Founder & Head Coach
From the running paths of Kenya’s Rift Valley to the high desert of Santa Fe — a coach who builds bridges the way he builds runners: one steady mile at a time.
Abraham Kosgei grew up where distance running is not a sport so much as an inheritance. He is Kalenjin — the community of Kenya’s Rift Valley highlands whose runners have shaped the modern marathon, and whose history includes the legendary mail runners who carried letters across sixty-four miles of highland country on foot. Long before medals, running was how news traveled, how neighbors stayed connected, how a people moved through their land.
That inheritance is the foundation of everything Kosgei has built in New Mexico. In Santa Fe — 7,000 feet, air and altitude remarkably close to the training grounds of the Rift Valley — he recognized something familiar: high, dry, honest country that rewards patience and humbles everyone equally.
In 2011, Kosgei stood at historic Fort Marcy and imagined a race that would carry runners the way this land has always carried its people. The event he founded grew into one of Northern New Mexico’s most beloved running traditions — and in 2019 it was reborn as the Santa Fe International Half Marathon under the banner of Mwangaza Athletics Club, from the Swahili word for enlightenment. The kudu horn that opens the race and the drums that carry the morning are his bridge between two running homelands.
As founder and head coach of Mwangaza Athletics, Kosgei trains runners of every level in Santa Fe — from first-time 5K walkers to competitive athletes drawn to the same 7,000-foot advantage that shaped him. His coaching philosophy comes straight from the highlands: consistency over heroics, community over ego, and long patient miles in good company.
Kosgei’s work runs in both directions across the Atlantic. Through the Jirani Kahawa coffee project, race weekend connects Santa Fe directly with Kenyan growers through fair, direct trade. Through the Kitany Water Project, one of the race’s two charities, every registration helps bring clean water to the village of Kitany in Kenya. And through the race’s age-group medallions — custom made by Maasai artisans — the finish line itself carries East African craft into New Mexican hands.
It is a single idea expressed three ways: running connects people, and connection should flow like water — steadily, in both directions, to everyone’s benefit.
Read the full Run Santa Fe story Meet our charity partners