How to Run With the Kenyans Pt. 3
In the third and final part in my series on running with the Kenyans, I detail some of my experiences living and running with athletes in the legendary town of Iten.
Run to Children’s Hospital Fundraiser (click me to DONATE)
Note: I’ve decided to keep the Shoe 4 Africa fundraiser open as long as I’m still running through Africa, or until we hit $10,000. Thank you for your support! I smile every single time I think about how much money we’ve raised to build a Women’s House at East Africa’s only public children’s hospital. This hospital will soon treat more children than any other hospital on the whole African continent!
To read about how Shoe 4 Africa is also supporting healthy children, go to the end of this post.
Summary
In the third and final part in my series on running with the Kenyans, I detail some of my experiences living and running with athletes in the legendary town of Iten. To recap, Part 1 introduced Iten— the home of champions, and Part 2 researched how great Kenyans really are and why. Please enjoy this installment.
“Baba Ryan”
Everyday after morning run, my host Peter would take his one year old son Ryan and play with him, full attention, nothing else in the world on his mind. They played not just for a couple minutes but for hours. The first time I saw, it didn’t make too much of an impression on me. Dad’s are supposed to play with their kids, right? Over time, however, I came to find it sensational.
Like clockwork, little Ryan would start yelling or crying every time we came home from morning run. He ran around the house, grabbing anything in sight, knocking things over, crawling down the step outside and running through the grass. My first instinct was to look for the pause button. I thought, “This child’s out of control!”
But, Peter would laugh and start playing with Ryan. I thought Ryan demanded too much attention, but Peter had no problem giving Ryan all the attention in the world. I realized he just liked playing with Ryan. He wasn’t doing it out of duty. Our training schedule allowed Peter too spend all day with Ryan.
As someone currently on the adventure career path spending months away from home, Peter’s life design seemed like a utopian future I didn’t know existed in this universe. He pushes himself to his physical and mental limits every single day at the crack of dawn and then comes home before breakfast to be with his family. When he comes home, he’s home! He has no smartphone. His attention isn’t pulled in different directions.
Peter also helped cook and do dishes when Miriam took over with Ryan. That’s standard-fare in the US (I hope), but I can say with confidence it was the first time in my four months in Africa that I saw a husband share so many of the house chores with his wife. Ryan and Miriam’s partnership inspired me in more ways than one. Ryan spoke no English, and when the language barrier blocked us, he and Miriam pooled their brains to stitch together enough English to communicate with me.
I still have no idea how Peter generates income to support his family. His fastest publicly available marathon time is 2:26– quick but too slow for prize money. If finances were a worry, though, Peter didn’t show it. On the contrary, he had morale for running and clearly took pride in his life. When I try to think of what, if anything, felt truly unique to me about my experience of Iten, Peter’s happiness and parenting is what comes to mind first.
Does this explain why Iten is the Home of Champions? I have no idea, but for me, Iten athletes like Peter represent the best of what Africa has to offer the West in terms of shaping our attitudes. Peter accepts his place in the world, he works hard everyday to make progress moja kwa moja (“one by one”), and he finds a reason to laugh without worrying about how he will pay rent and food tomorrow. “Regardless of your starting point, you can always step forward.”
The athletes of Iten make so many forward strides that it’s easy to forget where they started. As I was stretching after a run one day, a runner asked, “How do you find Iten?” I said, “It’s beautiful. The environment is so good for running!” He replied with a big smile, “Yes, it’s nice, but us Kenyans, we are poor!” He cracked up, and I started laughing too. Of course I knew Kenyans are poor, but the way he said it shifted something in my perspective. Until the Herculean figure standing before me reminded me that he was born into poverty and probably still struggles to buy food, I could’ve thought I was talking to a legendary skier in Alaska or a world class climber in Boulder. I wondered how much more this man had to overcome in order to compete at the top of his sport.
Thursday Fartlek
Before falling asleep Wednesday night, a quick Google search informed me that Fartlek is a system of training that involves varying the pace. At 6 am the next morning, Peter, Mike, and I jogged over to the starting point where about 100 athletes stood ready for battle. The coach announced, “Two ten! One ten!” and sent us off.
After the run, I learned this meant two minutes fast, one minute slow times 10, and then one minute fast, one minute slow times 10. For the time being, I was left to chase Peter until his watch beeped. I fell behind the group within 30 seconds. During the two minutes of running hard, people really ran hard.
By the end, you can bet visions of my legs collapsing under me replayed in my head. You would barely be able to distinguish between my last one minute hard run and one minute soft jogging. In Swahili, Peter said that for him, our pace was extremely easy. I don’t think he broke a sweat. I felt bad for disrupting his training and told him to go ahead repeatedly. But he insisted on staying together.
The run reminded me of walking with my Grandpa Lou on the beach. He used to insist the kids and grandkids walk ahead because he didn’t want to hold us back. I wasn’t as persuasive as Lou, though. I figured I’d just have to get used to chasing Peter and try to go faster tomorrow.
After the run, I showered, ate chai and bread, and Peter took me to the massage therapist.
Massage
Massages in Iten cost between 300 and 500kes ($2.34-$3.91). Almost all of the massage therapists are runners themselves. They operate out of their homes or small shops. I got two massages in my time at Iten.
In the first massage, I walked into a salon to find a man squirming like a worm on the massage table and grunting in pain as the therapist drilled into his legs with his elbow. At the end of the massage, he stood up with pride and flashed a big smile, as he got dressed. Here was a man who loves his body— and it looked hard as a rock.
Massage here matches the intensity of the training. Train hard, massage hard. The squirming is par for the course, as massage therapists prioritize pounding out every single knot over lulling you into a sleepy flow state.
I got on the table and proceeded to squirm myself through most of the session. “Be a man!” the previous client teased before walking out. The therapist powerfully rolled out my feet, ankles, calves, shins, hamstrings, and so on covering every single muscle.
When I got off the bed I felt like a new man. My body hurt but it was open. Even though I’ve never enjoyed deep, intense massage, it felt fitting for a training program that pushed my body to its limits.
The second massage I got days later was in a home. Two massage therapists worked next to each other on different clients in one bed at the same time. They put me next to a female runner, and I felt like I got thrown into a blind date. Despite the fact that we lied touching half-naked on the bed, I think both of us squirmed in pain too much to get in the mood for connection.
Diet and Nutrition
Kenyans do all their training in fasted states and don’t tend to carry water for runs under 35km. There’s a lot of controversy in the west over exercising in fasted states, but for practical reasons, that’s the way it works here. Personally, it’s fine with me. The one time I ate a late lunch within a couple hours of evening run, I got intense heartburn.
Budget non-restricting the nutrition available in Iten is excellent. You can get fresh fruits, vegetables, a variety of grains, and organic meat. That said, the great majority of athletes are restricted by budget. My host Mike’s family survives on about $120 USD a month. A female athlete living alone whom I interviewed, budgets just 3000-4000Kes ($24-$32) for food each month.
As consolation for tight budgets, people’s attitudes towards food seemed very healthy to me. From what I can tell, the athletes eat as much/as well as they can afford to and will tell you, “You must eat well so that you have energy. Everything you eat, you use when you do your training.” They cook all their meals, and with no disposable income, buying junk like cookies or candy isn’t even in the question.
Occasionally when new athletes show up, they want to lose weight, in which case they will actually restrict their diet. Otherwise, the majority of runners eat three full meals a day, including Peter’s family with whom I ate all my meals. After morning run (the most intense part of the day), around 9 or 10 am, we drink chai (milk tea with sugar) and have sliced bread. I had between 4 and 8 slices of bread most mornings.
We ate lunch around 1pm generally. One day that was rice and sweet potatoes, another day rice and beans, another day chapati (tortillas) and lentils.
Dinner was around 8pm after evening run. Peter has ugali (ground corn), greens, and fresh milk generally. With me supplementing, we also bought goat meat some nights and had some fruit most days.
Ugali Interlude
Ugali is the staple food of Tanzania, Kenya and maybe all of East Africa, corn being the staple crop. For reference, corn is also the staple crop in the US, but 40% gets used to make ethanol, 36% is used as livestock feed, and most of the remainder is exported. My friend Rocky was appalled when I told him we feed much of our corn to cows. In a land where one meal a day is standard fare, people love ugali. They say it’s heavier than rice, often making a fist and pounding their belly to signify feeling full. For athletes, ugali is a symbol of strength. They say it stays in their stomach through the night, giving them energy for morning run the next day. (I myself have come to love ugali for this reason too.)
During the corn harvest, everyone is happy because they have ugali, and the price of other food also comes down with the influx of supply. To say people have a religious-like affinity for corn and ugali is no overstatement.
Rest
My total sleep in the day probably averaged between 9 and 10 hours. We went to bed around 10pm and woke up around 5:45 am most days to run by 6 or 6:10am. After morning chai, there’s time to rest before lunch. Typically I wrote during this time as I didn’t feel too tired. Then after lunch, we had another ~3 hour window to rest before evening run at 5 sharp. I took a nap during this time everyday and found it worked miracles. I had freakish dreams as my body vaulted from run to rest mode, but the sleep kickstarted my recovery everyday.
All athletes in Iten value rest. In fact, I first learned the Swahili word for relax, “pumzika,” here. Unlike my hosts Peter and Mike, however, many local athletes work midday to support their running. One woman I interviewed does laundry (by hand) most days. She naps when she can find time.
Napping becomes especially important on days with early runs. Athletes can wake up as early as 4am to do low elevation morning runs. It’s too dark to see at this time, so the coach follows behind in a car with headlights. One woman told me without hesitation that she would rather lose two hours of sleep at night to train in cool air, than run in the sun.
This set off a lightbulb in my head about training. I realized that athletes focus their training directly on running faster for longer durations rather a more general goal like challenging themselves or working hard. This is exactly what Iten enables— between 6 and 8 am you can safely push yourself to run harder in 60°F air on smooth rolling dirt roads for up to 42km at 2300m (7600ft) in any direction.
Long Run
My last full day in Iten was Saturday long run: 30km. Mike and Peter took me straight over the edge of the escarpment five kilometers down into the Great Rift Valley before we climbed back up through the forest. The run beat the crap out of me (in a good way). At the end, Mike said “If you can do that, you can do any route in Iten. This is the hardest one,” he continued, “You’re okay you know. You’re slow but you don’t stop running.” That comment boosted my confidence more than any other in my time at Iten. I felt like I proved I could handle the training.
Shoe4Africa Boys and Girls Running Club
Photo Source: Original Facebook Post
After the long run on Saturday, I went to the Shoe4Africa Boys and Girls Running Club. Toby Tanser and Chelimo Saina started the club during COVID to do something for the healthy kids after being overwhelmed by death and illness at the children’s hospital. They dedicated a prime plot of their own personal land in the middle of Iten to use as the club headquarters.
The building was completed recently and is filled with books from the US. When I arrived, about 50 or 60 kids were lined up patiently against the walls, as volunteers handed them brand new track suits.
Knowing that African kids love school and extracurricular programs, I asked why only 50 (and not 100 or even 200 kids) were present. The head teacher, Jo Anne, told me the club used to be open to everyone but it got too big to manage, so they kept only the kids with the best attendance.
Ever the skeptic, I asked Toby and Chelimo if the decision to only keep kids with the best attendance ended up excluding kids with the most unstable families? They told me, no, on the contrary actually— the kids with the best attendance tend to come from the most difficult living conditions because the club becomes their source of stability.
They pointed out one polite, reserved girl who lives with her grandmother because her father is in prison for life for killing her mother. Several children are orphans and/or live with their grandparents. Another boy stashed half his chapati in his new tracksuit to bring home to his mother. A few kids live in villages as far as seven kilometers away and run to the club before then going on their training runs with the club.
I was amazed that these kids in the idyllic town of Iten were just as poor as many frowning children I ran past in the poorest villages in Kenya and Tanzania. The club had transformed them— they looked healthy and carried themselves with honor.
The club opens every day of the week, Saturday being the main meeting day. The unifying theme of course: running. Toby and Chelimo emphasized, however, that running isn’t their priority for the kids, it’s just a convenient theme because running is built into the culture of Iten and the kids are good at it. In fact, Toby and Chelimo usually find themselves telling kids to train less, not more. Even ten year olds train twice a day by themselves— they run before and after school. (Chelimo pointed out three or four middle school-aged kids to me who have the talent to be world champions in a few years). Counterbalancing the championship culture of Iten, Toby and Chelimo warn the kids about burnout and encourage them to study hard in school.
I continue to be amazed by how rewarding charity work in Africa is. The recipients more often than not make the very most of the opportunities you give them whether it’s a $100 cash transfer or a community program. I swelled with joy seeing the obvious success of one of Shoe 4 Africa’s latest experiments in the smiles of the children.
When I spoke briefly to the group at the end of the day, I felt like I was looking at the future leaders of Kenya. They watched with full eyes and ears, eager to catch every word and act on any advice I gave. I walked away excited about the future for these children— they are destined for greatness.
Every person mentioned in this post is a champion, including the author. Your empathy and capacity for adventure are world-class. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.