The most proficient runner of his technology takes the surprising route again house

One afternoon in May, as a chilly rain pelted the roof of his brother’s rural house, Henry Rono sipped a mug of tea and mirrored on what he referred to as his best achievement.

To most working followers — particularly those that got here of age throughout the Seventies, the game’s increase years — his signature accomplishment would appear apparent. Stifled by the Kenyan boycotts of the 1976 and 1980 Summer Games, Rono by no means skilled Olympic glory. But his 1978 season was one of the outstanding ones in observe historical past.

Over 81 days, as a 26-year-old Washington State sophomore, he set world data in 4 occasions: the three,000 meters, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and three,000-meter steeplechase. It was a feat achieved by nobody else earlier than or since: Rarely does a runner with the stamina to interrupt new floor over 25 laps have the pace to take action over 7 1/2 laps with obstacles. Yet to Rono, a long time later, its significance barely registers. Instead, he’s proudest of a interval later in life when he enrolled in a group faculty and eventually achieved what he stated had lengthy eluded him: a mastery of English.

“Running to me was second nature,” he stated. “Education was my weakness.”

If Rono’s angle towards his data defies conference, it’s in character: In the almost half-century since he first left Kiptaragon, a set of small farmsteads within the Nandi Hills of the high-altitude Rift Valley area of Kenya, his life has unfolded as a outstanding, if largely unintended, “Forrest Gump”-style journey — one which has taken him from the top of athletics to the depths of habit and to just about each nook of the United States in between.

Today, after greater than three a long time away, he’s again in Kenya, lastly sober, among the many avocado timber and bougainvillea flowers of his youth. Rono is hardly settled: He had returned anticipating a job teaching up-and-coming athletes, however native officers instructed him on arrival there was no room within the finances. He is essentially estranged from his spouse and two kids, who dwell on the properties he purchased on the peak of his working profession. Still, at 70, he’s way over the fallen hero he has come to characterize inside the world of elite working.

“Henry’s such a more complex and endearing figure than he’s usually depicted,” stated Tomas Radcliffe, a professor of English at Central New Mexico Community College, who edited Rono’s self-published memoir. “His goals and motivations are pure to him. That may be the most exceptional thing about him.”

Rono’s early years have been marked by tragedy. A bicycle accident left him unable to stroll till age 6. His father’s demise in a tractor accident round that point meant the household struggled: Rono was out and in of college for years as his mom scraped collectively charges. He was drawn to working by the point he accomplished seventh grade at age 19, impressed by Kipchoge Keino, who hailed from a close-by village. Keino’s 1,500-meter win on the 1968 Olympics ushered in an age of Kenyan working dominance, one which Rono would quickly be a part of.

His expertise blossomed when he was recruited by the military, through which his duties consisted primarily of coaching. Rono’s huge break got here earlier than the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He was named to the Kenyan squad and anticipated to be a significant menace within the 5,000 meters and the steeplechase. But Kenya’s authorities introduced an Eleventh-hour boycott, becoming a member of most African international locations in protesting the inclusion of New Zealand, whose nationwide rugby group was touring apartheid South Africa.

“I thought this man would come home with two golds,” stated Keino, who had been teaching the Kenyan group in Canada earlier than the boycott was introduced.

There was solace: After a 1973 courtroom ruling scuttled an NCAA rule that positioned limits on international athletes thought-about “over-age,” American faculty coaches have been more and more recruiting Africans, significantly in observe. Two months after lacking the Montreal Games, regardless of by no means having been to highschool, Rono discovered himself in Pullman, Washington, the place a younger coach, John Chaplin, was nurturing a proficient group of Kenyan runners.

As Rono struggled to regulate to education and life within the United States, working was his technique to “release tension.” By his second 12 months of coaching within the Snake River Canyon, he shifted into a brand new gear. Rono didn’t merely break 4 world data: He obliterated them in low-key meets with little competitors, on a food plan of cheeseburgers and Budweiser. His stride wasn’t essentially the most sleek. But his willpower and barrel-chested power have been unmatched.

“I could tell him exactly what to run, exactly how to do it, and he would do it,” Chaplin stated.

It was after that climax, in most accounts of Rono’s life, that the drawn-out, tragic denouement started. Although there have been a number of extra moments of glory, together with a 1981 season that started with a beer stomach and ended with one other 5,000-meter world report, his luster light rapidly.

Despite a school diploma and a contract with Nike, he receded right into a cocoon of non-public struggles. Disheartened by friction with athletics officers again house, he started consuming with rising regularity. Like many Kenyan stars of future generations, he was careless with cash: He misplaced observe of financial institution accounts, had money stolen on airplanes and was lured into dangerous investments by con artists. Soon, he was drifting throughout the United States, out and in of associates’ visitor rooms and alcohol-addiction rehab. He parked automobiles in Portland, Oregon, rang the bell for the Salvation Army in Salt Lake City and pushed individuals in wheelchairs on the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

There have been extra uplifting intervals. In the Nineties, after settling in New Mexico, he hung out as a special-education trainer and coach. He skilled faculty athletes within the Navajo Nation and aspiring elites in Albuquerque and was invited for a stint in Yemen to develop national-caliber athletes there. Kris Houghton and Solomon Kandie, runners based mostly in New Mexico who set private bests underneath his steering, described him as a “wise sage” with a reverence for hills and deep appreciation for the game’s psychological elements. “He loves the pureness of someone seeking to better themselves,” Houghton stated.

It was round that point, nonetheless missing confidence in English, his third language, that Rono went again to high school, ultimately progressing to lessons on poetry, superior grammar and inventive writing earlier than publishing his 2010 memoir, “Olympic Dream.” Only one of many e-book’s 29 chapters particulars his famed 1978 season.

“He never talked about the records,” Chaplin stated. “He was not someone to go around and beat his chest and say ‘how great I am.’”

Eventually, as Rono aged and paying lease turned a higher wrestle, Kenya started calling. In 2019, for the primary time since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he stepped foot within the nation of his beginning, settling into his brother’s house on the identical plot because the thatched hut the place they grew up. Not the whole lot has gone as deliberate: Disputes along with his household over his properties, together with a farm and a home in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, have left him resentful. He longs to return to teaching. Aside from church and journeys to the sauna — he has all the time preached the virtues of sweating — Rono hardly ever ventures out.

Still, as he narrates his tales of previous journey, he additionally initiatives a way of contentment — and appreciation for what working has given him, even when his data meant much less to him than they did to followers of the game.

Running, he stated, opened a path: to a world past Kiptaragon village and to an surprising route again.