[2/28/02]Yousri El Mejdoubi made the journey from Morocco to Meridian to run track. Now, he’s coming to Vicksburg to conquer.

El Mejdoubi, a 25-year-old Moroccan native who now lives in Meridian, has one goal in mind for Saturday’s Run Thru History, and it isn’t winning. He wants to break the 21-year-old record for the course through the Vicksburg Military Park.

The record, set by Hector Ortiz in 1981, is 30:35. El Mejdoubi’s best time in a 10K is 28:15. He admits, however, that the chilly weather predicted for Saturday morning could make his task difficult.

“It depends on what the weather’s like. If it’s cold, it may be hard,” El Mejdoubi said. “If I’m going to break it, it’s going to be by two or three seconds. Just enough to come back next year and lower it a little more.”

El Mejdoubi has never run through the military park and never visited Vicksburg. He was persuaded to make a run at the RTH record by race chairman Mack Varner last week in Natchez.

At the time, El Mejdoubi was setting a course record for the 24th annual River City Classic. He shattered the old mark for the 10K course, set in 1992 by Vicksburg’s Joseph Curro, by one minute, 21 seconds.

“I challenged him to see if he could come and break our record. I told him I’d pay for his hotel room if he could break the record,” Varner said. “I think it’s going to add a lot of interest to our local runners that we have somebody of that caliber in the race … I think it also gives our race a lot of credibility to have that type of runner wanting to come here.”

El Mejdoubi, who is moving from Meridian to Gulfport, will have about a three-hour drive to get to the RTH. His journey to Mississippi, however, was a bit longer.

Born in Rabat, Morocco, he ran for his high school until he was 18. Before that, he was a soccer player. His mother convinced him to switch sports.

“I used to come home dirty, and she didn’t want to do laundry,” El Mejdoubi said with a laugh. “So she told me to do something that I wouldn’t get so dirty at.”

He quickly took to his new sport, finishing third in his first meet, and was recruited by Meridian Community College as a distance runner in 1996. He transferred to Southern Mississippi in 1998 and made it to the NCAA cross country meet.

He was fourth in the one-mile run at the Conference USA indoor championships in 1999, and sixth in the 1,500 meters at the C-USA outdoor championship meet. He ran the 5,000 meters in 14:34.31 at the 1999 LSU Invitational, good for a fourth-place finish.

El Mejdoubi’s college career was impressive enough to land him a shoe deal with Fila, and he now trains full-time.

“Those kind of things helped, but I ran faster once I got out of college,” El Mejdoubi said.

El Mejdoubi is currently training for the Chicago Marathon in October, and hopes to land a spot on the 2004 U.S. Olympic marathon team.

“This will probably be my last race of the year in Mississippi. This will be part of my training,” El Mejdoubi said.

With his credentials, it seems the only way El Mejdoubi will see competition on Saturday is if he looks over his shoulder no one has even broken 32 minutes in the RTH since John Ratliff ran it in 31:29 in 1989 but he said he would need someone to break from the pack and push him to try for the record.

“I need competition to get the record. You always have to be ready for any competition,” El Mejdoubi said. “It’ll be fun.”