Running with the Kenyans Read online

  * Haile Gebrselassie’s marathon world record of 2:03:59 was broken by the Kenyan Patrick Makau on September 25, 2011, when he won the Berlin Marathon in 2:03:38.

  † In 2011, France’s Yohann Gène became the first black cyclist to compete in the Tour de France.

  Eleven

  Nike Discovery cross-country in Eldoret

  So here at the Nike-sponsored cross-country race in Eldoret, barefoot children streak away at the front of each race. In the girls’ under-twelve race, the first two runners across the line are not only barefoot but are wearing frilly, silk dresses. They are quite a sight, sprinting away at the front in their Sunday-best outfits, like two shaven-headed Cinderellas racing home after midnight. It obviously isn’t a marketing ploy, they probably didn’t have anything else to wear, but the scouts at Nike seem to like it, as the winner is one of the two athletes “discovered” on the day and invited to train at Doctor Rosa’s camp in nearby Kaptagat. She collects her award wearing the event’s free Nike T-shirt pulled over her dress. She stares ahead throughout the ceremony, looking more annoyed than anything, as photographers snap pictures and dignitaries hand her bits of paper. When it’s over, she scuttles away into the crowd.

  The races tick slowly by: under-fourteen boys and girls, junior boys and girls … my race is the last one. To register to run I have to join a long line of athletes. They all have the bearing of serious runners. I couldn’t feel more out of place, with my pasty white skin, shaggy beard, and a few excess pounds of fat. Not for the first time since I arrived in Kenya, I have to ask myself what on earth I am doing. It is like I keep volunteering to fly an airplane, only realizing once I’m at the controls that I don’t have a clue what to do.

  The longest line of athletes is at the table for the under-twenty junior boys race. Kenyan runners seem to take a flexible approach to age, basing the category they enter more on how they feel their career is progressing than on how old they are. “I’ll run the 12K [senior race] when I’m ready. Maybe next year,” many of them tell me, despite the fact that they are obviously in their midtwenties. The officials take a slightly different view, however, and it is someone’s job to walk along the line and pull out people who look too old.

  Once I’ve registered, I head back to the grandstand. Ossian has dragged Marietta up to the highest seats, which are empty, to play with his toy cars. Uma says she is hungry, but there’s nowhere to buy any food. Lila is sitting on Godfrey’s lap, pulling him around while he tries to talk with his old running friends. When I sit down, she clambers across onto my lap instead. Then Uma starts hanging from my neck, telling me she wants to go home. It isn’t ideal preparation for my race.

  Finally the time comes for me to start warming up. I take off my tracksuit and hand it to Marietta. The girls look concerned. “Wish me luck,” I say, and trot off to the start to warm up.

  Behind the start area, hundreds of athletes are jogging around in a large circle, like a parade ring. I slip in and join them. The hot sun is already making me sweat. I feel like a cart horse that has somehow wandered into the wrong enclosure. Someone is talking about me. I can tell because I hear the word mzungu. I look over.

  “Where are you from?” the runner asks. He’s friendly really. He asks me how I’m hoping to run today. Flush with confidence, I tell him my aim is not to come last. To beat at least one person. He looks at me as he pins his number to his vest. “I’m sure you can beat two,” he says.

  Soon we’re called over to the start. I try to hide at the back, out of the way of the impending stampede, but one of the organizers walking along the line spots me. It’s not hard. “Yes, my friend,” he says, as a hundred faces turn to look at me. “Where are you from?”

  “England,” I say. He’s writing it down.

  “And what is your name?”

  “Finn,” I say—it’s just easier.

  “Vin?”

  I spell it out for him.

  “F for Freddy. I. N. N.”

  He writes it down. “And?” He wants another name.

  Okay, you asked for it. “Adharanand.”

  My parents were hippies in the early 1970s when I came into the world. They followed a thirteen-year-old guru from India called Maharaji and, getting swept up in the peace and love swirling around them, they named me Adharanand. It means Eternal Bliss in Sanskrit.

  The organizer looks at me, mock startled, and then puts the pen away without writing anything down. It gets him a few laughs. A few minutes later I hear the PA announcing that Finn from England is here racing today. If only they knew how good I was. I don’t hear the starting pistol, but suddenly we’re off. My plan is to stick at the very back of the field, but it’s as though I’ve been shot and I’m falling backward through the air as they all charge off. I’m sprinting, trying to stay upright, but it’s no good. It’s like a bad dream in which your legs won’t move.

  At the first corner there’s a lot of congestion in front of me, so I manage to catch up with the tail end of the field. As we head past the stand for the first time I’m nicely tucked in. There are almost four hundred runners ahead of me, but I’m sure that some people have started too fast and I’ll soon begin picking them off. But it’s me who has started too fast, and now I’m struggling to stay with anyone. I battle to keep up with an elderly man in front of me, but he’s too strong and I’m soon drifting on my own. I think there’s a runner behind me, but everyone else is disappearing into the distance.

  The course is six laps of a route that doubles back on itself constantly so that people watching can see nearly the whole race. Once we get to the only part of the course where there are no spectators, I find myself running past about fifteen athletes, standing around looking sheepishly at one another. They’ve all dropped out already, after less than a mile. If I can just keep going, I’ll have beaten them at least.

  The crowd that lines most of the route watches in virtual silence as I pass. Have I shocked them into dumbness with my ineptitude? I get the odd patter of applause, for trying, I presume, and hear the odd muttering of “mzungu,” but otherwise it’s just faces watching. I try to focus on my running, but I’m not feeling great. My legs are heavy, sinking into the dirt that seems to get softer with each step. I don’t know if I’m running heel or forefoot first. I don’t care. Near the end of the first lap I try to swallow and nearly get sick. This is going to be a long race.

  I trundle on in a blur. The soft dirt, the watching faces, the fluttering of the tape marking the course. I keep hearing “mzungu.” People seem to be laughing. Someone somewhere calls out “Finn.” I raise my hand to thank whoever it was. Halfway around the third lap the leaders hurtle by to lap me. One after another after another after another they fly by. It makes me feel even slower. I’m sure people are laughing now. There’s a fine line between humbling and humiliating, and I think I’ve just crossed it.

  As we pass the stand for the third time, I see Marietta and the children watching. They look concerned. I’m still only halfway around, but I’m finding it hard to will myself on. It’s too easy to stop. I’ve seen enough. I wave both hands as though something is wrong. It’s not me, it’s the engine. I jog to the side and sit down. I’m dropping out. It feels blissful to just sit on the grass. I pull off my shoes and socks, releasing my feet. They look so white. I watch as a slow runner struggles past, among all the charging athletes. Then another, a man who must be in his seventies. So there were two runners behind me. But they’re still going. Suddenly I feel bad. My body feels fine now. I could have kept going. I briefly contemplate joining in again. I could even run barefoot. But it’s too late. The two runners are gone, off on their weary way. I hoist myself up and walk back to the stands. People smile at me as I sit down.

  “Thank you for trying our race,” says one man. I can’t answer, so I just shrug and shake my head. “Next time you will do it,” he says.

  My sense of failure is tempered slightly when I later find out that the three-time London Marathon winner, Martin Lel, f
inished in thirty-third position, and the reigning 1,500 meters Olympic champion Asbel Kiprop, like me, dropped out. That’s some serious competition.

  After the race I sit with Marietta and the children in the venue’s clubhouse eating French fries. The Kenyan version of MTV plays quietly on the screen in the corner. “Dad,” Uma asks me, with one eye on the TV, “did you win?”

  Just over a year ago, in England, I did win a race. But here in Kenya’s Rift Valley, things are very different. I feel as though I’ve fallen into a cultural chasm, and it’s one that right now I’m not sure I can get across. In England, running is largely a hobby, practiced gamely by enthusiasts who squeeze in training runs whenever they can among all the other things in their lives. A handful of people take it more seriously, training regularly, turning out on freezing winter mornings for races with their local athletics club. But here in Kenya, anyone who can run dedicates his life to it. And that dedication seems to be spreading. There are more training camps than ever before. More runners. All pushing one another, training harder, every single day. Here, athletics is like a religion. On the way to the race, Marietta commented that in such a fervently Christian place, it didn’t seem like a good idea to hold the race on a Sunday. But it didn’t stop thousands of people from turning out, arriving in busloads from the surrounding villages, both to run and to watch.

  In a land where running is so revered, my goals of running a marathon, or beating my personal best times, seem feeble and halfhearted. Here people are running to change their lives. To feed their families. To break world records. “I’m not sure this is going to work,” I say to Marietta. “I’m too out of my depth.”

  She looks at me. We both know I’m just looking for some reassurance. It has been a tough day. “You’ve only just started,” she says. “You just have to give yourself a chance. You never thought you were going to win. You came here to learn from the Kenyans, not beat them.”

  Of course I can’t give up. I’ve come too far for that. Running is a simple activity. Just lace up your shoes and go, one step at a time, like each breath. But the question is, where do I go from here?

  Twelve

  World 10,000 meters champion Linet Masai checks her watch

  After the race in Eldoret, I decide I need to ratchet up my training. I’m still in my old mindset, training every other day, treating running as a side activity. I need a dose of Kenyan dedication. That’s what I came here for. But the weeks are ticking by. I call Godfrey up. “Godfrey, we need to organize a run with the Lewa team. The marathon is in a few months.” But he’s already on it.

  “I know, Finn,” he says. “That’s just what I was thinking. We need to do a long run this Saturday. Thirty kilometers. Almost nineteen miles. I’ve already spoken to Chris, and Shadrack says he will come. You just need to tell Japhet.”

  To get myself ready for the long team run, I decide to brave Iten’s weekly fartlek session. The other runners have been telling me about it for weeks. Every Thursday morning in Iten, all the various groups and training camps come together in one huge force of runners. A common form of training around the world, fartlek involves alternating fast bursts of running with slow recovery jogs. It comes from a Swedish word meaning “speed play.” For most of the athletes it is one of the week’s toughest sessions.

  “Daddy, where are you going?” Uma asks me as I lace up my shoes. The sun is streaming in through the garden doors. Flora is ladling the oatmeal into bowls on the table. Usually I’m back from my run at this time, but the fartlek sessions don’t start until a leisurely nine o’clock.

  “I’m going running,” I say.

  “Why?” she asks. It’s a good question, but right now, just before a run, is not the best moment to try to answer it. Right before you head out running, it can be hard to remember exactly why you’re doing it. You often have to override a nagging sense of futility, lacing up your shoes, telling yourself that no matter how unlikely it seems right now, after you finish you will be glad you went. It’s only afterward that it makes sense, although even then it’s hard to rationalize why. You just feel right. After a run, you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled.

  “Because it’s fun,” I say. She smiles. It’s an answer that makes sense to her. Fun is always a good reason to do something.

  It takes me twenty minutes just to jog to the start of the “speed play” at the bottom of a long hill, heading out of Iten along the edge of the escarpment. All along the way, people emerge running from side streets, shops, doorways, joining the flow of runners, everyone going the same way, to the same starting point, as though we’re part of some mass celebration. By the time I get there, two hundred or so runners are gathered, milling around, chatting. The men stand to one side of the road while the few women that have turned up stand quietly on the other side. I walk into the crowd as it edges its way across to the start. Long, skinny legs, an array of faded colors, rustling jackets, T-shirts. Then everything goes quiet. A team leader of some sort is standing up on a mound explaining the day’s session to the runners like some biblical preacher. Even if I could speak Kalenjin, I can’t hear what he is saying from all the way at the back. Someone tells me it’s “Twenty-five, one, one.” That means we jog for a minute, then run hard for a minute, twenty-five times.

  Before I know it, the floodgates have opened and I’m being carried off down the dusty road into the countryside. The pace is easy, for a minute. I’m jogging along in what feels like a sea of runners, people bobbing around in front of me like I’m heading into choppy waters.

  By the sides, up on the banked earth, farm workers stand taking a break, watching us pass. It feels like it should be an incongruous sight, this huge mass of Lycra-clad runners streaming by amid the hand-plowed fields and mud huts of this rural African outpost. Things seem even more unlikely when two hundred watches start beeping simultaneously. But here in Iten, it’s the most natural thing in the world. The watches set everyone off like wound-up toys being released, zipping and flying away. I attempt to keep up, working my arms, trying to find the smoothest part of the track to run along. But I’m rapidly slipping backward, runners nipping past me on both sides.

  A minute later the scattering of beeps catches the galloping herd, pulling it to a halt. As the group slows to a jog, it begins to bunch up again. A few stragglers like me have become detached already. Behind me there are others; mostly, if not all, women, their arms working side to side, trying to catch up. But it’s a cruel game. Before we can make contact again with the group, the swarm of watches goes off, and the main group is gone, stringing its way out along the distant track. At the back, we team up in twos and threes for support. I find myself running next to a tall girl with short hair. I hope she doesn’t mind me running next to her. “I don’t have a watch,” I say, by way of explanation.

  “Three, two, one, up,” she says, and we’re off again.

  I must be the only runner here without a watch. Before I came to Kenya, I had naively imagined everyone racing along without a thought for anything as controlling and analytical as a stopwatch. It would be just them and the open road, I thought, their bare feet pounding on effortlessly, the wind in their hair. It turns out that’s not the case. However, while in the West we time everything so that we can measure and analyze it afterward, or keep track of our running pace so we can calculate whether we need to slow down or speed up, Kenyans use their watches in a completely different way.

  By running their intervals according to the regimented beeps of their watches, Kenyans are actually taking the thinking and analysis out of their running. When the watch beeps, they speed up. When it beeps again, they slow down. Although they say they are doing twenty-five sets of intervals, in reality they just run, speeding up and slowing down, until they get to the end of the route. Afterward, no one could honestly tell you how many intervals he had run. Nobody keeps a training log or adds up their weekly mileage. Each session is forgotten as soon as it is done. The timi
ng is just a way of structuring the training, of telling them when to start and when to stop.

  With hill training as well, Kenyans don’t run up a set number of hills but run up and down for a set amount of time, usually an hour. This saves them from having to count the number of hills they’ve run, which may not sound that difficult, but as you get tired your brain becomes easily addled. I’ve often done hill sessions on my own and even by the third one I’m struggling to remember how many I’ve done. I have to keep repeating the number over and over to myself, which can get tiring. Having a watch doing the counting means you can just run, unthinking, back and forth, up and down, until the beeps tell you to stop.

  “In the West we break it all down and analyze everything,” says Brother Colm when I track him down, standing on the playing fields at St. Patrick’s high school watching David Rudisha going through his warm-up routine. “But sometimes by doing that you lose the bigger picture. Kenyans might wear watches, but they’re not using them to analyze their training. They just take it as they see it. It’s a simpler approach.”

  Most of the athletes in Kenya follow virtually the same training schedule. Toby Tanser told me it was set up by Bruce Tulloh when he was in Kenya in the early 1970s. Other people date it back further to the British system of the colonial days. An integral part of the schedule is the regular 6:00 A.M. run. I often ask the athletes why they always have to start at six when it’s still dark. If they waited even thirty minutes, it would be light and they would be able to see. “It is best to run early,” is all they can say, laughing when I try to debate the point. Accepting the schedule, rather than questioning it, makes things simpler. They don’t have to lie in bed trying to convince themselves to get up in the morning. At 5:45 A.M. when their alarm goes off like a barking sergeant major, they just get up and, like disciplined soldiers, they run.