Running, Vicariously, with the Kenyans

Have you ever thought about moving to Kenya to train for a marathon with the fastest endurance runners in the world?  What would that entail?  Obtaining a six month sabbatical from your job.  Purchasing jewelry to get the green light from your wife.  Taking your children out of school and exposing them to a totally different culture.  Making all of the arrangements. 

Well, Adharanand Finn did just that, and he wrote a book about it.  I am reading Running with the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth.  It is a very interesting story.  I can identify with Finn.  His personal best for a half marathon was 1:26 before going to Kenya, so he'd slide right into our training runs.  (read his blog -http://runningwithkenyans.blogspot.com/)

Finn uprooted his family of five, including three small children, and traveled to Iten, a small, town in the Rift Valley.  Iten is a mecca for long-distance runners thanks to its high altitude, endless running paths, and some of the top training camps in the world.  There are hundreds of world-class runners living in Iten.  It is probably the only place where you could miss-dial a 2:04 marathoner’s phone number and speak with a 2:05 marathoner. 

Finn ran with Olympic champions, young hopefuls and barefoot schoolchildren.  He wanted to find out why the Kenyans dominate long-distance running and kept a record of their “secrets”.  Is it the shoes, or Kenyans’ lack thereof?  The food, or lack thereof?  The high-altitude training?  Is it the active childhood that often includes running to school and the lack of easier modes of transportation?  Is it Kenya’s pervasive running culture, their desire to win at all costs, and the simple lack of job alternatives?  The answer is yes to all.

Here are some of my observations:

There is a concentrated group of very fast runners.  They are single focused – they run, eat and rest, that’s it. 

Competition is fierce to be one of the few runners taken to major races.  The rewards are significant and life-altering for these poor athletes.  A few thousand dollars in prize money allows a runner to buy a big enough farm, with cows, to provide a comfortable future for his family.

They run mostly in groups.  The runs I’ve read about so far have not been that long, an hour to an hour and a half.  Those group runs start at a relatively easy pace, around 7:30 / mile, and get progressively faster until they are a race pace.

They train at 8,500 feet above sea level which is like us training in Woodland Park. 

Their diet is very simple and almost entirely plant-based.  Their favorite food is ugali, a polenta-like dish made from corn meal and water. 

The kids run to school, mostly because they don’t want to be late.  Teachers hit the late students with sticks.  Some run over three miles each way.  Most of them run barefoot.  In contrast, my elementary school was about half a mile from my home.  My high school was about a mile away.  I never ran to, or from, school and I wore sneakers even to the beach. 

When they are not running or eating, they rest.  By rest I mean they sit around or sleep.  One famously fast runner was notorious for sleeping 16 hours per day!  Imagine how much faster you’d be if you got over twice as much sleep as you do now.

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In other news, this week’s Phidippides track workout was the annual two mile time trial.  I ran the distance in 11:18, three seconds faster than last year.