The second week in Kenya

The time is going fast in Kenya, and we are exploring interesting things every day, even if the training has the main focus.

Last Friday we took matatu to the centre of Eldoret, and went to the marked. Matatu is a mini bus you can get a lift with if you just give a sign when it passes you along the main roads. Home a car with the same size would have had around 10 seats. Here it is 15 seats, but they easily squeeze in 20 people, and sometimes people are also hanging outside the car. The price for the 4 km ride to the city centre is approximately 20 cent.

Sunday we went to Iten, 30 km north of Eldoret, were we visited some friends in the Swedish national team in long distance running. The plan was to join Mo Farah for the first part of his long run. He was going to warm up for 30 minutes and then run 30 km in the speed 3.30 min/km. But our taxi went out of fuel 2 km before we arrived, so we had to walk the last part and came too late. In Iten we had an easy long run on paths. It was nice since the terrain there is hillier than in Eldoret.

On the track Tuesday we met David Rudisha, World Champion and World record holder in the 800 m. He was running 300 meters in 36 - 37 second, so it was difficult to follow him for long time.

The training has continued going well, and last week I managed to run 200 km. Normally we are waking up at 6 am, and going straight out running 45 – 75 minutes before breakfast. The next session is at 10 am, and could be a longer run or track intervals. Then we have finished two trainings before lunch, and can take it easy the rest of the day. But we have also quite often some training in the evening, and then maybe skip one of the trainings in the morning, if we not have three trainings that day.

Yesterday I felt tired, maybe not so strange after having run 25 – 35 km almost every day for two weeks. So I decided to not run much that day and went to the gym, where I did some warm up on cross trainer and bike before I did strength exercises and stretching. Today I had my forth sessions with track intervals, and it went really well, so it was probably smart to take it easy yesterday.

My picture gallery is now updated with more than 100 new photos from the last week.