Training for life – Iten Kenya 2024

The question “what are you training for?” is common place in our environment. Not surprising, as many people are genuinely training for things ongoing. It is good, it drives people, it brings focus.

When the reply to that question is “life” eyes sometimes start to roll. They should not. That response in itself is way bigger than any event. The infinite game you may say, the constant quest to be a better human being. It can actually make training for a specific race the easy option.

As we waited to board our Kenyan airways flight to Nairobi in the early hours of Sunday morning I looked at the 3 guys with me. For Rob, Tom and I this was our fourth trip to Iten, for Rob Jones his first. In the previous three trips all of us had a race on the horizon that we were “training” for. It made sense for us to be heading out to the Mecca of Kenyan running at 2,300m altitude. This year was different, none of us had any races in the calendar. All of us had lives to train for. We all still train hard to be the best humans we can be and for when a trip like this comes up to be confident to say “yes let’s go.” It’s unique, it’s cool.

On our previous three trips running was the focus. This time we had checked in our mountain bikes. Some 12 hours after departing from Dubai we arrived in Eldoret airport and we set about building our bikes in the carpark.. No one batted an eyelid. Welcome to Africa.

Our first “training session” / challenge was to ride 70km from Eldoret to Iten. I had plotted the route and it seemed like it was 50% road 50% red carpet (the beautiful red dirt / gravel roads of Africa). We would soon find out. Hustle and bustle through Eldoret, a left turn and the red carpet welcomed us back. Everything changes, the temperature, the noises, the smells. It is unreal and for those that have not been it is the sure signal you are in Africa. 4 hours later we roll into Kerio View hotel, our home for the week.

Monday starts easy with a 45 minute shake out run into a $1.50 per head breakfast at the institution that is Lillys, a place where all the local athlete meet, eat and watch running races on the huge TV. We spent the afternoon exploring the forest on our mountain bikes and making sure not to expend too much energy as we knew what Tuesday morning would bring.

Life in Iten is simple. You sleep a lot, you train a lot and you eat a lot. We always add a key ingredient to this in that we laugh a lot. Laughing is so important to humans and on the whole it is in decline. Not on this trip, we increase our daily intake. We sit a lot and look into space, talk about things, some serious, some not. Of course we take lots of photos and videos on our Go Pros and share them through social media in the hope that from a distance we can continue to make people better at life. Actually the time it takes to download, edit and post content a day sometimes gets quite draining but it is our responsibility to our community so we try and make it fun!

Tuesday morning we rise with the sun, a nice cup of coffee and a beautiful sunrise over the Rift Valley. We are excited. Today is the infamous Iten Fartlek where at 9am over 100 runners will gather for what is aways 1 minute hard 1 minute easy for 20 sets. It is always hard but always good.

We are welcomed back by some of the runners that recognise us from previous trips and are told that today will be very hard. As I get dropped in the first rep those words ring around my head. My lungs are exploding and the lack of oxygen in my body on the whole causes pain pretty much everywhere by rep 3. No race to be training for in this situation could bring no purpose and therefore make it easy to quit. I do not need to keep hurting myself, I do not need to keep suffering like this. During the 1 minute off of the 3rd set I look down at the beautiful ground I am running on and then I look around at the landscape. “What a privilege” are the words that enter my head. I keep pushing as hard as I can. At 15 reps I am done. I know when I am done as my recovery is no longer recovery. I jog easy as Rob who was just ahead of me keeps going until he has done 20 reps. We then realise that we have gone the long route and are somewhere around 5km from home. 19.1km on the watch…double my average run distance a week since May. Legs are surprisingly ok. Time for breakfast and more time horizontal.

In previous years we have run over 100km a week during this trip to Iten. It has been good. I am thankful that we are not doing so this year though. Ha ha. For Wednesday Tom has found us a 75km bike loop with just under 2,000m of climbing. Sounds great, but then he tells us it is on Komoot. Our history with Komoot and mountain bike routes has always involved a decent amount of walking! After a nice 27km descent to the floor of the Rift Valley we make a sharp right and get stuck into our work for the day. 15km with 9% gradient all off road, some mud, some rock pools, all very beautiful. What a route, what a day. We can all feel our legs but we are all wearing big smiles, both satisfied from the day as well as excited about running tomorrow.

Thursdays plan is track which is a couple of KM from our hotel. I am not sure who came up with the idea of 400’s but it was a good one, as was the idea to run 20 of them. Tom suggested we do 5 easy, 5 a bit harder, 5 hard and the last 5 all you have left. Obviously after the first 5 reps Skinny and Rob made an almighty leap on the pace, Tom and I stuck on the plan. Of course the questions come into your head as to why you are doing these 400s when there is no running goal at hand, I think this is natural, the mind wants a reason to keep telling the body to keep going. I give it many, some more profound than others. After 10 efforts I move the rest from 40 seconds to 60 and the whole session changes. My recovery is good. I am able to hit the pace I want. I am inspired by some of the runners passing me in their lines, the rhythm of the feet landing in  time on the cinder track. It is truly unique and incredibly motivational.

Ian Kiprono joins us for lunch. Spending time with this guy is always one of the highlights of the trip. In his late 30’s Ian has been coaching under the tutelage of arguably one of the best athletics coaches of all time, Colm O’Connell. He has coached juniors, he has coached world champions, his knowledge, approach to coaching and mindset is always interesting to listen to. I always learn something or have something reaffirmed. The biggest takeaway from this years chat was a concern of our inability to relax. Not only as athletes aiming for 2 hour marathons but for humanity as a whole.

During our trip last year legendary ex-pro tour rider Lachlan Morton was staying at the same hotel as us and doing some riding with the guys from Team Amani (an awesome project in Iten aimed at developing East African cyclists). I checked out some of his rides on Strava and for Fridays entertainment we picked a 112km route. Lachlan now spends his time riding for team EF education, he won the Unbound gravel race this year and then went on to set a new record for riding the 14,000km around Australia in 30 days, needless to say we were confident that todays ride would be a good one.

There is one main road into and out of Iten. Aside from that everything is gravel roads or more aptly put “Red Carpet”. 95% of todays ride was on those gravel roads. The route was insane, views, climbs, downhills, it had everything. Conveniently it was a game of two halves bringing us back to town after about 60km so we could grab some lunch. $10 later for the four of us and we were back on our bikes. Rob Jones being the Rob Jones that we love decided that it was getting too hot so rode the afternoon with his shirt off but his bib shorts up. Please contact him for advice on tan lines. 116km after we set off we were back at the hotel. Today was different, yes there were some hard parts of the ride but it was more a case of enjoyment and gratefulness that our legs are strong enough for us to be able to ride for 6 hours with no stress. It is very cool, try it.

One final run before we fly home. There was only one place to go and run on Saturday morning. Moiben road. This is perhaps one of the most famous stretches of road in the area for those preparing for marathons. As day broke Skinny, Rob and I head to the Main Street to catch a ride in the local transport, the Matatu. Sadly Tom had been struck down with food poisoning so was busy with the toilet and a fever.

Moiben road is 21km with kilometre markers every 1km. It is pretty straight but undulates slightly. If you are a running nerd then you would have absolutely seen footage of packs running on this road, normally accompanied by a European coach in the front of a Matatu shouting orders. Today was no different as various packs passed us at high speed. It is a special place to run and a very fitting place for our last session of the trip.

It is still early, my thoughts are still fresh around this years trip. There were learnings, many. There were laughs, also many. There were also very hard physical and mental situations. All of these things help us, they help us to be better humans and if we are better humans then we are absolutely better coaches. It was an honour to share the week with Tom, Rob and Rob. It is rare to find 4 people that are so closely aligned and so happy just training for life.