More Somalis need to run track!

[herndonhomer]

With Mo Farah's gold medal win I hope many other somali youth will begin to take up track and cross country as their primary sport/passion. Geographically speaking, parts of Somalia are located near the ethiopian highlands and not too far away from the great rift valley in kenya, which are two places that are universally known as the sources of the world's best distance runners.

We as the somali people have an untapped reservoir of athletic success in distance running. Over here in the states though many somali youth immediately take up basketball unaware of their own athletic inclination in distance running.

I myself was able to run a 4:40 mile in my first season of track as sophomore in high school. One of my good friends was also somali and he had the natural runner look as many somalis do. We pretty much had to beg him to quit soccer and start running and within a year he was the district mile champion and ran 4:20's consistently.

It would be nice to see more this. I know in ethiopia and kenya there are many organizations that harvest talent of long distance runners. There is nothing like this in Somalia! Such a shame. Somalia should have been racking up gold medals all these years. Hopefully we will begin to