Growing up at the foot of Africa’s tallest mountain in an impoverished nation can make the trials of life in the United States – and the mountains encountered on American trail runs – seem small by comparison.
“It gives you a respect for how much we have and how easy we have it,” Daniel Hamilton said.
It can also make you a dreamer, said Hamilton, a local trail runner who lived in Tanzania – where Mount Kilimanjaro looms – until he was 11 while his parents worked as missionaries.
After tearing up the local trail running scene over the past four years, Hamilton is dreaming big, both for his own running career and for the high school athletes now under his tutelage.
Hamilton, 28, accepted jobs as a guidance counselor and assistant track and cross country coach at northwest Georgia’s LaFayette High School last month, just a few weeks before announcing a new sponsorship for his running career.