On Nov. 21, Brandeis cross country runner Paul Norton '11 finished in seventh place at the NCAA Division III Championships, the school's best male cross country finish in ten years. Before his success this season, Norton's experience this past summer provided him an entirely new perspective on his experiences as a runner.

Norton spent the summer in Kenya working for KIMbia Foundation. According to the KIMbia Web site, "The sole purpose of the KIMbia Foundation is to use its position in the world of athletics to support education in Kenya."

The foundation is run by KIMbia Athletics, an agency that represents "some of the best distance runners in the world."

"It changed my perspective on the sport a lot, especially because a lot of these people, they're saying, 'If I have a good season, I can buy a house or I can buy a car,'" Norton said of the Kenyans. "For me, if I have a good season I get a cute little plaque that says All-American on it, but it kind of changes your perspective on running and keeps you grounded, which I think was really important for me."

One of the projects run by this foundation that Norton has been involved with is "Sponsor a Student," where a person donates money to pay for a child's school fees, and then receives progress reports and letters from the student throughout the year.

Another is "Track Project," which aims to rebuild the track at the Singore Girls Secondary School, which has had a long history of producing successful track athletes.

According to Norton, of the four Kenyan women who received medals at the most recent World Championships, three of them graduated from Singore.

Norton also is involved with KENSAP, the Kenya Scholar-Athlete Project, which helps Kenyan students receive admission to elite colleges in the United States.

One of the students aided by the program is Limo Sadalla '09, who graduated as a Computer Science major here at Brandeis.

Norton spent two months in Kenya this summer working on these projects, and in the mornings, he would wake early and run with some of the track athletes.

These runners routinely showed why some of the best runners in the world come from the region.

"I stuck out a lot," siad Norton. "It was very humbling because I can do well in Division III races here [at Brandeis], but over there, I'm getting my butt handed to me,"

Norton would often question himself, but he came up with a feasible answer.

"[I] also kind of said to myself, 'Why am I doing this, spending so much time in the sport that so many people are so much better at?' But I think I kind of realized that I can only worry about myself and I can't let other people's accomplishments diminish mine, " Norton said.

And Norton stuck out in a quite different way as well.

"Every run in the morning, every day it was like, 'Mzungu, mzungu' ["white person" in Swahili]; you just have it yelled at you all the time," Norton said. "I've never stuck out so much and gotten so much attention, so that was really new for me."

While Norton does not know if this experience helped him improve his running this season, it did help reinforce some lessons his coaches have emphasized to him.

"The biggest thing for [the Kenyans] was listening to their body, because when you're at altitude and you're training as hard as they are, if you push it a little too far you're just screwed; you're struggling and you never recover," Norton said. "And I think even though that's something [Coach John Evans] stressed a lot I kind of learned it even more there because of how much more important it is in their altitude, so I think that was something I learned to do was listen to my body."

Norton even got to run with and spend time with some of the most successful track athletes in Kenya, including Philemon Terer, who recently finished second in the Boston Athletic Association Half Marathon.

Another runner was Paul Koech, who won the International Association of Athletics Federations World Half Marathon Championships in 1998.

"I think [Terer and Koech] were all incredibly encouraging and supportive of my running endeavors despite the fact that the level I was at was nowhere near what most of them were," Norton said. "So it's a lot of fun when someone like [Terer], who's a 61-minute half-marathon, or Paul Koech, who's one of the best 10,000-meter runners ever . will say, 'Oh, how's your training going, how's your races been?' It must seem so trivial to them, but I think they kind of enjoy seeing someone who is in it because they love it and for no other reason, because in Kenya running is sort of looked at as a way of making money."

But despite these clear differences in culture, Norton was able to bond with his Kenyan friends over their mutual running experiences, which only served to reaffirm his love of the sport.

"I think it's really good to know that they're just people, and all of them had the same experiences of great races and terrible ones and having trouble training and focusing, and they get the same feeling crossing the finish line after a good day," Norton said. "It kind of makes you realize that even though your goals and aspirations are not [the same], that the desire to get the most out of yourself is the same regardless of your level of ability. I think kind of realizing that just gave me a great perspective on the sport and why I do it and made me enjoy running here even more."

Next season, Norton will lead a lengthy list of returning runners to the Brandeis cross country team. The team will have seven of its top runners back and they will look to improve in the offseason for Norton's senior year.