Hakuna matata! I'd love to say I'm currently rehearsing for a role in the Lion King musical but alas, my acting skills only go so far. Instead, I'm doing something far more exciting (IMO) and slightly better suited to my talents (again, IMO) which is living, breathing, sleeping and dreaming about running out in Kenya. I'm in Iten, living a simple but sufficient lifestyle, getting some altitude
training in before I head back to the UK to take part in a few low-key
races. This is my second time in Kenya
and it only took me 6 years to come back!
First world problems and all that, you know, work and life making it
rather difficult to just up sticks for a stint of training! The stars finally aligned so here I am, at
the home of champions.
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| Karibu! Iten, the running mecca of world. |
At 2400m, Iten is considered an ideal training spot for many
International athletes, along with hundreds of Kenyans, probably easily a
thousand or more in fact. It’s
interesting to see the vast number of athletes training in the hope of “making
it”. Making it for the majority is
simply getting a race abroad to try and win some money which is no easy feat
given the competition they face at home.
Yet they dedicate themselves to the cause, training 7 days a week and
most days twice daily.
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| Some of the Run Fast athletes chillaxing. I'm the one on the left... |
Whilst here, I’m
lucky enough to be staying with a really good group of Run Fast athletes rather
than having some of the home comforts that a few of the more commercial camps
offer. I really enjoy the simpler lifestyle which makes me wonder why I live in London of all places! Anyway, I’m eating plenty ugali, the magic Kenyan staple food. It’s just maize flour mixed with water and
cooked until it goes quite hard. It can
be quite bland but I’m more than happy to chow down on it with some meat stew
or spinach and vegetables.
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| Ugali with spinach and vegetables. Very common dinner, makes you run really fast! |
Food is only part of the picture here and the main task is
to get some running in. I came here in
decent shape having just run a solo 64:53 at
Brighton
half but the altitude takes some getting used to. At times I feel like I haven’t run for years,
struggling up hills and breathing far too hard, and that’s just the easy
runs. After a few days acclimatising I
was feeling pretty good and decided to test out a bit of pace so I jumped in
with the ladies fartlek session of 25 x 1min on 1min off. I was a little concerned I would struggle with
the pace and the hills but I ended up pacing the whole session with another guy
and we even had to slow it down a little half way in as we had dropped all but
2 ladies, oops. That was the last time
the ladies wanted me to run with them as they said “you killed us”!
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| Fartlek session, choo choo, jump aboard! |
The tables were quickly turned though as I completed my first "long run" with the men. I say "long run" as that seems to be what the Saturday run is called even though it can be as short as 20km or 25km some weeks, though a more appropriate 30km or 35km other weeks. They typically start easy but quickly pick up to a good pace so this adds to making the run harder. This one was 25km and was going great for the first 15km, helped immensely by being more or less downhill. Out here, the laws of gravity work both ways so what goes down must go up. That made the last 10km quite a struggle, getting harder and harder with each hill, sucking air to try to give my muscles the much needed oxygen they were crying out for. The hills are probably the thing I've struggled with the most so far. Not only are you working harder to get up the hill, but it is like the extra effort is taking away any spare oxygen so the end result is your legs just feel completely empty and dead.
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| Kamariny track, nice and early so not too busy yet. If you look closely you will see the lane 1 groove. |
At least on the flat my legs are coping and the main bit of flat running I've done is at the infamous Kamariny dirt track. It gets used so much that there is a lane 1 groove carved out so you have to be careful with your footing at times, often landing on the banking of the groove throwing you slightly off balance. The track is a slightly abnormal shape with shorter straights and longer bends and I've been told it is long, anything from 405m to 420m! I'm pretty sure it's about right otherwise the 60s laps I see some of them running are even more impressive. #tracktuesday here is a sight to behold as hundreds of runners descend to complete their workouts. Some going as early as 7am to avoid the crowds and the dust cloud that inevitably whips up due to more runners lapping and the wind blowing off the Rift Valley picks up.
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| Sundays are for relaxing so we went to the viewpoint to check out the mighty Rift Valley |
I've acclimatized enough to be able to get some decent sessions. In some ways I'm quite enjoying running and totally ignoring pace as I know it still counts, plus, if it's what the Kenyans do then it can't be all bad. I'm now really looking forward to running a bit harder but at the same time I have to be careful to not overdo things so a bit of less is more should help. At least I can just chill out and relax most of the day which is a huge benefit. Keep on running and until next time, safari njema!
