How Mary Keitany Went From Maid to Marathon Champion – The New York Times

In the video, Mary Keitany’s feet rhythmically patter on a lifeless stretch of Kaptuli Road on the outskirts of Iten, Kenya, nearly 8,000 feet above sea level. She carries her 5-foot-2, 93-pound frame with an effortless cadence alongside her three male training partners during their 20-mile run. The New York City Marathon is five weeks away.

Her alarm buzzed at 4 a.m. this day. Dedication has shaped Keitany, a 37-year-old mother and businesswoman who has won four times in New York and is the defending champion. She is the favorite on Sunday in a field that includes Des Linden of the United States, a two-time Olympian and the 2018 Boston Marathon champion, and Worknesh Degefa of Ethiopia, who won in Boston this year.

“Most ladies fear her because they know she’s faster,” said Charles Koech, Keitany’s husband, training partner and coach. Koech and their two children, Jared, 11, and Samantha, 6, travel with Keitany to most of her races.

Keitany is one of Kenya’s most accomplished runners, with seven major marathon victories, including three in London and the four in New York. Her career best is 2 hours 17 minutes 1 second, at the 2017 London Marathon, the third fastest marathon by a woman. Her winning time of 2:22:48 last year in New York was three minutes faster than her competition and the second best women’s time in the race’s history. She is the only woman other than Grete Waitz to have won New York four times or more.

This life and the means it has provided her to tote her family around the world is far removed from her impoverished upbringing in the countryside of Baringo County, Kenya.

Her success still surprises her when she considers the financial hardship that forced her to quit running and school at age 15 so she could earn a living for her family. She took a job as a maid to help support her parents.

“I was not even imagining that I could run and that I could become a champion,” Keitany said of the two-year disruption in her running career as a teenager.

Her story illustrates just how far many of the world’s top marathoners have to travel to get from their humble beginnings to the pinnacle of their sport. One of six siblings, she lived at home with her younger brother, Benjamin, while her sisters, Ann, Priscah, Sarah and Subi, each lived with various neighbors because their parents could not afford to feed them all.

Every day, Keitany would walk two kilometers carrying a pail, hoisting her scrawny body uphill to retrieve water from a nearby river for cooking and drinking. A donkey would have eased the demanding effort, but it was an inconceivable expense for her parents, Juda and Jane Chepkeitany, both farmers. They had no electricity, sometimes little food, and not nearly enough money for a pair of shoes to protect Keitany’s feet as she ran 10 kilometers each way to Country Blue Primary School.

Keitany realized she was a naturally gifted runner, but with no means to pay secondary school fees, she accepted an offer to move in with a family in the area who had hired her to work as a live-in servant and to care for three children, all younger than 7. Her days were filled with getting them ready for school in the morning, making batches of ugali, an African cornmeal porridge, washing the family’s clothes, scrubbing dishes and keeping the house clean. The agenda as caretaker left no time for running.

“It was not an easy job,” Keitany said. “But I was getting money to give to my parents. I was thinking, ‘If I don’t do this, then what?’”

Keitany said she would often go a month, sometimes three, without seeing her family. When she had enough money, she would walk for two hours to her parents’ home and buy whatever supplies they needed.

“I couldn’t go home empty-handed,” she recalled.

A door opened when Keitany’s distant relative helped get her into the National Hidden Talents Academy, a private secondary school in Dagoretti Constituency in Nairobi County for underserved youth. The opportunity allowed Keitany to become a full-time student and athlete.

She resumed running, gradually regaining endurance and speed. In 2006, after finishing secondary school, she opted to pursue running as a career, thanks in part with help from her mentor, Linah Chesire, a former Kenyan competitive runner who connected her with three other up-and-coming elites. Keitany lived with them in a cramped one-bedroom house during her first eight months in Iten, a haven for long-distance runners because of its high altitude setting, which is ideal for training.

She won her first international competition, the Seville Half Marathon, less than a year later. The experience motivated her, and made her realize how much further she could take her career. Her family was depending on her.

Keitany also uses some of her race earnings to support development in her community. She collaborated with Shoe4Africa, a nonprofit founded by the former elite runner Toby Tanser, which funded a school in her hometown in fall 2018.

So far it features four classrooms and serves 40 students, but the goal is to build additional labs for biology and chemistry as well as a dorm to house students and student-athletes. Keitany and Koech are board members of the school.

At this point in her career, Keitany is looking ahead to the 2020 Olympics. She desperately wants to make Kenya’s Olympic team for the first time, an accomplishment that can be as much about politics as it is about athletic accomplishment in her country

“There are many talented athletes, so you never know who will be chosen,” she said.

Adding a fifth New York City Marathon title would bring her one step closer.