Home Of Champions

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.

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.

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. 

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”!

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.

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.

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!

2015 so far

With 2 months of the year well and truly gone, it seems a good time to give a bit of an update on things.  I've managed to get some really good training in and also some good races so I'm pretty happy where I'm at in preparation for my main Spring target which is the Manchester marathon.

It hasn't all been smooth sailing as I ended last year and started this year as a somewhat crippled old man.  I was still recovering from November's 100km World Champs and every time I went running or got up off the couch after sitting for a while my entire body seemed to be creaking and groaning.  I guess that's a taster of things to come when I get a bit older and it's a long term reality, definitely not looking forward to that one!  I managed some ok running in December but it was a struggle to get under 7 minute miles at times though in the end I cranked out 352 miles, mainly off single runs.

January started with a double parkrun on New Year's day where I managed to bag a double win and a double course record, despite getting lost on the first lap of the Peckham Rye course.  I tried to do the double double last year too but I went wrong on the Valentine's course which scuppered my chances.  It's almost a given that I'll go wrong somewhere when attempting a new parkrun course but that adds to the fun of it I guess.  2 days later and I was lining up for the Middlesex cross country county champs at a very boggy heavy going Ally Pally.  I really struggled to get going in the thick mud and was pleased enough to secure 3rd place when I was just getting back into things.

Having done these low key runs "races" (I know, parkrun is not a race!) I was starting to feel more in the groove and was finally mentally up to the task of getting some proper sessions in, even if my body was still grumbling a little (actually, it was grumbling a lot!).  It was also time to up the miles and get back to double days as this really helps bring me back into shape.  Mid way through January, I had a really good session down at Battersea Park, running a sub 70 half as part of the 11x1km/0.93km session (21.3km total).  It was only meant to be 10 reps but I couldn't do all that work and not run a sub 70 half on a school night;-)  I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this was given I ran the whole thing on my own and considering that at the start of January I thought I'd struggle to break 70 at Watford Half on Feb 1st!

Another Saturday came so it was time to revisit Barking parkrun where I had lowered the course record by a few seconds to 15:52 4 weeks earlier.  I thought I had a shot of breaking 15 this time but would have been happy with anything around 15:15 as I thought that was slightly more realistic, especially considering I'd already run over 100 miles in the previous 5 days!  I managed to run 15:02 which was both good and slightly annoying that I was so close to breaking 15.  Nevertheless, I was back into the swing of things and my confidence was rising.  January was a pretty hefty month with 517 miles on the board, including a 150 mile week thrown in there to stimulate some hurt factor.

I caught up with my coach Nick Anderson to go over my plan going forward and we had a really good chat which helped me get in the right frame of mind for some upcoming races.  It's little things like this that can make having a coach invaluable as people are often so caught up in their training that they fail to see issues that are right in front of them.  Luckily for me, Nick is more than happy to tell me how it is and I don't mind hearing it.  To give my Wife credit, she says a lot of the same things, it's just I have a harder time listening to her which is must come back to some primitive male instinct;-)

Anyway, Watford Half was first and for the last 2 years I've come 2nd to Yared Hagos who is a pretty handy runner from Ethiopia.  Thinking back, I've always done this race as a training run where I'm trying to run a consistent pace so didn't cover any moves from Yared and just let him go.  This year, however, I decided to race it.  Not only that, I was going to race it naked!  Ok, so it was the start of February and it was freezing cold so I wouldn't have helped my manly status much by literally racing naked, rather, I was going to implement one of Nick's suggestions and run without a gps.  I still had my watch on to record it but it was covered up so I wasn't looking at it every 30 seconds as I probably do.  The idea being that you are not imposing artificial barriers on yourself and you are running purely on how you feel.  Being a marathoner, I think I've learned all too well how to pace myself reasonably well and avoid going over the red line or even too close to it.  Whilst this can obviously be a good thing in a marathon, it doesn't always help in shorter races as you are potentially holding back, checking to make sure you're not going too fast or that your heart rate is not too high.  With this slight change in strategy I ended up having a really good battle with Yared before I dropped him at 11 miles and won in my fastest time yet of 66:52.  It was good to know that they had actually added an extra hill to the course to avoid an area that was flooded last year.

Me with Yared Hagos after the race, positions reversed this year! 1st 66:52

Next on the plan and a week after Watford was the Wokingham half marathon with the idea to race it hard and see what happens.  I adopted a similar strategy to Watford in that I was going to race it naked.  Having said that, I was still getting pace feedback from the big clock in front of me on the lead car but that was only every mile compared to the dozen or so times I would look at my watch normally.  There was a good group of 3 of us, including Phil Wicks who holds the Wokingham course record of 63 low.  There was only a small breeze as we headed away from the start/finish area and Phil was in front leading the way.  I made some effort to go to the front at times but it wasn't too long before Phil was back in front.  The other guy running with us was Gary Murray from Ireland who is a pretty decent runner with a 3:59 mile to his name and he seemed pretty happy to sit in behind us.  We went through the first few miles pretty swiftly and by 5 miles I had beaten my road 5 mile pb by nearly 10 seconds as we went through in around 24:10.  I was still feeling really good and we kept the pace, going through 10km just outside 30 minutes which is only a tad slower than my 10km road pb!  At around 8 miles I went to the front and put in a little bit of effort and only Gary came with me.  I knew I was on for a big pb so long as I could keep churning out the miles which was made somewhat easier knowing I had the 2 other guys hot on my heels.  Gary dropped off pretty quickly and I went through 10M in a massive 10 mile pb of around 48:45.  I had an outside chance of a sub 64 if I could hammer it home but I knew the last couple of miles were a bit tougher as we had a couple of uphill sections to contend with.  Sure enough, I couldn't quite keep going at the pace I needed for the sub 64 but I was still knocking out sub 5 minute miles.  I ended up winning in 64:18 which was a pb by 61 seconds, not bad at the end of a 100 mile week!  Going in to the race I knew I was in pb shape but didn't realise by how much.  It was a huge help having some company to keep the pace going until I was on my own at 8 miles and now a sub 64 doesn't seem anywhere near as daunting.

2015 Wokingham Half. 1st 64:18

With Watford and Wokingham wins under my wing (alliteration extreme!) it was time to move on to another letter of the alphabet and the lucky one this time around was B for Brighton and Bath!  Having won Brighton the past 2 years I was really keen to defend my title and go for the triple crown, especially as it was also the 25th anniversary of the race.  Karen and I love visiting Brighton as it's abundance of little cafes and being by the water reminds us of Wellington back in NZ, not to mention the wind that can whip up.  Since Karen was also running we opted to make a weekend of it to make things more relaxed.

My rough plan was to run marathon pace to about 10M and then come home strong. That held together for about 6M before I decided to drop the other 3 guys I had for company with a 4:53 mile. From there I was just trying to run strong to the finish and going through 10M a fraction over 20 minutes later meant I had averaged 5s for the last 4M (miles 7-10 were into a bit of a breeze which made it harder). I needed a 15:20 last 5km to match my course record from last year and with a little bit of a swirling tail wind along the promenade I came home with a 4s course record of 65:48.  In 2nd place was Kevin Rojas who ran a big pb of 66:46 and is going from strength to strength.  Karen also ran a massive pb so it was a good day all round.

2015 Brighton Half start. 1st 65:48

Next on the agenda was Bath Half which I had planned as a pb attempt so I had an easier week in prep for this with a full track session on Tuesday and then just easy running for the rest of the week. The weather was looking a bit dicey with some strong winds but I factored that into my race plan which was to try to sit behind the Kenyans and shelter! It would mean a pretty brisk start but if I could stick with them for 4 miles then I'd be well on track. As it turned out, my fellow Run Fast team mates had some visa delays so didn't make it out of Kenya as planned. Time for a new plan! I had no idea who else was running other than Tadele Geremew who is a handy 64 min half runner. Also, to add to the pressure I had now become favourite to win with my recent 64 from Wokingham and if I did win I would become the first British winner since Huw Lobb won in 2003.  Having won 3 out of 3 half marathons I was going for number 4 and maybe it was a sign but my bib number was 4!

I was confident of running a good time so I went to the front from the start and pushed the pace. There was some company for the first mile but after that I was on my own.  I kept a solid pace on the first lap and was more or less on pb pace at 10km (30:38) but I think the extra effort needed to hit the pace into the windy section of the first lap meant my 2nd lap suffered as a result.  I guess this wasn't really helped by having to run slightly wide on the 2nd lap as you go around the bulk of other runners.  I knew Dean Lacy was behind me and he's been having a cracking cross country season so knew he'd be strong to the finish which meant no let up for me!  By 12 miles Dean had closed the gap a little and with the uphill finish ahead I knew I had to keep pushing. I had a bit left and managed a 4:56 last mile (including the uphill) and was delighted to take the win in 65:28.

2015 Bath Half. 1st 65:28

So that capped off a really good set of races with 4 half marathon wins in 5 weeks and a stonking new pb. My mileage has been pretty decent through it all (see the 9 weeks below - 112 mile average) and I'm now looking forward to some training races before going for broke at Reading half.

29-Dec-2014 to 04-Jan-2015  99.53 miles (incl a few parkruns and Middlesex XC)
05-Jan-2015 to 11-Jan-2015 100.05 miles
12-Jan-2015 to 18-Jan-2015 121.87 miles
19-Jan-2015 to 25-Jan-2015 150.66 miles (incl parkrun 15:02)
26-Jan-2015 to 01-Feb-2015 104.74 miles (incl Watford Half 66:52)
02-Feb-2015 to 08-Feb-2015 109.68 miles (incl Wokingham Half 64:18)
09-Feb-2015 to 15-Feb-2015 132.19 miles
16-Feb-2015 to 22-Feb-2015 110.76 miles (incl Brighton Half 65:48)
23-Feb-2015 to 01-Mar-2015  81.47 miles (incl Bath Half 65:28)
9 weeks average = 112 miles

Keep on running, keep on racing!