In the 20-plus years she's managed distance runners, Lisa Buster has handled athletes from 15 countries and oodles of odd requests. She's gone so far as to have a chipper-shredder shipped to Kenya for one of her runners, to help with agricultural efforts. But until Kenyan Catherine Ndereba asked to go behind bars, she thought she'd heard it all.

Three years ago, Buster granted that wish. She and Ndereba toured Graterford, the maximum-security prison in Montgomery County. "We were shocked," Buster says. "I think that most people believe that prisoners stay behind bars in cells. … This one was not like that." Inmates there, the pair concluded, have too much freedom. Ndereba, 33, works in a Kenyan prison back home, where prisoners are behind bars at all times. Stateside, Ndereba has grown accustomed to her own freedom — to pursue a career she finds fulfilling. It's an important concept for both Ndereba and Buster, who fled a full-time TV/radio career to manage what's now become a colony of 15 world-class Kenyan runners who call Norristown and Valley Forge Park their second homes.

Because of high unemployment rates back home, "There are so many desperate Kenyans looking to get out," says Buster, who lives in Royersford. "For many, this is the only way they can make a living."

As many as five of her charges will run in Sunday morning's 28th annual Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Philadelphia Distance Run, the nation's premier half marathon. (The race begins at 7:45 a.m. at Eakins Oval by the Philadelphia Museum of Art; visit www.philadistancerun.org.)

San Diego-based race organizer Elite Racing is expecting as many as 12,000 runners for a new course and an increased prize purse ($8,000 for first and $500 for 10th). The 13.1-mile course starts and finishes at Eakins Oval. In between, the pack will head toward Center City on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway before looping back into Fairmount Park along the Schuylkill River.

This year, many of Buster's best runners, like Ndereba, won't participate. Most are running a full marathon the following weekend; in Ndereba's case, she now requires an appearance fee the city's race doesn't offer. An Olympic silver medalist (2004), world championship gold (2003) and silver (2005) medalist, she's also the defending champion of the Boston Marathon, where she has taken first place four times. Ndereba's won Philly's half marathon six times, and still holds the women's course record of 1:08:30.

Without her, the biggest headliner is 2004 U.S. Olympic bronze medalist Deena Kastor, 32. Of those in Buster's camp, the four definite participants are Catherine's brother, Samuel Ndereba; John Itati; Teresa Wanjiku; and Linus Maiyo, a 22-year-old who rode the press truck with Buster last year, vowing to run the 2005 event. Still, he's yet to run half-marathon distance, unless you count the time this summer he got lost for two hours and 40 minutes while training in Valley Forge Park.

"I took the long route," he says, explaining he'd like to finish Sunday's race in a little over an hour, "but it was a lesson for me."

Wanjiku, 31, doesn't like the inherent stereotypes surrounding the Kenyan colony: "Most think we're born runners in Kenya," she says. "We're good runners because we work hard at training. It's our career."

Another of Buster's most accomplished and colorful athletes, John Kagwe, who has won the New York Marathon twice, may run Sunday pending his return from Kenya. (Registration is open until 5 p.m. Saturday at the Health & Fitness Expo, held at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown.) Regardless, Kagwe's set to retire after this year's NYC event (Nov. 6).

While Buster was never an athlete herself, for five years beginning in the late 1970s she was a sports reporter, then a news anchor, with Philly stops including a middle-of-the-pack FM station and KYW.

While touring Italy in 1983 she befriended two international runners, a Dutchman and a Brit. Once home, she began finding them races in the States. When the races offered prize money, she began taking a cut of their winnings. Soon she had herself a business, Promotion in Motion International, which she launched in 1984.

The venture freed her from the inflexibility and the spotlight she hated on TV, although she never much minded the anonymity of radio. "I've never liked personal attention," Buster says.

That makes her a bit of an anti-agent in today's ego-driven sports world. Besides, what she does for her runners, she says, is much more than an agent would. Buster takes them food shopping, escorts them to chiropractors and massage therapists and accompanies them on errands to buy clothing and electronics, "though nowadays they are pretty good at going to those shops on their own," she says.

The Kenyans call her their manager.

"I don't just negotiate their contracts, but get involved in anything having to do with their lives," Buster says. "The only thing they have to worry about is stepping into a plane and onto a starting line."