Two-time Berlin Marathon winner Aberu Kebede has also won in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Shanghai, and Rotterdam. At the 2011 World Championships Marathon in Daegu, she finished 12th and at the 2013 World Championships Marathon in Moscow, she finished 13th. Kebede’s 1:07:39 personal best half marathon was recorded with a bronze-medal performance at the 2009 Birmingham IAAF World Half Marathon Championships. She is a two-time national champion in the 10,000m (2009 and 2012) and holds a personal best 10,000m time of 30:48.26 from Utrecht in 2009. She began running when she was a youth and progressed to finish 16th in the 2007 IAAF World Cross Country Junior Championships.

Kebede trains in the Ethiopian towns of Suluta, Intoto, Sendafa, and Sebeta. She became a runner because she grew up in the same village as Birhane Adare, who was a world champion in the 10,000m and half marathon. “I would see Birhane when she came to visit my family and I have always wanted to be a runner like her,” says Kebede. She says her proudest running accomplishment was winning the bronze medal at the Birmingham IAAF World Championships Half Marathon, where she led the Ethiopian women to the team silver medal.

“I choose to run the Boston Marathon because it is the most historic marathon in the world.”