y’all feel me even if it’s in Swahili

Thursday: Flew from Eldoret to Nairobi.  My seatbelt on the plane didn’t work.

Then flew from Nairobi to London overnight.

Friday: Flew from London to Brussels and then took the train to Liege, Belgium.

On Tuesday I did my last workout on my Kenyan training camp in the form of 6 X 800m.  Jogging to the track that morning I wanted to do 800m repeats but I was willing to switch it up a bit to get in with a group of runners.  Luckily I found a couple of guys (one guy paced the recent Dubai marathon) doing 10 X 800m and jumped in with them for the first six.  They said they would start at 2:25 and work down, which sounded like a good pace on that dirt track with the altitude.  The track is always busy on Tuesday morning, however we started early so it wasn’t too busy except for one rather large group of guys doing 600m repeats.  It seemed like every other interval we somehow met up with this mammoth group, either getting passed by their front-runners or catching some of their laggards.  We went from 2:25 down to 2:20 taking between 1:15 and 1:45 rest depending on when we shuffled between other groups doing intervals.   If I compare my times to when I’m actually in track shape and at sea level it is a far cry from anything to be happy with and to be honest it’s still quite off the splits I’d like up in Iten.  However, it was a good step in the right direction and I think there is slight chance I have enough work under my belt to have a decent race tomorrow, but probably not, haha.

Hannut Lotto CrossCup is going to be muddy!  There has been a lot of rain and the run we did yesterday in the trails here in Liege was sloppy. That may be good for me because I feel like my fitness is far ahead of my leg speed.  Larry and I are staying with Pieter Desmet (8:15 steeplechaser) who normally runs these races but is currently out with an injury. 

Francis Coral-Mellon (fellow Canuck) is in Iten filming different projects and he spent a few hours here and there filming myself.  He has some great running footage and some other interesting stuff around the HATC (High Altitude Training Centre) and in Iten.  His buddy, Matt, and him are going to put together a short documentary of sorts that I’ll share later.  They have a lot going on right now so it will be a few weeks, at least, before the final product.

This is me leading my two training partners in an 800m while a rather large group doing a 600m was catching up

Me, Kip Kangogo, Kibet Rutto, Larry

Talking to Joseph after a run