Army soldier Elkanah Kibet follows unique path to Olympic marathon trials

LOS ANGELES — The marathoner’s legs speak. Angrily.

Twenty-four hours pass without running, and Elkanah Kibet said he feels an ache in his hamstrings and calves. Forty-eight hours pass without running, and the pain intensifies. Seventy-two hours pass and, well, Kibet’s legs would not tolerate such neglect.

Run, the legs order Kibet.

They have carried him on a unique journey, from rural Kenya to the U.S. Army and now onto the eve of the U.S. Olympic Marathon Team Trials here Saturday. The top three finishers in the men’s and women’s races will earn spots on the Olympic team and a chance to compete in the Rio Games in August.

That incentive is sweeter than what motivated Kibet, 32, when he was in grade school. Back then, the fear of a cane propelled him on the 2.5-mile trek to school. He usually left the house at 7:20 a.m.

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“If you walk and by 7:45 you’re not (at school), you get caned," Kibet told USA TODAY Sports. “So you have to be fast."

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The threat of the cane hovered over him like the blistering Kenyan sun, with Kibet running back home for lunch, back to school for the afternoon and back home one last time to tend to the family’s sheep — Kibet running about 10 miles a day.

On the weekends, his family dispatched him to pick up meat for dinner at a store about three miles away. There was no dawdling. Kibet ran, and his father timed the son’s fleet pace.

His father wasn’t the only one who took note of Kibet’s fast-moving legs.

After finishing high school, Kibet met Pete Watson, then a coach at Auburn and visiting Kenya while looking for prospective runners. He offered Kibet a scholarship.

“He is the most positive person I have ever met in my life,’’ said Watson, and that positivity was tested.

Kibit failed to meet qualifications at a Div. I college and soon he found himself living in a cabin while attending Rend Lake (Ill.) College. Only one other Kenyan was on the squad.

Two years later, he transferred to Auburn but never reached NCAA championship level. Top Kenyans who wanted to stay in the United States were accepted into Army’s World Class Athlete Program (WCAP) that allowed them to train full time.

Kibet had to enlist as a regular soldier. They issued him boots, not running shoes, and his legs' need to run got complicated.

He trained in Iraq when he was deployed as a member of the Army’s 82nd Financial Management Support Unit. He trained in Kuwait, too, until he was told the area was considered high-risk, no matter how much his legs demanded to run.

On four-days weekends, Kibet said, he regularly told his perplexed commander that he was staying on the base so he could train.

“She thought it was weird,’’ Kibet said of his Army commander. “She thought I’d run too much.”

His journey became a marathon, and eventually so did his preferred race. He ran his 26.2-mile race in October at the Chicago Marathon, where he finished seventh and in 2:11:31, an eye-popping time for a marathoner’s debut.

Then he promptly reported for Warrior Leader Course, a four-week Army immersion course that required soldiers start the day 5 a.m. Kibet was up at 3:45 a.m., so he could get in his daily run.

In late December, he was at last accepted into WCAP, a military unit whose primary mission is to support nationally and internationally ranked soldiers.

“One of the things that struck me very quickly is he very much had the mentality that nothing was going to stop him from accomplishing his goals,’’ said Maj. Daniel Browne, coach of the WCAP track-and-field unit. “That commitment is something that falls right in line with all the Army values that we hold dear.’’

Appropriately enough on Thursday, Kibet, who became a U.S. citizen in 2013, arrived at a media event wearing an Army cap and a camouflage-green and black vest.

Reporting to duty.

“I’m  soldier who lives to run,’’ said Kibet, who takes orders from his superiors and those demanding legs.