Kenyan-born Janet Cherobon never raced competitively until she was 20-years-old.

The leaps that she has made in the almost 10 years since that time have brought her status and respect that even she still seems surprised by.

“That’s not like how people usually think,” Cherobon said, standing along one of the trails at Berry College she runs on occasionally.

“They think that a Kenyan runs from birth, pretty much.”

Now 30, the oldest of eight children from the countryside near the town of Kepsabet in Kenya can hold claim to three NCAA Division II national championships, an expansive list of first places in 10k’s, half-marathons and marathons all over North America and numerous course records to go with them.

“My first real race was in college, running cross country and the first time I ran I broke 20 minutes, I think,” Cherobon said.

“Barely.”

For the past year and a half, she and her husband, Jay Bawcom, have lived in Rome, taking advantage of the training facilities and programs provided by Team USA Georgia and trainer Jay Stephenson.

“Working with Jay, he’s been great and just very supportive,” Cherobon said. “And having the (cross country) teams at Berry and Shorter, that’s the best part. You are not going to have trouble finding somebody to run with, at all levels.”

Growing up, Cherobon said she was interested in running and was on the track team. In seventh grade, She ran in one race — the 4-by-400 — because the girl that usually ran was sick.

“I really enjoyed just following the races,” Cherobon said. “Especially because my uncle was running competitively at the time.”

Her uncle, Sammy Lelei, won the Peachtree Road Race in 1992 and the Berlin Marathon in 1995. He also took second in the Boston Marathon.

When Cherobon graduated high school, she put off college so her mom, who was raising Janet, her six sisters and one brother by herself, could afford to send her other kids to school.

“Three years later, I was just at home watching cows and kids and that’s all I knew,” Cherobon said.

Then a chance meeting with 1988 Olympic gold medallist and Kepsabet native Peter Rono changed her thinking about the prospect of training to earn a college scholarship in running.

“He asked me, ‘Are you willing to put the work in?’” Cherobon said. “I said, ‘I think so. If it’s going to get me to college, that’s what I’ll do.’”

She joined a local track team, trained for a year and received an offer to attend Harding University in Arkansas. She came to America for the first time in her life and started school in August of 2000.

While her collegiate beginnings may have started out with some doubt she continued to work hard and, by the end of her senior season, Cherobon had won the outdoor and indoor 5k and outdoor 10k national titles.

When she graduated from Harding, she moved to Georgia with her husband and began to get into the world of competitive racing even more.

After running her first marathon in December of 2006 in Huntsville, Ala., — and winning — Cherobon hasn’t looked back.

“I got to 24 miles and I almost walked,” Cherobon recalled. “But I finished and won it. That’s when I decided to go back and start training for marathons.”

Last year, Cherobon won 22 of the 26 road races she entered.

She is the three-time defending champion at the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon and has run in Barbados, Bermuda and the Dominican Republic.

But running is not the only thing on her mind. She is looking forward to finishing up the nursing program at Georgia Highlands College in May and becoming eligible for U.S. citizenship next September.

“My big goal, right now, is to get out of school,” Cherobon said.

“That’s when I’ll set my goals to see what is ahead. Maybe the Olympic trials or something like that.

“If there is a chance, I don’t think anybody would want to skip it.”