Rubbing running shoes with Olympians in Eldoret

I'll let Terry fill in the details on this one, but I just wanted to say that our excursion to Eldoret was perfect in every way. I was a bit reluctant to go and kind of grumpy about it even the morning of departure... I reminded myself of Jono and Cody moaning, "It's too far, it's too hot, what are we going to do there anyway, it's just another big, dirty city, blah blah blah." Thank God I ignored the whiney voice in my head long enough to get on the crowded matatu headed for Eldoret.

For those of you that don't know, Eldoret has been called the birthplace of marathon running, or something equally as cool in Runner's World Magazine. Unfortunately for us, the author's of our Lonely Planet Guide for Kenya aren't in to running and so we were going in blind. We did know that they have a cheese factory -- yup, you heard me right, cheese. And I like cheese, so that was enough to get me to go. So after 2 1/2 hours in the back of the hot, overcrowded, bumpy matatu, we arrived in Eldoret... surprise surprise, it was busy, noisy and dirty just like every other Kenyan city we've seen so far. But, we headed straight to the most expensive hotel in town so I could check out their pool. If all else failed, I would have a day by the pool.

We asked a tour company if they knew of any elite running training camps, fully expecting to come up empty. Just so happens that there are two close to town and also a stadium that is home to running. So we headed out on foot to have a bite to eat and find the stadium. We ended up in Will's Pub, recommended by Lonely Planet, and had an expensive, but pretty yummy lunch -- I had fish curry, Terry tried spaghetti again (noodles with frozen veggies and something resembling cheese on top). I was cheered up by the nice quiet restaurant... Terry was laughing at me saying that if this was Vancouver I wouldn't even go into a restaurant that looked like this and here I am going on and on about how nice it is.

After lunch we walked up to the stadium, maybe 10 minutes away. Terry was pretty tickled and we took lots of pictures of him alone on the dirt track in his CVRR singlet. There were no runners, of course, it was 1:30 in the afternoon. We asked a couple of women there if the runners come here. They said yes, at two. Two? Oh, we had heard about this time thing here where 6am is 0 and 7am is 1, 8am is 2, etc. We didn't believe it because up until now we hadn't come across it, but here it was. O.K., this is great. Terry will come back in the morning for a run and maybe get to do a couple of laps in the midst of greatness.

One down, now to find a taxi to take us to the training centre. Maybe we could peek over a fence or take a picture in front of a sign. We negotiated with a car on the street and got nowhere, so went back to our expensive hotel and went with the driver from the tour company. He definitely knew where he was going and even said that he was friends with some famous Kenyan runner, whose name escapes me.

So, after a 15 minute drive or so into the country we arrive at Kip Keino's Training Centre for Elite Athletes. Not only did we have a picture in front of the entrance sign, we got a tour, by the coach of the facilities and even snuck a peek at a couple of the athletes that were staying there. Terry was giggling like a school girl! Talking too much, asking too many questions... he even asked if we could stay there, to which the answer was, YES!

We settled in to our room and were told that we would be taking tea at 10 o'clock (there's that time thing again... if you count from 6am, then 10 o'clock means 4pm). We had Kenyan tea with bread and jam and saw a couple more elite runners. Then we went for a walk around the running circuit (I didn't even bring my runners with me), which is a nice one mile loop with turns in a treed area close by. The training centre is on a dairy farm, where they have a lot of cool things going on -- bio fuel, a dream of fish farming, honey bees, they get their hot water by running a pipe from the water supply to the house over a stove lit with corn cobs. They have room at the centre for up to 36 athletes and there is also another guest house on the property which will house several more. Currently there are 8 runners (6 men and 2 women) staying in the centre and the German Olympic marathon team is staying in the guest house. The German coach won the 197something Olympic marathon. (I'll leave the name dropping and stats for Terry).

Terry had a nice easy run; I took pictures of him running where the Kenyans train, and then we had dinner with everyone. We sat with the German team and Terry was in ecstasy as he peppered them with questions and of course, ranted about raw food :-) After dinner we chatted in the very comfortable sitting room with a young Sri Lankan athlete. They knick named him Indika, which means bicycle.

After a comfortable sleep... it was soooo sooo nice to go to sleep to the sounds of frogs and the odd bird (no dogs barking or security lights here). We set the alarm for 6:00am so Terry could at least take off with the group. He was the first up and dressed. It was still dark when they took off. The Kenyans dressed in tights, jackets and touques, and Terry in his shorts and a singlet. He managed about 4 minutes with the first group before they left him, but the second group were on a recovery run, so he was able to join them for the full 50 minutes! Unfortunately I missed their return because I was reading "The Perfect Mile" about the three runners racing to break the 4 minute mile.

Over breakfast we chatted with a few more of the runners, now that Terry had been out with them, we felt at home. We heard from Farah Mahamoud, Olympian in the 1500M and 800M, how he got his start. There used to be a famous runner in his village that he adored. He would always run beside him and be so happy. After primary school, his mother told him he had to stop running all the time and go to school. He said he would cry and cry, all he wanted to do was run. He did finish school and he did continue running. He used to run barefoot and thought he could be faster without carrying those heavy shoes. Needless to say his feet were covered in cuts and blisters and he had to wear shoes. (We also heard another story from the coach of an athlete that was sponsored by Puma... he had always worn bare feet and when he started with shoes his times suffered, so he went back to bare feet... Puma dropped him, it doesn't look good if your sponsored athletes are faster WITHOUT your product). Farah did learn about shoes after much trial and error. His 800M is about 1:50.

Dream come true kind of stuff for Terry!

The matatu ride on the way home wasn't quite bad enough to squeeze out the dreamy day. This one was a record -- 24 people in a 14 passenger van. Toyota really should do ads in Kenya, these vehicles really can take a beating.