speedster wins Strawberry Shortcut 10K in Glenwood SpringsEnough about the race, this is the more interesting to part to most of us ...
Jason Graham wins third straight 5K
By Jeff Caspersen
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado — As one spectator aptly put it, Sam Chelanga looked as if he were on skates.
The Kenyan, in Colorado for the summer to train for the upcoming college cross-country and track and field season, blitzed a mostly local field at the 31st annual Strawberry Shortcut 10-kilometer foot race in downtown Glenwood Springs Sunday morning.
“He was just playing with us,” said Bernie Boettcher, whose time of 35 minutes, 9.24 seconds garnered a silver finish. “The first mile he was just looking over his shoulder. After a mile and a quarter, he stopped at an aid station to get a drink and dropped back and then, all of a sudden, he came up behind us and just goes whoosh. He picked up more than 50 yards in a quarter mile on us.”
That didn’t slow anyone too much, especially Chelanga, who is renting a place in Leadville with a couple of Liberty teammates for a summer of high-altitude training. They’ve been in town for three days and are finding the altitude challenging.Click Here for Full Story
“It’s painful,” said a soft-spoken but confident Chelanga, who scoured the Internet for high-altitude training spots before settling on the Rocky Mountains. “I’m still adjusting to breathing.”
Chelanga is a native of Nairobi, Kenya, and spent the 2006-07 school year competing in track and cross country for Farleigh Dickinson University (N.J.), where he won the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional and Northeast Conference cross country titles and locked down two All-America honors.
His brother, Joshua, is a world-class marathoner.
So far, Sam is finding Colorado to his liking — particularly his mid-June trip to Glenwood Springs.
“I really liked running the race, training and pushing those guys,” he said. “They’ve probably never seen people as fast as us.”