Rejoice! It’s a Beautiful Day

Hard Work and Long, Hard Miles Led Meb Keflezighi to Athens and to a Sterling- Silver Day.

ix weeks before the 2004 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, Mebrahtom Keflezighi, one of the prerace favorites, phoned his long-time coach, Bob Larsen, to inform him that he would be withdrawing from the February 7 competition.

Keflezighi, affectionately known as “Meb” throughout the running community, had been enduring the worst of all possible luck in his preparations. First, he was battling a variety of physical ailments, including tendinitis in one knee and then the other. Then, to make matters even worse, he had come down with a horrific case of the flu that had prevented him from running for three full weeks.

Larsen, though, who also happened to be the 2004 U.S. Olympic team men’s distance coach, convinced his runner that it was still too early to make that type of decision.

Debilitated by his influenza and with a rapidly shrinking window of time in which to ready himself, Keflezighi made the commitment to train as minimally as possible. There would be no 100-mile weeks and no runs exceeding 20 miles. For the longest of stretches, in fact, the distance star was reduced to biking more than running.

“Tt was difficult,’ Keflezighi admits, recalling his mind-set while approaching the start line on a blustery winter morning in Birmingham, Alabama. ““You’re not sure if you’re going to hit The Wall early. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

What happened, though, defied probability.

Not only did Keflezighi earn one of the three coveted spots on the U.S. team, but he also somehow managed to run virtually lock step for some 26 miles with eventual winner Alan Culpepper—losing by a mere five seconds over the final sprint.

Six months later, on August 29, Keflezighi again stunned the marathon world by earning a silver medal at the Olympic Games. In doing so, he became the first American male marathoner to reach the awards podium since 1976.

Upon reflection, though, perhaps Keflezighi’s feats at both the Trials and the Olympics shouldn’t be that much of a surprise because his entire life—and especially his running career—has been defined by his achieving the seemingly improbable.

A LONG AND WINDING ROAD

Keflezighi (pronounced Ka-FLEZ-gee) was born on May 5, 1975, in Eritrea, a small underdeveloped East African nation with a population of some 4 million. He was one of 11 children, and his memories of childhood are punctuated by a lack of electricity and endless farm duties.

“We had a lot of chores,” he says. “I was always busy taking care of cattle and collecting wood for fires.”

Eritrea, at the time, was in the midst of a three-decade-long war with neighboring Ethiopia. Keflezighi’s father struck off on his own to neighboring Sudan to try to make a better life for his family and to help save his sons from a perilous life in the military. After a taxing work tenure in Sudan, he moved even farther away from home, to Europe, and labored at multiple jobs in Italy to accumulate enough money for his family to join him. It would be four very long years before the Keflezighi family was reunited.

© Photo Run

A Silver medalist Meb Keflezighi (left) on the victory stand with fellow medalists.