Elly Rono
Country: Kenya
Age: 33
Personal best: 2:10:57 (Grandma's Marathon, Duluth, 2002)

Champion of 11 marathons since 2000, Rono runs five or six marathons a year instead of the usual two or three for an elite athlete. Now living in Durham, N.C., Rono earned a bachelor's degree in teaching, specializing in math, from Southern Indiana University, where he was an 8-time All-American in cross-country and track and an NCAA Division II champ at 5000m indoors and 10,000m outdoors in 1998 and cross-country in 1999. Boston fans will remember him as the unusually tall (just over 6 feet, 3 inches) Kenyan who led the 2002 race for much of the first half. Although Boston didn't go as well as he'd hoped, the rest of 2002 brought five marathon victories: Grandma's, California International, Ocean State, the Mercedes Marathon in Birmingham, Ala., and Richmond. Last year, he finished a surprising 4th (2:11:31) in New York and two weeks later successfully defended his title at Richmond in a course record 2:15:36. He is in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen.