Happy Fourth of July from Kenya!

Three weeks into my grand adventure this summer and life has certainly slowed down!  I have been in the small farming village of Iten for almost two weeks now and it’s amazing how at home one can feel here.  The town takes it’s name from a Kalenjin word meaning “to answer”, but when the British came to colonized they misinterpreted it and called it “Hill-Ten” instead.  That name is certainly appropriate because one of the things that makes Iten such a distance runner’s Mecca is the incredibly hilly terrain.  There isn’t a flat run anywhere near us.  Oh, and it’s at 8,000 feet!  You really couldn’t design a more perfect place to train.  That said, for a Texan to get dropped off here and start running definitely is not ideal!  But two weeks into my time here (along with another week at a slightly lower altitude) and my lungs are finally adjusting.  It’s my legs that are struggling to keep up!  As I mentioned, with hills everywhere there’s no such thing as an “easy” run.  It’s more like “easy” run with a dozen hill repeats mixed in!

But yesterday I made my way over to the local dirt track, which is the only flat course around here, to do some speed work.  Of course it was a hilly 1.5 miles to get there and back, but that’s beside the point.  It actually felt really good to open up my stride, which is impossible to do on normal runs because of the constant uphill/downhill on the trails around here along with the uneven terrain.  And maybe it was the flat surface, or maybe it was the fact that I was working out on the same track that David Rudisha worked out on less than 24 hours before, but I finally felt like a runner again!  Instead of someone who was carrying bags of concrete on their bags while walking through sand and breathing through a straw.  I finally felt what the runners call the “Magic Air” of Iten.  It was incredible!  I am so thankful for this opportunity, and I highly encourage any runner out there to plan a trip here at some point in your life.

A few other thoughts on life in Iten:

 -As I said, Iten is a very small town, even though pretty much every Kenyan runner trains here.  So you see top notch Kenyan runners all over the place and everywhere you run.  To my untrained eyes it’s hard to tell the elites from the beginners.  But one thing I’ve learned is that local Kenyans don’t call anybody elite.  In fact if you ask them if there are any elite runners in a group they won’t really understand the question.  I’m guessing it’s because every Kenyan runner is elite!  So instead they distinguish themselves as regular runners and “Champions”.  You only get labeled Champion by winning an international race – the London/Boston/New York marathons for example, or anything on the Diamond League track circuit.  That’s the standard for separating yourself!  Pretty intense.  

 -We watched a European track meet last night that was stacked with Kenyans.  The Kenyans who work here were watching with us and it was fun to here the backstories on every runner.  They knew each one by name, knew who they worked out with, and what small town they come from.  Last night there was a relative unknown teenager who won a stacked 1500 race by dropping his PR by 15 seconds and beating some of the most experienced “Champions” Kenya and the world has to offer.  The Kenyans in the room weren’t even shocked.  “Oh yeah, he trains just over there,” they said, as if that was routine.  There is so much untapped talent around here that it just takes a few breaks for the next great runner to hit the world stage. 
        

 -Because of the small runner’s community that exists around here, the Champion runners are incredibly open to the public.  Oftentimes they are working out on the same track as 50 wannabe’s and shoot the bull with everyone with during warmup and cool down.  The other day, world record holder David Rudisha was working out on the track.  Afterwards we had a local ask him if we could come up and say hi.  He said of course and chatted with us for about 10 minutes, even stopping to take selfies with my kids!  He said next time we should just wave him down during a workout and he’ll come over to say hi.  OK!! 
        

 -The other cool thing about having so many elite runners around is that there is a black market for running gear.  The Champions are always being handed merchandise from their sponsors as well as from when they run for the Kenyan National Team.  When they are done with the gear they pass it along to black market retailers.  You have to know who to ask, but if you show up at the right store at the right time you can get kitted out in full Kenyan National gear along with the latest running accessories, some that haven’t even hit the American market yet.  All at bargain prices! 

So, like I said, if you consider yourself to be a runner, you have GOT to put Iten on your bucket list!  Well, Happy Fourth of July back in America!  We’re going to celebrate with Kenyan hamburgers and a few party favors I found at the local general store.  It’s not much, but it’s the American spirit that counts anyways!

First Days in Iten

Having a great time in Kenya!!  We have just finished our first full day in Iten, although it feels like we’ve been here for a week.  Our travel to Iten was a full day on Sunday.  We awoke early to the sounds of roosters crowing near our hotel.  By 6am we were at the domestic airport preparing to board our flight to Kitale, which is near Iten.  We were somewhat surprised to find that the 10 members of our party would be the only people on the flight.  We were even more surprised to board an old bush taxi plane with no separation from the cabin and the crew.  Definitely a new experience for us all!  But I don’t think that any of us would have traded the views we had aboard the plane.

Once landing in Kitale we were escorted by buses from the High Altitude Training Center to a meeting with 2012 Boston Marathon Champion Wesley Korir.  Wesley and his Canadian wife Tarah were incredibly hospitable and were excited to find ways for Strive Kenya to partner with some of the projects he is working on in the area.  He has such a great perspective on life and I think that we were all better off for having visited with him.  Despite being a busy Member of Parliament in Kenya he gave us most of his morning and Tarah even took time to show us around his parents’ home.  What a great experience!

Finally we arrived at Iten to a warm shower, a good meal, and a full nights rest.  Our first run was this morning and everyone did great!  We also made our first visit to Kamariny Primary School where we will spend most of our mornings in Iten.  We were introduced to every class and were overwhelmed with the love and respect we were shown.  Strive Kenya has definitely had a major impact on these kids in the past and we are excited to continue the tradition.  The group has been tasked with helping to teach math and English lessons and we will begin those in the mornings.  What a great opportunity to make a personal impact on these children.  

So a full day so far and we still have so long to go.  Everything has been great at the HATC and the group is in high spirits.  

TRAVEL THROUGH TANZANIA

Dropped the family off at the airport this morning, which concludes the vacation part of the trip.  Now on to the real work!  A few notes on our travel through Tanzania and Kenya:

-          The Lonely Planet guidebook section on Ngorongoro Crater REALLY needs to be updated.  The books says that when you show up at the park you just go to the office, pay an entry fee for your car and for each person entering.  IN REALITY…you show up at the park and they act like they’ve never seen a tourist before and wonder why you’d want to go to the park.  Then they tell you to go back into the nearby town to their other office.  Then their office tells you to go to the Exim Bank on the edge of town to pay and bring back a receipt.  The Exim bank isn’t really sure how much you pay, so you can help them with that.  It’s actually $200 more than the guide book says.  Then back to the office to show the receipt and pick up a 24 hour pass, which you can then take BACK to the park entrance.  Of course by this time it’s already too late in the day to see the park so you have to wait until the next morning.  Then the next morning you get back to the park entrance and they look at you like you’re the first person to ever show up with an entrance pass.  All pretty funny and very African. 

-          Aside from that, there were about 5 or 6 other steps you had to get through to make it in and out of the park.  In typical African fashion they have stocked the park with loads of patronage jobs.  I counted 3 check-in areas and 2 check-out areas, each staffed with at least 3 people not doing very much. 

-          All that said, once I had convinced everyone that we really were allowed to go into the park, they let me drive my own SUV rental straight through the crater for our own personal safari.  Pretty awesome!!  I’m pretty sure I’m one of the first mzungus (white people) to drive into the crater because you’re supposed to go through a guide service. 

-          The roads in and out of Tanzania and on the way to the park are actually really nice.  But every 3-5 miles they have a series of speed bumps that require you to slow down to under 10 mph.  The worst part is that each speed bump is it’s own creation and, like snowflakes, no two are the same.  So some you can cruise through at 10 mph, while others you’ll be lucky if going 2 mph doesn’t launch your luggage out the window.  Definitely keeps you alert and makes the whole ride more of an adventure!

-          Peeing on the side of the road is still a thing in Africa, and it…is…AWESOME!  But it’s kind of funny when Africans do it because they only turn away from the rest of their party in the car, even if that means turning TOWARDS oncoming traffic.

-          If you make a plan to go see Mt. Kilimanjaro, make sure there are no clouds.  Otherwise you might drive 3 hours out of your way to sit down at an amusement park waiting for the clouds to clear, which might never happen.

-          Nairobi traffic sucks

So like I said, finished with the exploration part of the trip and off to the Kenyan highlands for a summer running camp.  The kids all arrive tonight and we’ll catch a flight to Kitale for the short ride to Iten, which is the small town we’ll be staying in for the summer.  Before leaving Kitale, however, we’ve been invited to have tea at the home of Wesley Korir, the 2012 Boston Marathon Champion.   Nbd.  Excited to get out there and see what makes those Kenyan runners tick!  This first group will be here for three weeks and then the second group shows up.  The last three days of the trip include a trip out to Maasai Mara, the most popular safari park in Kenya.  Should be pretty fun!

A few pics from the trip...

LET'S GET IT STARTED!

After several travel related delays our grand adventure through Kenya and Tanzania finally began yesterday at our Nairobi hotel.  These intrepid travelers set off for a week of safaris parks, wildlife, and new experiences across the continent. 

We had a fairly tight itinerary set for the week.  But as I’ve learned through several trips to Africa, schedules have a tendency of not working out.  Africa will let you know what it wants you to see and things will go a lot more smoothly once you accept that fact.  That is definitely a lesson we learned today.

I have two general rules for travel in Africa – 1) Never drive at night, and 2) whatever amount of time you think it will take, allow for double that to avoid breaking rule number 1.  You just never know what will present itself on the highways and byways of African countries – road missing, bridge out, cow crossing, or riotous teenagers…

Our trip was going very smoothly coming out of Nairobi en route to Tanzania where we are spending the week.  Two hours out of the city we were on track to make our destination with time to spare.  That’s when Africa kicked in.  20 kilometers from the border near the Kenyan border town of Namanga, we started to see cars lining up on the sides of the road.  This is not unusual in Africa.  I have seen cars backed up for road blocks, missing roads, jack-knifed 18-wheelers, etc.  But as we inched our way past the parked cars on this otherwise normal 2-lane road, something felt strange about this.  We got curious looks from people standing along the roadway and there was no traffic coming from the opposite direction.  As we inched forward I could see several buses and an 18-wheelers all parked on the roadway about ¼ mile up and a crowd gathered.  Before we got there, though, we found a group of white people standing by the roadside and stopped there to find out what was going on before proceeding.

Before we could get out the question they anxiously explained that their tour bus had just been attacked not 10 minutes earlier by a mob of riotous teenagers.  Apparently the teenagers had taken to the streets to protest over unmet demands for a new school bus and more teachers at their high school.  At some point the teenagers marched out of their school and onto the main highway which connects Kenya, Tanzania, and much of East Africa, eventually drawing the police to disperse the 500 angry teenage boys. 

Unfortunately at some point the protest got out of hand and turned into a full on riot.  Riot police were called in and fired shots into the air to disperse the crowd, but there were not enough police on hand to control them.  The kids fired back with rocks and sticks and then began to attack the cars on the road.  A boy was shot, perhaps by a stray bullet, and the ire of the crowd grew and grew.  The children turned their frustrations on two tour buses filled with Australians, Europeans, and American on a month-long vacation in East Africa, breaking most of the windows with rocks and shaking the buses violently.  The buses tried to escape but were blocked by a truck which had jack-knifed itself trying to turn around.  At that point the buses were sitting ducks and the drivers sprinted away leaving the passengers defenseless and immobile. 

Eventually some kids in the crowd realized what had happened and helped the passengers in the bus walk away from the incident, even apologizing for what had happened.  That is when we drove up, just as they had reached a safe distance from the crowd.  The demonstration was still going strong and the injured boy on the street did not help matters.  Suddenly our African safari adventure had turned into so much more than we had bargained for.  As I said at the beginning of this blog, as much as you plan out a travel itinerary in Africa, ultimately Africa will make the final call on what you see that day.  And today Africa wanted us to see and feel the frustration of kids who are so desperate for a quality education that they feel their only option left is to take to the streets.  It is the frustration felt by hundreds of millions of Africans who grow up in poverty but see so much wealth in the hands of the few wealthy elites who run their countries.  How can you explain to these children that they cannot afford a few extra teachers and a school bus, while the capital city of Nairobi is exploding with new office buildings and 5 star hotels?  The same scenes are taking place in Brazil as that country hosts the World Cup.  Billions were spent on improvements for soccer stadiums, hotels, and under tourist investments, while children go to bed hungry and parents can’t afford health care…

As for our immediate situation, our lives were never in any real danger.  But the reality of the challenges facing Africa set in on all of us as we waited out a resolution to the fighting.  The broken down tour buses eventually guided its passengers to a roadside motel a few miles back where we were happy to tag along.  Perhaps miraculously nobody in the tour group was injured, but the same cannot be said for the two buses…

Eventually the local chiefs of the Maasai tribe were called in to quell the violence.  The road was cleared and we were once again on our way to the safari parks of Tanzania in our comfortable  4-wheel drive SUV.  As I write this I am sitting in a 5-star hotel in northern Tanzanian city of Arusha.  After a nice meal and a couple of Tuskers I could almost forget about the difficulties of the day.   

If only the Kenyan school children near Namanga could do the same.  But that is only for the privileged few and all I can do is be thankful for my gifts in life and carry their stories with me.  I like to think that one day I will come back to that village with donations for a new school bus and extra teachers.  I like to think that, but the reality is that it will probably not happen.  And even if it did, that would only solve the problem for one village in Africa, among the several hundred-thousand similar villages that dot the continent.  

So tomorrow we will once again leave our hotel to explore the continent.  We are scheduled to stay in the Ngorongoro Crater National Park for some once-in-a-lifetime sight-seeing.  But I will once again leave extra time in our itinerary in case Africa decides to show us a different part of her amazing story.  

BORN TO RUN

On the eve of my latest adventure to the African continent, I wanted to take a second to let everyone know what I’ll be doing over there and also put a little perspective to the trip.  I have been hired to be the Head Group Leader for the STRIVE Trips, Inc in Kenya.  I will be responsible for leading a group of high school runners who will be going to Kenya to perform service projects and also train at altitude.  Working for an organization like STRIVE is the culmination of a lot of my experiences since college, including being a running coach as well as studying and working in several countries in Africa, including Kenya.  But the seed for living out this trip began much earlier than that.  It goes all the way back to my high school days.  

My growth as a runner in my formative years coincided with the rise of elite distance runners from Kenya in the 1990’s.  I can remember following the career of my favorite runner, Wilson Kipketer, who was the world record holder in my favorite race, the 800, for most of my life.  Of course many people know about famous Kenya runners like Kipketer and Kip Keino, or have seen the names like Kiplagat, Mutai, and Kemboi  win famous marathons and Olympic races.  What you may not know is that virtually every famous Kenyan runner hails from one tribe in Kenya called the Kalenjins, and virtually every Kalenjin grows up within a few miles of each other in Western Kenya. 

 

 In the year 1996, when I was 16 and trying to break the 2 minute barrier in the 800, 56% of the top 10 runners in every track event from the 800 to the 10,000 were from the Kalenjin tribe.   Maybe even more amazing, Kenya has not lost a 3000m Steeplechase race at the Olympics since 1968 and every one of those winners was Kalenjin.  To say the least, Kenyans have dominated distance running since my youth and the majority of those runners come from the Kalenjin tribe.  

As a boy growing up in San Antonio I would dream about those Kenyans running across the highlands of Africa’s Rift Valley, never going so far as to think I would visit there someday.  A few years ago while working for Sprite and the NBA in Africa I got to actually visit the area, but I didn’t have much time to seek out runners.  This time, however, that’s my whole trip.  I will be staying in the small town of Iten, which is where 90% of Kalenjin train when not competing abroad.  There is only one track in the town, one of only 2 in the country, and it has been a dirt track until it was surfaced this year.   

 

All of the great Kenyans train on that track and it will be a dream of mine come to life to experience that reality; to smell the fresh mountain air at 8,000 feet and feel the lack of oxygen burn my lungs as those Kenyans race around that oval.

So I’ve got 7 weeks to absorb the magic and the mystery of the greatest runners in the world.  Along the way I’ll be going about my own training as well as coordinating service projects for the local communities.  It’s a dream trip and one I hope I don’t take for granted.  I’ll try my best to give you a taste of that life on this site before I have to return to the real world.  I’ll try to post as frequently as possible, so keep checking back for the latest.  During my first week I’ll get to do some personal travel with my mother as well as my Uncle David and his new wife Donna.  We’re going to visit several places in Kenya and Tanzania including Nairobi, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro Crater, and the Serengeti.  It’ll be their first trip to Kenya so it should be quite an adventure!  Safari njema everyone!