Eldoret, Kenya - Thursday 10/25/2012

Woke at 5 a.m., waited for the sun to rise, and off for a last run in Iten. It had rained that night so I noticed the usual path was a bit sticky.  The morning crowd was off in the opposite direction from the previous two days so I figured they knew something I didn't, I followed along. Sure enough we were on roads that were a bit harder and thus could handle rain much better than the normal trails. Again beautiful scenery, and again my lungs weren't happy with the altitude...



Final goodbyes at the HATC, particularly to my new friends - David and Gabriel. They were the security guards at HATC, each worked a 12 hour shift and the change of shift was at 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. I seemed to always be passing by around then so we had daily, lively conversations, normally about religion.  They have remembered the entire bible. I asked them about dozens of philosophical topics and within seconds they would find passages in their pocket bibles that answered my question, at least for them. 'Are there any jokes in the bible?', however, was one question that had them thinking.



Off to Eldoret to meet with Coach Yobis (first ever to run a sub 27:00 10k) and his athletes. We met at a hotel lobby along the main street in Eldoret. I soon found out many of the runners had traveled over 200 kms the night before to attend my discussion - they were thirsty for knowledge and yearning to run pain-free. We settled in the space by the hotel pool for me to demonstrate and work with them on their individual issues. It was a bit surprising to see how much pain and how many musculo-skeletal dysfunctions some of them were running with. Fortunately, many of these issues I was able to quickly improve with just 5-10 minutes of specific attention (certain stretches, activation exercises, etc). Here we are huddled around the table - among the group was Joseph Birech (1:00:13 half marathon in Berlin last year) who was sitting next to me.



Now off to a final meeting before my flight back to Nairobi. After a 20 min drive to Kapsait I met up with Coach Claudio Berardelli at the Rosa Running Camp - this is one of the premier running camps in Kenya with several World and Olympic medalists currently residing there. I had only an hour until I had to head to the airport but Coach Berardelli and I were able to maximize our time together and we both expressed hope to work together in the future.

Another full day in running country completed, now back to the big city...