Friday, August 13, 2010

Berihun the Marathoner

The blog has been dormant a full year, but Berihun has not. Since last summer Berihun has developed into a full-time professional marathoner. He has been working on building results and adapting to the longer distance in a series of international events that will hopefully take him to his dream of competing in the 2011 World Championships at the end of next summer in South Korea, and the Olympics in London in summer 2012.

Back in April, Berihun joined an impressive contingent of five Israeli runners who placed 22-26 consecutively in the Paris Marathon (click the right "voir les resultats" here). Amazing to see "Israel" listed as the largest bunch of elite finishers after Kenya and Ethiopia, well above the host French.

More recently, Berihun just returned from the 2010 European Athletic Championships in blistering Barcelona. The men's marathon on August 1st was run in brutal heat, about 90 degrees Fahrenheit with 67 percent humidity. Many of the top runners and 20-25 percent of the entire field dropped out. Berihun was determined to finish, even if his time was significantly hurt by the weather conditions.

Berihun will be home for the New Year holidays before traveling back to a training camp in October to prepare for some local Israeli races later in the fall. We'll be with him the whole way. Stay tuned and stay in touch.