Even a wrong number can lead you to a world-class runner in Kenya
I was walking along the street in Eldoret with a friend the other day when he bumped into someone he knew.
“Hey, meet James,” he said to me. James looked like any other man in town that day, dressed in a shirt and smart trousers, his jacket too big for him, hanging off his shoulders. He smiled nervously and offered me a limp handshake.
“Are you an athlete?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Marathon?”
“Yes.”
My friend stepped in. “James is the third fastest marathoner ever.”
It was a fairly typical exchange in this part of the world, where virtually every second person is a world-class athlete.
The reason Kenyans are so good at running is partly and simply because so many of them are so dedicated to it. The whole Rift Valley area is teeming with people living like full-time athletes, even if they have never raced outside Kenya or earned a single shilling from the sport.
I met one woman who told me that after she finished school, she spent about five years living at home, helping her mother. “I was big,” she says, holding out her arms to show me just how wide her girth was. Then, about two years ago, even though she had never run before, she decided to become an athlete.
She rented a tiny shack in Iten, and started training. Not just the odd run, but twice a day, every day. And when she wasn’t running, she was resting. Last month she ran a half marathon, at altitude in Kenya, in 76 minutes. That would put her in the top 20 women in Britain.
While young, unemployed people in Britain with nothing else to do may end up calling a temping agency, or trying to go back to college, in Kenya the most common option is to become an athlete. All around them they see success stories – athletes returning from abroad driving 4×4 Land Cruisers – and they think, ‘I could do that’.
That’s not to say everyone in Kenya can run. One Harvard professor in the US made that mistake. He believed that any Kenyan from the Rift Valley could be a great runner if they put their minds to it, so he decided that he would ignore their running credentials and instead pick the brightest students from the area for his Harvard track scholarship programme. It proved to be a disaster. The students couldn’t run at all. The Harvard track coach was furious, and the idea was scrapped.
But any Kenyan that can run, probably will. That is the difference. And with so much competition, inspiration and encouragement, the chances are that they will be good.
The other day I was trying to contact an athlete called Wilson Kipsang. He is a fairly decent runner even in these parts, ranked in the all-time top 10 in the marathon with a time of 2hr4min. Someone who knew him gave me his number – except by mistake they gave me the number of a completely different person, someone called William Kipsang.
When I called up, the conversation went like this:
“Hello, Kipsang?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Finn here, the mzungu writer.”
“Eh?”
“We’ve met a few times. I was talking to you at the track yesterday.”
“Eh?”
“Is that Wilson Kipsang?”
“No, William.”
“Oh, I thought your name was Wilson. The 2:04 marathoner, right?”
“No. 2:05.”
Even a wrong number here ends up with a person who has run a time 10 minutes quicker than the fastest British runner this year, and three minutes quicker than the British record, set over 25 years ago. The depth of running talent is truly incredible.
Tomorrow is my last day in Iten before I head back to the UK. After six months with the best runners in the world, I’m fitter, almost two stone lighter, and raring to tackle my PBs back at sea level. I’m also looking forward to not being the slowest runner in town for a change.
• The book Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn will be published in 2012. You can follow Adharanand on Twitter @adharanand
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