Running with the Kenyans: Improvisation and brilliance in the Rift Valley

The small stand and the grassy banks that surround the Kameriny stadium in Iten are crowded with serious faces. Schoolchildren in ripped jumpers and long grey shorts are taking forever to line up the hurdles in the home straight. Their task is not helped by the flimsy hurdle stands, bits of rusted metal that keep falling out of their slots. To keep them from toppling over, the children put bricks on them. In the end they look wonky, but at least they’re up.

Before the wind blows any over, the starter fires his pistol and four women come racing up the home straight, stuttering before each hurdle, knocking most of them over, despite the bricks. The winner pumps her fist in victory, but nobody cheers.

A local track meeting in the Rift Valley in Kenya is a mixture of haplessness, improvisation and brilliance. In some of the field events it feels like the organisers have simply plucked a few random passers-by to compete. Men in trousers and wellington boots fling the discus, while at the pole vault mat, the marshals sit chatting and waiting to see if anyone turns up. Nobody does.

The high jump features a host of tall, skinny athletes who rush at the bar and karate kick themselves over. Despite their lack of conventional technique, they manage to reach the impressive height of almost two metres, somehow contorting and twisting their bodies up and over the bar.

It all feels a bit like a school sports day, a commendable effort, a bit of fun. That is, until the distance athletes file onto the track. Then, suddenly, this dusty track that sits on the edge of the clouds, the vast Rift Valley spread out far below, becomes host to some of the most fiercely competitive racing you could possibly hope to see anywhere in the world.

In the men’s 1500m, there are nine heats with around 20 athletes in each one. When the starting gun fires, they charge off, sprinting like the light brigade in fast forward. In the 5000m they seem to start just as fast. And there are just as many runners.

None of the most famous Kenyan athletes have turned up to race.

“They know you can’t run fast times on this track,” one former runner tells me. The dirt track is soft from the rain the night before. It sits at an altitude of over 8000ft. And, by all accounts, it is at least a few metres too long.

Yet, despite all this, the distance events are run at a breakneck speed. The 800m heats, eight of them in all, are each won in around one minute 49 seconds. While the 5000m final is won in just over 14 minutes.

Interestingly, some of the athletes at the back of the field trail home in fairly slow times. I’m amazed to see 1500m runners finishing in times slower than I used to run at school. I know the track is slow, but surely not that slow. In all the training I’ve done in Kenya, I’ve rarely met another runner slower than me, so what’s going on?

The answer is that every athlete sets off as though he is going to win, sprinting the first lap at least. Even after just 200 metres, some athletes are dropping out of races, sheepish grins on their faces, disappearing off the track and into the crowd. If they don’t drop out, they end up jogging around to the finish.

Among the crowd, I bump into the coach of the 800m world record holder, David Rudisha. I ask him why everyone starts off so fast.

“It’s OK,” he says with a smile. “Here, they are learning to race. After this, they can run in Rome or Oslo.”

This is the breeding ground for the great Kenyan runners of tomorrow. They may have natural talent – I see that everyday on the roads in Iten – but now, here on the track, the final piece of their apprenticeship is taking place: race tactics. And it’s interesting to see that this is one area where they still have a lot to learn.

The book Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn will be published in 2012

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