Kapenguria, Kenya ? Six minutes before the starting gun, my bus was still rumbling through northwest Kenya, and I was sucking exhaust through a window that wouldn’t close.

I tightened the laces on my silver Nikes and tried to stretch, hoping this 10-kilometer race would begin much like everything else had since I arrived in Africa eight months ago: really, really late.

This wasn’t going to be easy, after all. I had been a respectable cross-country runner in high school, logged laps around New York City’s Central Park over the past decade or so and finished a marathon.

But this time, I was running with Kenyans.

This is home to some of the world’s fastest and most naturally gifted distance runners. And this region in particular – a hilly and dry expanse in the West Pokot District – has produced some great ones, including race sponsor Tegla Loroupe, a two-time winner of the New York City Marathon.

I arrived about 15 minutes after the appointed start. Just in time to jump off the bus, grab a number and toe the line.

Where’d everybody go?

I cheated a bit, I admit. I lined up with a group known as “Female Warriors” – the slower runners who start well before the “Elite Women” and “Elite Men.” But even with this relatively pokey pack, cheating was futile.

Even at a full sprint, I couldn’t keep up.

Not that I was expecting to. There was that cramped, nine-hour bus ride from Nairobi the day before, followed by another 45-minute leg the morning of the race. And Kapenguria is a chest-burning 10,825 feet above sea level.

For a while I distracted myself by staring at the runners leaving me in the dust – they of the rope-like muscles, skinny legs, and impossibly effortless gait.

Why ARE Kenyans such good runners, anyway?

There are all sorts of theories – that Kenyan children run to school every day is my personal favorite, though it strains credulity. But there are more scientific opinions. Most of Kenya’s best runners were raised at high elevation, which builds lung capacity. I had been running for five minutes and I felt like I was breathing through a cocktail straw.

An unidentified spectator lends runner Elizabeth Kennedy (314) a helping hand. Kennedy competed in a 10K race in Kenya, a hotbed for distance running.

The pack was growing tinier in the distance, and a hill was looming before me. I pumped my arms and forced myself to speed up.

I was scared – not of a poor finish – but of getting lost.

Let’s go slow

I’m not used to being laughed at. But as I labored along the muddy path, I was drawing howls from spectators. People were pointing and yelling, “Mzungu! Mzungu!” (Swahili for “White person! White person!”) – and it seemed like no one could hold back.

Children were grabbing my hands and showing off the few English words they knew, screaming “How are YOU! How are YOU!” and “GO! GO! GO!” I felt ridiculous, but at least I wasn’t alone.

None of it, however, could distract my mind from the pain.

I made it up that hill and gazed proudly at my sneakers drenched in reddish mud, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I was thirsty, too, and I kept thinking of those races I used to run New York, where organizers hand you lemon-lime Gatorade.

I tried to psyche myself up. I ran a marathon less than two years ago, for crying out loud! This is only six miles!

Then I tried to focus on my good luck. Running with Kenyans is a privilege for which some are willing to pay a hefty amount. A two-week trip called the Running Safari takes amateur runners all around Kenya, including this very area, for $3,900 per person. I was paying $10 a night for a hotel in nearby Kitale.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking that I wasn’t actually running WITH Kenyans, so much as running behind them. Far behind them.

I was going to speed the hell up and run with a Kenyan – any Kenyan! – if it killed me.

And then, after my heroic sprint, I met Beatrice.

Like me, she was huffing and puffing and sweat-drenched.

“Let’s go slow,” she said as I sidled up alongside her, “like that girl!”

She pointed to a woman sitting on the side of the road, basking in the sun.

We both cracked up and fell into a rhythm.

Is it over?

It didn’t last. Frankly, Beatrice started to annoy me after a while.

She had obviously gone out too fast and was crashing – this Kenyan was actually slowing me down. And after I had taken a sip of a water bottle someone handed me, I made the mistake of offering to share.

She dumped the contents over her head, then chucked the bottle on the side of the road.

I had no idea how far into the race we were, but I suddenly wanted to quit. I felt nauseous and cranky. The equatorial sun was beating down mercilessly. There were no markers along the course and I didn’t wear a watch, but I figured the water stop was only about halfway.

Then Beatrice and I stopped talking. Exhaustion had taken over.

The humiliation began soon after.

Those “Elite” runners were catching up and passing us by. When the first wave whooshed past, some of them in bare feet, I was stunned. These guys meant business, and they inspired me.

The crowd on the sidelines was getting more excited, too, in the presence of these great runners. I noticed some women pointing at Beatrice and saying something in Swahili I couldn’t understand.

“They asked me why I can’t beat the mzungu,” Beatrice said, looking chastened. I sensed that she tried to lose me after that. But I kept up, and then I passed her.

I wouldn’t come in last, after all.

The next champion

The end was anticlimactic. I turned a corner and the finish line was there.

“You finished it? I suppose that’s possible,” said a skeptical Wilson Pkanaka, a Kenyan runner who told me he finished the race in a half-hour or so – half the time I did.

Not that I was certain of my time. There was no big clock announcing times, no trainer-type with a stopwatch yelling out numbers.

And to be honest, I don’t care.

I figured it took me about an hour to go six miles – that’s 10-minute miles. Not too shabby.

On the bus back to the hotel, a man pointed at my silver medallion, and asked what I did to deserve it. I explained that I had, indeed, gone the entire 10 kilometers, like everyone else.

He started laughing and he agreed that I should wear it proudly. He threw up his hands and kept laughing.

“If you can do 10 kilometers you can do 20 kilometers or more,” he said. “You can be the next champion.”