The injury, they thought, might very well have come in the first few
strides out of the starting gate, when Swaps tried and failed to win the rail position from Nashua.
Striding toward Bethlehem, in the West Bank, Salopek is detoured by a herder's tattered fence, one
of the first human - made barriers — other than checkpoints and border
gates — he's faced in some 2,300 miles since he
started out in Ethiopia.