All In Stride, by Johanna Garton

Running Book Reviews with Alan and Liz

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All In Stride is the story of two Kenyan born athletes who have competed at the highest levels in running, and one US athlete and Olympian in the modern pentathlon. The bond that the three characters share is that they have all been in the Army’s world class athlete program (WCAP).
The book is divided into two parts:
Part 1: Kenya – which is about Elvin and Shadrak’s upbringing in Kenya and their journey into running.
Part 2: United States of America – which is Elvin and Shadrak’s life when they arrived in the US, how they met, and how they ended up in the Army and the WCAP. Sammy was introduced in this section and we learn about her upbringing, how she got into modern pentathlon, and her decision to join the Army and the WCAP.
Author Johanna Garton began running on the dirt roads surrounding her family’s farmhouse in Wisconsin at age seven. She continued through college, where she competed for Syracuse University as a walk-on. She has since run more than 20 marathons including 5 Boston’s. Prior to this book, Johanna also authored two other books:
Awakening East, the story of the adoption of her two children from China and her family’s decision to move to China to live for one year to immerse the family in the culture
Edge of the Map, which shares the story of American high altitude mountaineer Christine Boskoff, and is currently being developed into a feature film.
Johanna was not always an author. Her career started as an immigration lawyer, she worked in nonprofit management and taught college. She now also coached high school cross country.
Our second guest in this episode, and one of the subjects of this book, was Elvin Kibet. Elvin was born a twin in rural Kenya. Her family was poor and her parents had 9 children so Elvin and her twin sister Ivy were caring for their younger siblings by the age of 9, including worrying about how they would have enough food to eat. Elvin loved school and was good at it. She also had a grandmother (Gogo) who pushed her to leave the village if she could and always believed Elvin had potential to do great things. Through a series of opportunities, Elvin started running and received a full scholarship to study at the University of Arizona, moved to the US where she met and married her husband, completed a degree in public heath, served in the army and became a US citizen. Elvin was also the first woman, and for while the only women, on the WCAP running team.
If you would like to get a copy of this book for yourself, you can find it on Amazon here (in case you don't have a local book store that can order it for you): https://a.co/d/eHf3XaW

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