Striving for the Highest in Iten

On Wednesday the 24th of April a few of our cross-country runners, myself and Mr Owino woke up very early for morning flight to Eldoret. We had the incredible opportunity of visiting the town of Iten, also known as the 'Home of Champions', to do some high altitude training at 2400m above sea level.

At Iten we ran alongside and met some incredible athletes, as well as met a variety of passionate international runners who were there to be inspired and learn from the Kenyan runners and coaches in the area. We stayed in a training camp founded by Lornah Kiplagat, multiple world champion, and we were trained by our coach Ruben who encouraged, motivated and inspired us with his knowledge and training program. Often we were joined by children from the town who trained alongside us and raced our athletes for fun.

A training camp is not a luxury camp and the runners were up early every morning for their first run. Breakfast and some recovery time followed before we set out for some speed work. Speed training was done on a 400m track which has been set up in this humble town for all the athletes that visit, as well as those training within the town. Evenings were spent doing a recovery run. It was definitely not always 'fun' and many of our little runners had to persevere when legs were tired and they didn't think they could do any more. However, we arrived back at Nairobi in high spirits, excited to go back next year ... and with very stiff legs.