Weini Kelati broke the American record in her first half-marathon
As she prepared to make her half-marathon debut, Weini Kelati set a goal to finish in under 70 minutes. She didn’t really know what to expect, and no one was more surprised when she set the American women’s record.
“Honestly, going into the race I had no idea how it was going to be or how I was going to feel,” the 27-year-old runner said by phone from Flagstaff, Ariz., where she lives and trains. “I mean, I was ready, but for the first time you don’t know what’s going to happen, especially in the middle of the race. So I decided I was just going to do however I feel and stay patient at the beginning.
“At maybe five miles, I saw the record pace, and I was like: ‘Oh, my goodness. This is possible.’ ”
Kelati, who moved to Virginia’s Loudoun County from her native Eritrea when she was 17, was the top American finisher Sunday in the Houston Half Marathon, running the 13.1 miles in 1 hour 6 minutes 25 seconds, lowering the six-month-old record set by Keira D’Amato of Richmond by 14 seconds and finishing fourth overall. Ethiopia’s Sutume Asefa Kebede won in 1:04:37, becoming the first woman to run a sub-1:05 half marathon in North America.
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“When we got to I think it was 8½ miles, it got a little hard because the wind was blowing and then we were going slightly uphill,” said Kelati, who was the 2019 NCAA cross-country champion while attending New Mexico and was named to 13 all-American teams. “I wasn’t surprised, though, because I asked two people who have run a half marathon before, and they told me [that] it gets a lot harder around 60 minutes.
“I decided I was close to finishing the race so I was just going to hang in there, and I pushed through until the end. When I saw the time, I couldn’t believe it. My goal was to run under 70, and when I finished, I said: ‘This is amazing. I cannot believe this.’ ”
Kelati competed for Eritrea at the world junior championships in 2014, calling her family in Eritrea from Eugene, Ore., and telling them she would not be on the flight home. Instead, she was joining family in Virginia, where her third cousin, Amlesom Teklai, became her legal guardian. Teklai had been an All-Met runner at West Potomac High in Fairfax County and ran in college at Stephen F. Austin.
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“When I moved here, I was like, ‘I love running, but I don’t know how I am going to continue what I love,’ ” she said.
Her cousin explained that the sport could help her adjust to America, telling her, “This is going to open many doors for you,” she said. She ran her first two years in high school but not as a senior because of her age. She was an All-Met runner at Leesburg’s Heritage High, and she ended up at New Mexico, where she majored in population health with a minor in community health education. Now she is a professional runner for Under Armour’s Dark Sky Distance team.
She will return to Virginia this weekend for the USA Track & Field Cross Country Championships on Saturday in Richmond’s Pole Green Park and enjoy a reunion with family and friends in the area.
“It’s so very special going back to Virginia — I’m very excited and happy to be back there. This year, I’m healthy and ready to race again. Last year, at the last minute, I had a little injury that kept me from performing well,” she said of her fifth-place finish at 10,000 meters.
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Kelati hopes for better results this year and in the lead-up to the U.S. Olympic trials in June. In 2021, she dropped out of the 10,000 meters in the trials, exhausted and overwhelmed by a confluence of events. She had become a U.S. citizen just days before and got the chance to run when a bureaucratic tangle was sorted out at the last minute with help from Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and an immigration lawyer.
“And I was taking exams. I had just turned pro and became a citizen two days before the race was happening. I flew to Eugene but didn’t realize how much it would take out of me mentally and physically,” she said. “It was pretty hot, and conditions weren’t really how I like them to be. I didn’t get to finish the race, which was very disappointing for me because I like to finish no matter [what]. That day was like the worst thing in my life, I guess.”
She hopes to run in the 5,000 and 10,000 at the Paris Olympics, but first she’s concentrating on Richmond. And she said she isn’t thinking about the attention she will draw as the American record-holder in the half marathon.
“The goals are always high, no matter what, and I usually like to focus on one race at a time,” she said. “You just have to think about how are you going to perform on race day, and hopefully it will turn out well.”
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