CONTEXT: This is an account of my first full day in Iten (I think - hard to remember for sure at this point).
We got
up bright and early the next morning at 6:00 to head out for the morning run,
and the air was still crisp as we headed out.
I think Iten is the first place I’ve been in Kenya that’s really felt
cold, but overall the climate is phenomenal for running, just one more reason
it is such a premium place to train.
Like the rest of Kenya, there isn’t too much variation in the season
since it’s so close to the equator, but Iten is at high enough elevation that
it really isn’t that hot, which makes for moderate but pleasantly warm
temperatures for training much of the year (I’m sure some of the Kenyans would
say it’s downright cold, but I’ve found in my time here that often pleasantly
warm for me and cold for them are about the same temperature). We went up to the main road, where runners
were gathering. This fascinated me,
because for as much as I saw and asked about it I couldn’t find any evidence of
a real central organization to coordinating the runs, but still people just
seemed to meet and run. I wondered if it
worked kind of like our cross country house last summer when we had 10 runners
in the house, so people would just kind of head out for runs together at random
times, so maybe here that was happening on a larger scale. With the amount they
trained here I imagined that training groups formed, formal or informal, so
people would generally run with the same groups. But even if you had never been there before
and didn’t know a soul, if you headed to that junction at 6 in the morning, you
were bound to find a group you could run with.
The beauty of having so many runners was that you could even choose the
group that was doing the kind of run you wanted, whether going hard or doing
fartlek or going for easy miles. Kemboi,
who I believe hadn’t run Monday or Tuesday, headed off with a group to do a
hard 70 minute run, while Jackson and I waited for his wife to just go for an
easy hour, a little shorter than I wanted but I figured I would get in a solid
run one way or the other so I shouldn’t be too anal about the distance. That proved to be prophetic.
While
we waited for Jackson’s wife I asked why he didn’t stay with her, and he said
it was a distraction for training, so he stayed at the other end of town from
her, and they would see each other but stay separately so they could both
concentrate on their training. To me
this was solidly over the top, going to an unhealthy level of commitment to
training. On top of that, it didn’t
really make sense to me why staying with your wife would hurt your training,
especially if she is seriously training too.
Anyway, she showed up and we headed down one of the roads heading out
into the hills near the training center at a pretty moderate pace. This run rivaled the beauty of any I had done
yet, especially running that early when the sun was still coming up. The sun gradually spreading its light over
the fields of corn and grain still covered with dew as we ran along in silence
made for a serene setting. I’m not sure
if the hills started getting tougher or if I just started tiring quickly
because of the elevation, but after about half an hour I started to labor a
little bit, not to the point of struggling to keep up, but to where I was
working harder than I should have been for it being supposed to be an easy
recovery day. I was working pretty hard
on the hills, but what I noted was that I couldn’t really recover on the down
hills like I’m used to. The result was
that I kept working harder and harder, eventually falling off the pace a little
bit, but Jackson was nearly as persistent as Kemboi that I should keep up. For as much as these guys talked about making
sure they took their easy days at a comfortable pace, they certainly didn’t
care at all if I was running at a comfortable pace, I thought irritably.
I
sensed that we had lost elevation on the run, and sure enough, there was a big
hill as we came back up toward the main road that shifted me from struggling to
keep up to gasping for air and searching for an oxygen tank. Running at 7500 feet there is such a fine
line of when you are feeling ok and when you are in trouble, and once you’re in
trouble it’s just about impossible to be able to recover, short of the oxygen
tank that I dreamed of in my mind. Still
Jackson cheered me on, urging me to stay close, and to his credit he did
actually slow down rather than just yelling for me to keep up. That was the combination that drove me crazy
with Kemboi. Either just run off into
the distance and leave me, or actually go at a manageable pace for me if you’re
going to try and drag me along, as long as you don’t just try to drag me along
at a suicide pace like today is a good day to die. We got back up to the main road, and true to
form I couldn’t recover at all. Even as
we ran at a pretty slow pace along the only slightly uphill grade of the wide
dirt path running next to the main highway, I still gasped for breath and
struggled to keep up. I was reaching the
point where I was questioning whether I would be able to finish the run. I was able to struggle in, setting a goal of
how far I could make it, stumbling past there and setting a new goal. By the time I got to the point where I felt I
couldn’t go any more we were only a couple hundred yards away, so I flailed my
way back to the junction, still I’m sure not a shade faster than 7:30 mile
pace, as Jackson effortlessly glided away to finish the last quarter mile a
little bit faster. I remember looking up
at one point along those last 15 mintues and noting that not only was Jackson
not breathing heavily, but he wasn’t even sweating. True, he was a 1:01 half marathoner, but even
then I couldn’t believe how effortless that run appeared to be for him. His wife struggled a little bit at points,
but was clearly much stronger than I was and I didn’t doubt that she could
probably out race me at just about any distance she pleased.
I
staggered to the finish and leaned on a fence pole for support as I fought to
control my breath. The other runners
that were around stretching after their runs regarded me with what I perceived
to be curiosity and amusement. Both in
my build and my form, my freight train type running was pretty much the
antithesis of the flowing, effortless running that the Kenyans almost uniformly
displayed. I imagine that they almost
never saw someone laboring like that, that even when the Kenyans dropped off
the pace they did it far more gracefully than I had stumbled in running on
sheer will power and little else.
Jackson encouraged me though, as Alvin had, that I was tough enough to
be a good runner, and that I just needed to come train for a couple months and
I would quickly be great. Hearing this
again was fascinating to me, because I couldn’t necessarily just write it off
as Kemboi’s naively optimistic outlook.
I still didn’t believe them, but there was a big part of me that really
wanted to believe them, enough that I could fill my head with the dangerous
thoughts that maybe they were right.
We
headed back to Jackson’s place for tea and bread, a welcome relief and chance
to relax after the grueling run. Talking
with Jackson’s wife more I found out that she had actually had several
scholarship offers in the US to go run there for college, including one to the
University of Alaska-Anchorage, but hadn’t been able to go because she couldn’t
get a visa. I was surprised and
disappointed with the US that even someone who had a full ride scholarship
lined up to go to school there wasn’t able to get a visa. I understand the restriction of visas, at
least at a very simple level, but not allowing someone who is being recruited
by US schools to come just seems wrong to me.
This was also interesting to me because it shocked me to think of her as
“one of those guys”, if she had run for Alaska-Anchorage. For our cross country team they are something
of an evil empire, swooping down out of the north to win the conference cross
country title every year, grab one of the spots to nationals, and then choke at
nationals so we don’t get any extra spots the next year out of our region, all
without saying a word to anyone except Andrew Van Ness. Personally, I also saw them as a New York
Yankees type team, having basically just bought their team by going out and
filling it with Kenyans rather than developing any talent themselves. It was valuable to see it from the opposite
perspective, where, as much I didn’t like how Anchorage had gone out and got a
nationally ranked team overnight just because they had a bunch of money
available, I was even more frustrated by the idea that the US wouldn’t let an
athlete in that American schools wanted enough to offer her a free
education.
Kemboi
came back from his run, bragging about how he had been setting the pace and
everyone had been trying to keep up with him and about how many people fear him
here, and after we showered him and I headed into town again. From what I understood Kemboi’s typical day
basically consisted of running in the morning and then going into town to see
who he could find to sit and chat with.
I was able to get in contact with Elkana Ruto, the man in the car I had
met out on the road near Grandy’s farm, and we met him and Martin Kiplagat
Koech, whose number I had gotten from Vincent and who happened to be Ruto’s
nephew, at a favorite café of Kemboi’s.
It turned out that they knew each other, and I was starting to wonder
how many runners in this town there were that Kemboi didn’t know, or at least
that Kemboi would say he didn’t know. It
seemed to me that most people we met Kemboi would say they were very good friends,
and I think he considered everyone he had met more than once to be a very good
friend. We met up with Kemboi’s friend
Reuben and headed down to his house, which was closer to the downtown area. It
was also an extremely simple, concrete two room home with no electricity, which
surprised me considering that Reuben ran for Qatar. I had it in my mind that all Qatari athletes
must be filthy rich but clearly that wasn’t the case. Reuben explained that he was renting the
house and, like Kemboi, hoped to be able to build his own house where he
wouldn’t have to pay anything once he had put in the initial cost of building
it. He showed me a bunch of a pictures
of him running in various races and workouts, and he pointed out guys he was
running with who I assumed were fast Kenyan runners, but who I didn’t
recognize. He also showed me a medal
from the All-Asian games that he won, I think in the 1500 if I remember
right. From the pictures he showed me
and what Kemboi’s cousin, who’s also a 1500 runner told me later, even if
you’re primarily a 1500 runner, you have to run a lot of longer road races
because that’s where most of the money is, and then you can run 1500 for track
when you get a chance, mostly for championships. On our way back toward town Kemboi pointed
out to me where the field was that he had bought where he intended to build his
house. He insisted that when I was done
with school I should come live with him and train, which I have to admit is a
pretty appealing option if I do decide it’s worth fiddling around with running
more after college.
On our
way back home we stopped by the running store again and I bought a sweet
t-shirt from a race in Stockholm, and also a jacket that was 650 schillings,
which I just couldn’t pass up. We
stopped by another running store where the owner said they would be getting in
full Kenyan national team warm-ups, which I was about ready to cut off one of
my hands to get. They didn’t have any in
right then though, so I got his phone number and told him to let me know when
they came. Both the running shops were
kind of funny places, because they had the look of the shop stalls you would
find anywhere, but then they were full of really nice running gear from all
over the world, no doubt that runners had won at international races but didn’t
have use for themselves.
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