PERU "" In his first cross country race, Sammy Chelanga found himself alone in the woods and, concluding he had gotten lost, starting walking back.

It turned out he was all alone because he was so far ahead of the rest of the field.

"When my coach was trying to give me pre-race advice, trying to tell me how to run, the strategy, that made me so scared," the 22-year-old from Kenya said. "I was prepared for like a huge fight, to run so hard. So when the gun went off, I'm sprinting so hard, trying to find a place to run. So like I just kept going, and when I was in the woods, I realized, all these woods, I don't see anybody.

"So I say, This a bad race. Let me just ... go tell my coach I'm lost.' And then when I was just walking, I see these guys running right in front of me. And I just turned back, and I just kept on going."

Chelanga won that race "" the Fordham Invitational last fall "" and his next four races. He earned All-America honors in cross country and also had an excellent track season for Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Not bad for a kid who played table tennis in high school and didn't start running until he was 19.

Chelanga was featured at a running clinic Friday at Forrence Orchards in Peru along with Peru native Josh McDougal, Liberty University teammate Jarvis Jelen and other area runners. The clinic was put on by the organizers of the 17th Annual Run for Jon, which will be held Aug. 25 at the Orchards.

Chelanga, who is transferring to Liberty and will be a sophomore in the fall, became friends with McDougal while they competed against each other last year. McDougal brought him to the North Country to train before the start of cross-country season.

Despite having an older brother who is an accomplished marathoner "" Joshua Chelanga won the Rotterdam Marathon in April "" Sammy never thought he'd become a runner, too.

"At my school, they say you have to do a sport," said Chelanga, who stands at a slender 5 feet, 6 inches. "And I just figured out that the easiest sport is table tennis." He said he wasn't any good at it.

Finally, after high school, his brother chided him one day for not doing much and convinced Sammy to join him and his training partners "" who just happened to include legendary distance runner Paul Tergat.

Chelanga said the elite runners left him in the dust after a few strides, but he kept running with them and eventually noticed progress.

And one day he realized he was actually good at it.

"It was really like a turning point in your life," the softspoken Chelanga said. "You feel like, Wow, so I can run.'

"It became so exciting and I loved it, and I wanted to do it more and more. Because the more I did it, I realized I was getting better."