When I find a good book I savor it. I devour each chapter slowly, tasting each word and absorbing all the imagery spelled out on each page. I just finished Born to Run by Christopher McDougall and thought it was absolutely fantastic. The type of adventure he had in Mexico with the Tarahumara Indians was inspiring, fascinating and ultimately educational for me. I’ve been a runner for most of my life and loved all the theories and studies he weaved into the story about humans, in general, being born to run.
One of my goals while visiting Kenya was similar to McDougall’s, I wanted to figure out why Kenyans produced such amazing runners. What about their culture made them have such incredible endurance and speed? Was it their food? Their training? Their genetics?
I finagled my way into spending a few days with the national team at their cross country training camp in the tiny, colorful town of Kagali near Mt. Kenya. The beautiful town is surrounded by rolling green mountains, lush with tea, plantain and coffee plantations. Mt. Kenya has its own climate making temperatures bearable and provides the ever beneficial high altitude training many professional athletes seek.
The runners trained three times a day starting early each morning doing calisthenics in dew moist fields, then taking to the labyrinth of red dirt roads. They ran as a tight pack, not letting anyone fall behind, a blur of pounding feet, passing children wearing uniforms on their way to school and women picking tea in the early morning light. They slept on thin mattresses in makeshift dorm rooms, rummaged through piles of used running shoes at a nearby town searching for a new pair of trainers, were paid $9 a day and ate beef stew, overcooked veggies and chapati for nearly every meal.
A lot of the conclusions McDougall came to with regard to the Tarahumara surrounded their way of life. They are a simple people with no currency, law or unrest. When left alone they lead peaceful lives where everyone takes care of one another and running is just a fun past time. They are not a competitive people but rather thrive off of the comradery of the sport. The pure joy they receive from running is at the root of their strength.
I felt like the Kenyans have different motives for becoming runners. They are fighters, survivors, who have endured hard lives and pain. They are driven and motivated to bring pride and a paycheck back to their country and to their struggling families.However, I think they share in the same the joy as the Tarahumara and more than once I saw huge smiles on their faces after grueling workouts.
Sadly, I did not discover any mind-blowing secrets of the infamous Kenya runners, maybe each culture has its own, but I did feel like they support the idea that people have evolved to become runners. That it is in all of our genetics. That greatness can be made without all the bells and whistles society tries to sell us but rather quietly, in dusty little towns most people have never heard of, with feet simply brushing over the earth.
