Kevin Doyle has run up and down the rolling hills of the roads near Butler.

He's conquered the flat streets in Michigan and even experienced what it is like to run through Chiba, Japan with fans as far as the eye can see on either side of him.

Doyle has become a road race warrior. Two years spent with one of the elite road running groups in the country will do that for you.

But now Doyle is back in Western Pennsylvania, and picking up where he left off, setting a course record on the way to a win in the St. Barnabas 5K Saturday.

It was his first area race since returning from Michigan two weeks ago.

"It's good to be home," Doyle said, chuckling.

Doyle ran a time of 14 minutes, 57 seconds to eclipse the course record of 15:01 and win the event, which was held in Gibsonia.

Jorge Medina of Karns City was second with a time of 15:21. Jake Walker, a 15-year-old from Ellwood City who won the Butler Road Race 5-mile run in June, was third.

"I thought with my current fitness level I could run a 15-flat," Doyle said. "I knew the course record was right around there."

Doyle won the event in 1999 and 2000.

He excelled on the track at Knoch High School and in college at St. Francis (Pa.) University.

All the while he was a fixture in the Butler Road Race, winning the event in 2002.

When he graduated from St. Francis, he joined the Hansons-Brooks Fitness Project in Michigan. The group focuses on road races and has some extreme training regimes.

Doyle said he ran upwards of 140 miles a week.

He's been taking it easy lately - only running the equivalent of three-marathons-worth of miles per week.

Brian Sell, a teammate of Doyle's at St. Francis got him interested in the group. Doyle's college exploits got the group interested in him.

"I ran a 13:55 (in the 5,000-meters) during my senior year of college," Doyle said. "That helped."

Once he was there, he competed with the group and placed seventh in an event in Rhode Island and broke the 14-minute mark in another road race to qualify for the United States team.

That earned him a trip to Japan last November to compete in the Chiba Ekiden Relay, a unique five-man marathon relay race.

The first leg is 5,000-meters, followed by 10,000-meters, then another 5k and 10k before a final leg of 12,000-meters.

Doyle ran the second 10k portion of the relay.

No matter where he is, nothing about running a road race is lost in translation.

"It was just like any other road course," Doyle said. "It's a big event in Japan. It was televised live. It's a national holiday."

The United States team didn't fare so well. Ethiopia, Kenya and Japan were the top three finishers.

Now Doyle is back in Butler and still running.

He plans on entering more local road races, including the Great Race in Pittsburgh in September.

Doyle is hoping the hilly terrain of Western Pennsylvania will give him an added edge.

"I hope that will build me up," Doyle said. "Michigan was pretty flat, so I was lacking that. My goal was to get back into running races again."

He's one-for-one already.