Cheeromei wins his first Virginia Ten-Miler.

Publication: News & Advance (Lynchburg, VA)

COPYRIGHT 2007 The News & Advance

Byline: Ted Allen

Sep. 30--Runners with Lynchburg ties finished first, third and fifth in Saturday's 34th annual Virginia Ten Miler, with Liberty University graduate student David Cheeromei out-kicking fellow Kenyan Wilson Chepkwony to the finish line.

Cheeromei, the cousin of Paul Tergat who set the men's marathon world record of 2 hours, 4 minutes, 55 seconds in Berlin in 2003, completed the challenging Ten Miler course in 52:26. That was nearly 30 seconds faster than Chepkwony (52:55), who ran a personal best 2:14 in a marathon in Europe this summer.

"He's been running marathons," said Cheeromei, who paced off Chepkwony for much of the race before surging ahead of him near Holy Cross School with less than a mile to go. "He's used to 26 miles. With speed (races), I was better than him."

"He had a stronger kick," said Chepkwony, who is training under countryman Henry Ongechi in Chapel Hill, N.C., for his next 26.2-mile race in Hartford, Conn., in two weeks.

"Back in Kenya, he's used to running on softer ground," Ongechi said. "I had him come here to run on a hard surface to prepare for the marathon."

It was the first Virginia Ten Miler for either runner.

Cheeromei, a graduate assistant on the Flames' cross country and track and field teams, transferred to LU from Virginia Intermont after winning three consecutive NAIA national cross country titles there from 2004 to 2006, when he captured the individual title before the program was eliminated for financial reasons.

After recording the seventh-fastest time in the nation in the 3,000 meters last year, Cheeromei plans to run in the steeplechase at the Olympic Trials next year in hopes of representing Kenya at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China.

On Saturday, far from his homeland, he felt like he had a home-course advantage.

"The crowd would cheer for you even if they don't know you," he said of the spectators lining the streets near the finish line. "All my teammates from Liberty raced in the Four Miler and came back to the (Ten Miler) finish to cheer me on. I felt like I was at home. That's why I wanted to win."

A total of 566 runners finished the main race, run in ideal conditions from E.C. Glass High to Riverside Park and back.

Joe Jacobs, who ran for UNC-Greensboro last year after running on the last Virginia Intermont national championship team in 2006, finished third in 55:56. He is the older brother of Lynchburg College sophomore cross country runner Pat Jacobs, who cheered him on during Saturday's race.

"People were telling me 'The Kenyans are dying. You can catch them,' but I knew (Cheeromei) was going to win once he got the lead," Jacobs said.

"That last hill was intense," he added. "It was hard to get any kind of rhythm going on it. That was tough, but it was fun. I was sure I was going to kind of tank, but I stayed within myself and I ran negative splits the whole way except the last mile, which was my second or third slowest mile."

Ryan Wheeler, a Heritage High graduate, finished fifth in 59:09, beating former E.C. Glass rival and VMI teammate Danny Boyers, who came in 11th in 59:28.

"We were always neck-and-neck," Wheeler said. "He didn't have a good day."

Wheeler nearly surpassed fourth-place runner David Hryvniak (59:04) of Christiansburg on the final stretch.

"I felt good the whole way and I just started picking people off on the way back," said Wheeler, who was in eighth place after coming out of Riverside Park. "I ran negative splits for the last half of the race. I thought I was either going to bonk halfway or I was going to catch (Hryvniak). I just ran out of time."

Brendan Hogan, a graduate student at Virginia, placed sixth in 57:39 after an eighth-place finish in the Charlottesville Ten Miler last spring.

"I didn't know the course at all so it was an unpleasant surprise to see some of the hills on the way in," said the former collegiate cross country runner at St. Lawrence (N.Y.).

Like Jacobs, Hogan is training for the Dec. 8 national club cross country meet in Ohio, where he plans to run unattached against some of the nation's fastest post-collegians, as he did in 2005.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Va.