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The 2026 World XC Championships: A Reunion And Career Opportunity For U.S. Athlete Ahmed Muhumed
- Cory Mull
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
After years of training without a professional contract, Ahmed Muhumed, 27, signed with HOKA NAZ Elite in 2023 and quickly proved his talent, scoring results, top times and spots on two U.S. world cross country teams. Next up are the World XC Championships, set for Tallahassee, where he competed as a graduate student.
Written by Cory Mull
There was a point roughly three years ago when Ahmed Muhumed was juggling a lot on his plate.
Like, Thanksgiving-dinner-lot.
He was training a ton — in most cases, 80 to 90 mile weeks. But then he was also an assistant coach and operations assistant for the cross country and track and field program at Florida State University, which sometimes felt like a full-time job.
Then there was the nonprofit social work back in his adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon — the kind of remote job that also required his full attention.
There was racing, too.
It was a heavy workload for anyone. But somehow, Muhumed, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018, made it work. Then, in the middle of 2023, he moved back to Portland and everything seemed to change.
“That one month destroyed my body,” he said. A solid-if-unspectacular race over 5,000 meters at the Los Angeles Grand Prix followed.
Fate, however, soon intervened — like almost minutes later.
Muhumed hit his cooldown with Kasey Knevelbaard, a former teammate at Florida State. And as luck would have it? Knevelbaard was leaving for Europe and had a room available in Flagstaff, Arizona. Did Muhumed want it?
“I said, ‘I’m taking you up on that,’” Muhumed, now 27, remembers of the moment.
“I needed a change.”
A little over a month later — after an incredible few weeks of training with the likes of Abdihamid Nur and Woody Kincaid — Muhumed placed eighth in the men’s 5,000 meters at the U.S. Outdoor Championships.
Next came a contract offer with HOKA NAZ Elite.
Fast forward to December 2025, less than a mile from the former apartment where his family first took up residence following their arrival in the United States. Muhumed, only a year and a half removed from signing his first professional contract, finished fourth at the U.S.A. Cross Country Championships.
Now he’ll return to the World Cross Country Championships for the second time, only this appearance on January 10th is set for Tallahassee, Florida and Apalachee Regional Park. That is a place where Muhumed once competed, once coached, and once began to realize his true potential.
Muhumed's story has always been a slow burn. Are things finally picking up?
“He’s nowhere near done,” said Florida State coach Bob Braman, who coached Muhumed in his final collegiate season.
Coming to America
Muhumed arrived in the United States from Jijiga, the capital of the Somali Region of Ethiopia, in 2011. He's the second oldest of nine other siblings and the son of a Somalian mother who escaped Civil War in the early 1990s.
When he first arrived as a refugee at the age of 13, his family took shelter in Portland, where they acclimated with vaccinations, health checks, and paperwork. They couldn’t do much early on, Muhumed said, but he practiced his English and began to adjust to life in America, even discovering running.
About a year later, the family moved to Salem, about 45 minutes south.
This is where Muhumed emerged as one of the best high school runners in the state, winning state Class 6A cross country titles in 2015 and 2016 for West Salem.
Next, behind both an academic and athletic scholarship, he set off for Boise State, where he carved out a role for the Broncos immediately, featuring in the NCAA Cross Country Championships in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Those races served as lessons for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Muhumed never quite found his footing. He finished no greater than 65th place in any national cross country race over those first three seasons and only really figured out his place during his final race on grass with Florida State, finishing 20th overall in November of 2021 in Tallahassee.
That, of course, was a weird year that also saw him compete at the 2020 national meet in March of 2021 (he was one of the very few athletes who competed in five NCAA Cross Country Championship races over his tenure).
By the end, Muhumed wasn’t really happy.
He had qualified for the national meet in his final indoor track and outdoor track seasons and had won an ACC Championship over 10,000 meters on the track, but he believed he was capable of much more.
“I didn’t want my NCAA results to be what I was remembered for,” Muhumed told The Stride Report recently. “It’s kind of imposter syndrome. The only time I qualified for the indoor or outdoor championships was my last year at FSU. I don’t know why it’s still there. But somehow, it’s still there. I think people do view me as an underdog, but I don’t see myself as that.”
Finding a Sense of Place
Worth more than racing, though, was Muhumed’s sense of identity. He became a permanent United States resident in 2013 and by 2018, while as a college student at Boise State, he returned to Portland so he could become naturalized.
Muhumed was among about 50 other permanent residents on that day who became U.S. citizens. “It was a day where you feel a lot of emotions and a lot of excitement,” he said.
“But if anything, it was a moment to fully feel like I am home now.”
Braman put it like this: “I know Ahmed was born in the Somali Region of Ethiopia, but he grew up in Portland. He honors his heritage, but he’s as American as the day is long.
“When he started to chase his dreams, we talked about who he would represent. It was always going to be the U.S. I said, ‘OK, let’s bet on yourself.’”
The summer before Muhumed’s graduate season with the Seminoles (he earned his master’s degree in international relations and affairs), he traveled back to Ethiopia to train for a month. There, something clicked. “I was just so consistent with the training,” he said. “There was a switch that went off.”
Muhumed clocked a 5,000-meter personal best of 13:26.40 early that season to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships, where he went on to finish 15th. Braman, however, said another reason had a knock-on effect.
Muhumed was training every day with Adriaan Wildschutt, an international student-athlete from South Africa who was the NCAA runner-up in cross country in March 2021. Wildschutt went on to earn a number of All-American performances for the Seminoles over his tenure, many while as teammates with Muhumed.
“[Ahmed] just kept getting better and better,” Braman said. “He flourished as Adriaan kept getting better, too. Ahmed really challenged himself to be good.”
By graduation day, Muhumed had options to continue running with ASICS Mammoth Track Club or with HOKA NAZ Elite, he said, but the “numbers were never right,” so he opted against it.
Meanwhile, two more doors remained open. Braman offered him a chance to become an assistant coach at Florida State, while the other option was back home for a nonprofit in Portland (at the African Youth & Community Organization). It was the kind of work he could lead that would help refugees and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Muhumed had always wanted to work for the United Nations, but more than that was just making a difference. “I wanted to change the world for the better,” he said. Ultimately, Braman stepped in and gave words of advice that ultimately served as fuel.
“When he started to chase his dreams, we talked about who he would represent. It was always going to be the U.S. I said, ‘OK, let’s bet on yourself.’”
“He needed someone to tell him, ‘It’s OK to leave a really good job behind. You have a chance here,’” Braman said. “I think secretly Ahmed wanted someone to push him to that decision. You rarely want to leave financial and career stability behind. But when you’re special, you need to see what you’re made of. I knew he was good.”
“This is what Coach Braman told me that stuck with me,” Muhumed said. “‘You can work for the rest of your life, but you cannot run at the level you’re running at right now for the rest of your life.’ It was then that I committed to it.”
Earning His Stripes
Next came the most arduous months of Muhumed's life. He took up Braman on his offer in Tallahassee to help out with the Seminoles — recruiting athletes and performing all of the little intricacies of the job. In the midst of it all, he continued to train and compete, building on the form that led him to achieve greater and greater times.
But the work wasn’t easy.
By the end of the NCAA Cross Country Championships in 2022, he returned to Portland and took that nonprofit job, helping the organization lead economic development in areas of need in the city. “I was working with a lot of immigrant, refugee communities,” he said.
In January of 2023, he switched things up again, working out a deal to work remotely and then flew to Ethiopia to train. Then, in March (after he ran a personal best of 27:56.99 for 10k at a meet in California), he returned to Tallahassee, picking up where he left off with Braman and the Seminoles. A month later in April, he ran 13:27 over 5k in Boston, then he followed that up with a career-best 13:16 mark at the Track Festival at Mt. SAC.
By the end of the month, his body caught up with him. He was 16th in the 5k at the Los Angeles Grand Prix, clocking his worst time of the season in 13:31.
In the fog of that performance, though, Muhumed agreed to take on Knevelbaard’s lease. Once in Flagstaff, he messaged Nur, who like Muhumed, had also arrived in America as a young child — Nur was Somali-born before residing in Phoenix, Arizona.
Muhumed flat-out asked if he could train with Nur and his Nike group in Flagstaff under former NAU coach, Mike Smith. The answer, surprisingly, was yes. “They helped me see the things I was doing right and what I wasn’t doing,” he said.
By the time Muhumed lined up at the U.S. Outdoor Championships a month later, he was as confident as ever. After his eighth-place performance, along with a slew of personal best times that year, a phone call from HOKA NAZ Elite’s Jenna Wrieden came. The duo had a short meeting in September, and then solidified Muhumed’s next steps as a pro. He accepted.
What’s crazier to think about, though, is that Muhamed had just $150 to his name when he was offered the contract — a fact he recounted recently in a podcast with Marathon Handbook.
“It definitely was a reminder of the system I built around me, and that it was working,” said Muhumed, who’s now coached by Jack Mullaney.
Flying Toward Success
The biggest difference between an unsponsored and sponsored runner is opportunity. One needs to fund itself. The other is insulated by infrastructure.
Once with HOKA NAZ Elite, where Muhumed rejoined Wildschutt as a teammate, he traveled to Latvia for the World Road Running Championships (he was 22nd), then to New York City for the Abbott Dash to the Finish Line 5k (he was 2nd). He settled that year with the Cross Country Championships in Austin, Texas, where he finished fifth overall in the 8k in 22:27.
When Muhumed made his first U.S. cross country team in January of 2024 after finishing third at the USATF Cross Country Championships, it was a breakthrough moment which sent him to Belgrade, Serbia, for the 45th edition of the World Cross Country Championships.
It was also a reminder of the positive steps he was making.
Then, a year after his “bad race” in Los Angeles, Muhumed responded with a career-best 13:08.73 mark for 5k at the same event. Next, he was eighth in the men’s 5k final at the U.S. Olympic Trials. A few months later in November, he jumped into the half marathon for the first time, winning the Philadelphia half in a time of 1:03:15 (it was the 19th-best time for an American that year).
As the year turned over, Muhumed ran a personal best of 1:01:03 at the USA Half Marathon Championships (169th-best in the world). In June, he was fourth in the 10k at the U.S.A Outdoor Championships – finishing one spot shy of a World Championship berth.
Maybe it wasn’t surprising when Muhumed locked up his second straight cross country team in December. The gears were clicking, and he had been on the cusp.
Then again, Muhumed didn't forget about those moments of self doubt.
“I’m almost fully overcome,” he said. “I don’t accept people’s views of me as an underdog.”
Driving Forward Toward Worlds
On a recent morning, Muhumed found himself staring at his computer screen, his head tilted.
To be fair, it was confusing, the picture on the screen. One of the barriers for the 2,000-meter course at the World Cross Country Championships is a series of wooden logs with fake alligators on top of them.
Muhumed was staring at the artificially-created image.
How are you going to attack that?
“Maybe the beginning stage I just hurdle them,” he says. “I guess I’ll assess later.”
Naturally, Muhumed has spent hours researching the course and its many obstacles — which include a water pit, a mud pit, a sand pit, and a roller coaster-style ramp.
In high school, after acclimating to his surroundings, he sprinted to the finish. “I think the last five semesters I had a 4.0," he said. At Boise State, where he majored in international and global studies and graduated early so he could enroll at Florida State, an almost a mirror situation took place. “The last four semesters were all 4.0."
In Tallahassee, “I think the worst grade I had was an A-minus,” he said.
Every phase in Muhumed’s life has followed a routine. Running, in many ways, has also mirrored that image. There were some rough years, but now the clouds are parting.
He acclimates, he adjusts, and then he unloads.
Are we in Muhumed's best era now?
“The number one goal is just really to go out and fight to the end,” Muhumed said of the World Cross Country Championships. “Every spot matters…but I would be satisfied with top 20…I would be happy with top 15…If I could really run well, a medal on home soil would be incredible.”