Habari Gani

The journey to Kenya went as smoothly as one could hope for considering the length of the journey.  We had three flights, Toronto to London 6hrs, London to Nairobi 8.5hrs and finally Nairobi to Eldoret, 1hr on Saturday morning.  The drive from Eldoret to Iten (where I’m staying) took about 45 minutes and was easily one of the most interesting rides I’ve ever witnessed.  There were many little shops, cattle, sheep, billboards and even a camel, which our driver, Kibet, told us was very rare to see.  There were tons of people on and along the side of the road.  Some were working, selling all kinds of goods, going to school, riding bikes(some with massive loads), driving motorcycles, crammed into matatus (vans), on carts pulled by donkeys and, of course, running.

Lornah’s High Altitude Training Camp (HATC) has a pool which is deep enough for pool running, some stationary bikes and mountain bikes so I can get in some decent x-training while I’m here. Pool running here is quite different than what I’m used to.  First off, water running at close to 8000ft is taxing.  Also, I have to layer on the sunscreen and wear sunglasses which I didn’t fetch from my room until after 30 minutes of squinting.

 The food and hospitality are great here at HATC and I can say that this is a place dedicated to high performance running.  Upon arrival we were offered tea, toast and jam, fruit and told that this is the place to “train hard, sleep hard and eat hard”.  There are 26 rooms here and they are currently operating at capacity with the vast majority of the athletes coming from Europe.  The gym has a ton of equipment and a sauna.  Three meals are served daily in the dining room.  I’m writing this blog from the lounge which has very spotty internet connection, you get many more “timed-out” messages than web pages that actually load.
…After not being able to do much of anything on the internet I bought a modem stick (seems very cheap compared to Canada for the actual USB stick) for my computer to get back on the grid.

The room Larry and I are staying in until February 10th.