KIMbia Athletics

Hey everyone, thought I would give an update of the Monaco 3,000m on Tuesday.

I left this race and went home to the States the next day, and on the way back I was trying to figure out just what to take from this first half of the summer season and some of the spring. The only title of my first half of the track season is……..”The Frustratingly Mediocre Season.”

To call what I’ve been through this half a terrible season would be false; to say it was good or great would also be false. I think after last summer, with everything going so well, left me set up to try to do the same this summer, and that is a tough and incorrect way to approach racing. It rarely, if ever, goes as planned, and I was just fortunate to get out of last summer having everything go perfect.

This year I have faced many disappointments. I won’t go into all of them because I have previously discussed them, but Tuesday’s race in Monaco continued that trend. I came into this race once again having no expectations in terms of a time or place, but as always I just wanted to be competitive and have fun. I am happy that I did those, as I wasn’t feeling the greatest going into this race–in the days prior I was just kind of tired and almost zapped, but I was able to enjoy the experience and while still feeling not great stay in the race up until the last lap.

This is where the frustration comes in for me. I was there with a lap to go and got rolled, again! Somewhere just before the bell I got boxed in and missed the initial move and was never able to get back on the main lead pack once they started kicking, and thus kind of lost the real hunger to dig down and really go after the last lap. This is what I’m mad at myself about for–noteven with a gap not really going after it–because who knows if I could have caught some of them, because I just ran in hard versus really digging.

I ran 60 seconds for my last lap and ran 7:41.9 for my second fastest time ever, but I finished 11th…not competitive. The one thing that is positive to take out of this summer is that I’m learning way more from this summer than last, because last summer was so perfect. I’m facing adversity this year and I’m learning a lot, so if anything I will be so much smarter from this year and be that much better from it.

I am now back in the States and going to train for a month before heading back over for the meets that I had mentioned previously. I am no longer doing the Falmouth Mile, mostly because I need to get more training in at this point rather than just racing. I really enjoyed that race last year and am sad I have to miss it, but I feel that this is the best move for me to address a few things before stepping to the line again.

I would also like to say thank you to everyone for their support this entire year. I cannot express enough how appreciative I am of it. It is something that helps me to keep pushing, so again THANKS!!

I am looking forward to watching the Olympic Games in a few days and seeing what our team can do. I think there will be some exciting performances–we are sending quite the team! I am actually even looking forward to watching the 5K. (At first wasn’t planning on watching it, but now I may tape it for motivation.) I am excited to see what my training partner and the rest of the guys can do against the world. Good luck guys!

Well that’s it from me until I head back over in a month, but if anyone has questions I would love to try to answer them, so just leave them in my comments! Thanks again for the support and happy training/racing!!

Replacing light fixtures, painting doors/walls, moving furniture, cleaning—ah, the joys of selling a house. Since I got back from Stockholm, Michelle and I have been working hard to get the house ready. Not the ideal time, but it was important that we get the house up and sold so the transition to Portland in the fall is easier.

With all that work I have not even had a chance to really reflect on the race at Stockholm, so here it is. I was happy with the race overall! My only problem is that I am having a hard time getting comfortable in the middle of the race and just going with the flow. I feel like I am pressing the entire race, and that is never going to lead to fast times. Luckily the race was on the slow side and I was able to have some pop left in my legs at the end. With 500m to go, Mottram dropped the hammer and never looked back. To be honest I was not really paying attention to just one person in the race at that time, because I thought if anyone made a move the pack would go with it. Unfortunately, Mottram put close to 2 seconds on us in just 200m. With 350m left I was ready to go but as I started to move to the outside, I noticed Songok was already on my shoulder, and I was boxed in. It stayed that way until 70m to go, and finally a gap opened and I was able to unleash. I really moved well in the last 100 and that made me very happy with the race overall.

When I talked with Jerry about the race, he reminded me of the sharpening work that is still to come. I never really thought about it, but up to this point we have done everything at 61-62 pace, and that makes it really hard to settle into a race. Now over the next couple of weeks adding in a bunch of mile race pace work should make it easier to settle in to the slower races. I mean, if I do a bunch of repeats at 56-57 pace, and I need to race a 62 pace it should feel easier. At least in my head it does!

I am confident that our timing leading up to the Games is going to be perfect. I will be providing regular updates over the next few weeks, so check back and leave me some comments.

Speaking of which, answers to some earlier comments:

Does your wife ever travel with you to your meets overseas? Do you ever take a full day off of running or do cross training? What would be your ideal in how often you’d be running a race during the middle of a season?

Much to Michelle’s displeasure, she does not get to travel with me overseas. She was busy with grad school and now she is finishing up her dietetic internship, so that limits her ability to travel. She does, however, travel to some of the domestic events. And she will be going to Beijing, which is awesome.

I do take full days off, and they are not scheduled. I just read my body and take them when I need them. I do not do anything training related on those days.

I always want to race as often as possible in the summer. I do realize, though, that the races take a lot out of us and recovery is important. At least once a week for shorter races and every 10-14 days for 5Ks would be awesome.

I was curious as to where you train while in Europe. I mean, do you just go run on the streets around where you are staying when you are not on the track, or do you try to find trails when possible? When you are doing track work, are you able to use the track you will be racing on, or do you find other tracks in the area?

We usually decide in the spring where our base is going to be for the summer. I have been in Berlin, Teddington (London) and Hulst (Holland) in the past, and all have been great. We usually are able to find soft surfaces, which is always nice. At the meets it depends on the city—usually there are trails to run, but everyone once in a while it is city streets. Luckily we are only running 5 miles most days. The meet always provides a practice track to do stuff on, and we are never allowed to go on the competition track before the meet.

Here’s the latest dispatch from Peter Vigneron, in Kenya on behalf of the KIMbia Foundation.

There is a tremendously important article in the May/June issue of The Boston Review by the Berkley development economist Ted Miguel. In a meditation on Africa’s encouraging growth rate since 2000, Miguel argues that, for the first time in 30 years, African economies appear to have broken free of stagnant or even regressive growth rates. In the development world, this is big news, and Miguel’s article is one part of a trenchant discussion among economists who are trying to sort out why Africa is beginning, finally, to recover.

But the article caught my eye for another reason. Miguel opened with a description of Busia, a border town in western Kenya that has begun to cash in on trade between Kenya and neighboring Uganda. Busia now has ATMs, car rental businesses, supermarkets and, critically, Miguel writes, “the road from Kisumu, the economic hub of the region and Kenya’s third largest city, to Busia ha[s] become a paved, two-lane highway all the way to the border.”

Miguel’s is a remarkable observation, both in that a major road in Kenya is today well paved, and that in Kenya, the jewel of East Africa, something so basic as a proper highway is cause for celebration. And it is.

The Kisumu-Busia road is one of a few good highways in Kenya. Travelers headed from Nakuru to Kabarnet also will not find potholes, though they may similarly fail to encounter any other cars—the route conveniently links two homes of former Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi, and is ignored by most commercial and even passenger vehicles. Besides Kisumu-Busia and Nakuru-Kabarnet, there are some other good stretches of road, but they’re difficult to find and don’t often last more than 10 or 15 miles. More typical is the road north from Nairobi, the main artery bringing goods from the capital to the cities of Rift Valley Province and beyond to Uganda, which is disastrous. In some stretches, drivers avoid the road itself and follow dirt tracks alongside the potholed and crumbling pavement.

Good roads are good for trade, but Busia’s new road was likely a product of economic growth rather than a cause. I’m told that the smooth, wide roads in Narok District, home to the Masai Mara game reserve, are funded by tourist dollars, and, as Miguel writes, Busia is clearly benefiting from the successes of Kenyan and Ugandan interdependence. But in other regions, the majority of regions, the cost of bad roads to Kenyan society is staggering. Driving 20 miles from Eldoret to Iten takes 45 minutes, a major expense with gas in Kenya over $7 a gallon. Flat tires are commonplace. Suspension systems cannot possibly last—in working condition—more than a few thousand miles. These are major costs to a developing economy, and frustrating and unnecessary costs.

Yet the the real price of Kenya’s bad roads is paid in human lives, not in fuel or vehicle repairs. Each year thousands of Kenyans die in traffic accidents (the government reports around 3,000 deaths annually, but the World Health Organization assumes significant underreporting in most developing nations, and presumably Kenya too) and traffic fatalities occur, per registered vehicle, at a rate 20 times that of the United States. Pedestrian deaths account for nearly half of all fatalities; in the United States the figure is closer to 12 percent.

Driving in Kenya is terrifying. Even the best roads are too narrow, and all are trafficked as heavily by pedestrians and cyclists as they are by cars. The safety features of American roads—stop lights, speed limits, lane marking, warning signs, traffic enforcement—which are almost banal in their ubiquity, are nearly absent in Kenya. Because transit takes so long, when road conditions are good, drivers proceed at wildly excessive speeds. Since March, I have witnessed or heard first person accounts of 4 fatal accidents. Weekly I read about a major crash in The Standard or The Nation—typically when an overloaded matatu, or taxi, has suffered a flat tire and careened into oncoming traffic and killed five or six or 10 people. On two occasions I have seen the charred remnants of tanker trucks sitting forlorn and forgotten in deep ravines by the side of major roads; in May I was a passenger when the vehicle I was traveling in hit a pedestrian (at low speed).

It may seem strange to write about car crashes in a country battling AIDS, hunger, illiteracy. But these problems are less visible to prying eyes, and it may be that the governmental neglect of transportation infrastructure is in fact representative of its neglect of the entire spectrum of social problems affecting millions of Kenyans each year. In 2003, President Mwai Kibaki declared his willingness to tackle the roads question and limit the corruption that allows government officials and contractors to pocket money and leave roads in disrepair. If Kibaki was sincere, his initiative has been slow in coming. Worse, it is almost as if, by maintaining his personal highway, former President Moi is publicly acknowledging the billions of dollars he looted while in office, or the members of Parliament, riding in their Mercedes and Land Rovers, are acknowledging that driving safely in Kenya requires extraordinary vehicles. Few seem concerned that government serves itself first and Kenya last.

I wonder if there is another dimension to the issue of roads, however. At the intersection of traditional Kenya—small farms, big families, village culture—and the new, rapidly growing Kenya—of satellite television, Lexus SUVs, and high-rise office buildings—we find that here the value of human life has not yet synced with the swiftness by which a speeding car erases a person from the earth. Or, perhaps, at the margins, where the modern car and its modern driver encounters those Kenyans still hovering within a society that has changed so little in hundreds of years, there is resentment for the old ways, perhaps even hatred. When a driver clips a cyclist at 70 miles an hour, or swerves too wide around a pothole and catches the drunkard who didn’t jump quite quickly enough, maybe he is unconsciously doing his part to bring Kenya into the 21st century.

These are uncomfortable ideas. They do not seem in line with the Kenyan people I know, who are among the most gracious and caring individuals I have ever chanced to meet. But I cannot decide what to think. It is inconceivable to me that the drivers of these modern cars have yet internalized the corresponding appreciation of human life. If they had, they would have slowed down.

In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, former Bogota, Colombia mayor Enrique Peñalosa said that when a city planner or a politician builds a good sidewalk, he or she is “constructing democracy,” because in developing nations most people do not drive. I imagine that the relationship is slightly different—maybe sidewalks are themselves signs that democracy has taken hold, that citizens can demand a safe place to walk and find that their leaders are listening, or that an effort is made to safeguard life even if it has never been safeguarded before. This was supposed to be the role of government—to serve people.

Africa, or at least Kenya, is developing, and I agree with the unstated premise of Dr. Miguel’s piece, that we in the West should want Africa to develop. It just seems that within this bizarre form of accelerated growth—where many Kenyans sleep on dirt floors and under grass roofs, and other Kenyans fly to Europe for medical care—some essential priority has been lost in the scramble.

Peter Vigneron, in Kenya for the next few months on behalf of the KIMbia Foundation, sent us this dispatch. It’s a thoughtful, well-informed look at some of the historical factors behind the recent troubles in Kenya, and how those historical antecedents are likely to continue to affect attempts at political reunification.

In Kenya, the coalition government survives day to day. Last Friday, Vice President Kalonzo Musoka just nearly fooled Prime Minister Raila Odinga into speaking first at a peace rally, suggesting that Odinga should introduce Musoka and President Mwai Kibaki as his superiors. Constitutionally, Odinga and Kibaki are supposed to be equals. As Vice President, Musoka’s role in government is to assume presidential duties if the real president dies, and then only for 90 days until an emergency election can be held. His status is so clearly and indisputably inferior to Odinga’s that the controversy might be amusing if it had not headlined the nightly news each evening this weekend. As such, it strikes a sadly Orwellian chord to this Western observer.

Meanwhile, 150,000 Kenyans languish in refugee camps–and for some, “languish” is probably the wrong word. Non-refugees have been found sneaking into the camps, people looking for government handouts and lured by rumors of impending land grants to refugees. Stories have circulated of families selling their property and heading to the camps to get in line for those grants. So maybe 149,000 people are languishing in refugee camps, and the rest are laughing all the way to the bank.

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of land to Kenyans in Rift Valley and Central Provinces. “As agriculturalists,” anthropologist and rebel leader Jomo Kenyatta wrote of his Kikuyu tribesmen in the 1930s, “the Gikuyu people depend entirely on the land. It supplies them with the material needs of life, through which spiritual and mental contentment is achieved…The Gikuyu consider the earth as the ‘mother’ of the tribe[.]” A Kalenjin would almost certainly say the same. Kikuyus and Kalenjins are farmers, as Kenyatta notes, and so depend almost exclusively on what their farms produce. A family without land does not eat, does not live.

This is why, like many famous ethnic conflicts in world history, Kenya’s post-election violence had very little to do with ethnicity. In the 1960s, after Kenyans fought and won their independence from British colonial rule, Kenyatta, now recast as the nation’s first president, awarded large plots of land in Rift Valley Province to his Kikuyu tribesmen, who bore the brunt of British oppression and savagery during the Mau Mau uprising, and who had suffered the greater indignity of losing their property to British settlers throughout the first half of the 20th century. It is unclear if Kenyatta believed he was righting historical wrongs or just bestowing patronage on his Kikuyu supporters, but he couldn’t have been surprised when the Kalenjin community reacted poorly to sharing their ancestral homes with new neighbors. In the 45 years that have followed independence, a low-grade land conflict has simmered in the Rift, and the post-election violence of January and February is the latest chapter.

It might be useful here to consider the use of the word “genocide,” which was bandied about at the height of the violence, especially after dozens of Kikuyus were burned to death while taking shelter in a church. In genocides, the object is generally murder. In Kenya this year, the object was land reclamation, which makes the killing that occurred ghoulishly purposeful, but not genocidal. It is perhaps for this reason that the number dead, usually estimated at around 1,200, is dwarfed by the number of Kikuyus initially pushed from their homes (over 300,000), and the number of those who still find it unsafe to return (150,000).

And in the midst of this conflict, now generations old, we find the current power-sharing debacle between Kibaki, a Kikuyu who brazenly tried to snatch December’s presidential election from his Luo challenger, Odinga. Luos, traditionally fishermen from Kisumu, have no particular affinity for land, and the Luo-Kikuyu violence was strictly borne of hatred for Kibaki and his abuse of the democratic process. Kalenjins have no particular affinity for Odinga, except that he opposed Kibaki and offered to decentralize the government, which many Kalenjins interpreted as their long-awaited opportunity to assume greater control of Rift Valley and drive their neighbors back to the ancestral Kikuyu land at the foothills of Mount Kenya, in Central Province. For the time being, Kibaki and Odinga are sharing executive power, but badly. Neither the hardliners in Kibaki’s camp, like Musoyka and Justice Minister Martha Karua, nor Odinga—a hardliner himself—will likely compromise well enough to run the government, which is already deeply corrupted and inefficient, and so it seems only a matter of time until the whole thing collapses once more.

And still—the refugees. Compounding the government’s ineptitude is a legitimately complicated and serious refugee crisis. For decades the only stable and peaceful nation in East Africa, Kenya has never had its own refugee problem, and Kenyans are rightly clamoring for a return to normalcy. The government is under enormous pressure to move the 150,000 displaced Kenyans out of tents and into permanent homes, but cannot decide where those homes should be. Parliamentarians from Rift Valley argue that most refugees shouldn’t return to the Rift, where the land conflict would be renewed, and yet haven’t offered a way to determine which Kikuyus were driven off land given to them illegally by Kenyatta and which were driven off land they purchased legitimately. Disallowing all Kikuyus from returning to their homes seems like a massive perversion of justice, but allowing them all to come back seems like a recipe for disaster, revisited. Worse, it certainly is not clear whether resettlement away from the Rift will do anything more than alienate a new generation of Kikuyus, who will feel that their land was stolen by the government, as the Kalenjins felt in 1963, and still feel today.

The government appears to have adopted a third solution, however. Over the past two months, construction crews have been feverishly building big police stations in the worst-affected areas, evidently hoping that the imposition of law and order will keep Kalenjin-Kikuyu tensions from re-igniting. It is not a particularly good solution. In some areas, the Kalenjins who died during the clashes were shot by police, not by Kikuyus, and there exists a hard-bitten distrust of the police in several North Rift communities. Worse still, land conflicts have a way of outlasting the original disputants, sometimes for thousands of years. Too often, an escalation in force by one side—and today Kalenjins do not believe the police to be impartial—triggers an escalation in violence.

On the other hand, any government’s first priority ought to be the safety and security of its citizens. Perhaps law and order could be an partial or interim solution to this decades-old conflict. In the long term, though, it is hard to be optimistic for a real peace: Kenya’s land dispute is not particularly different than any of the world’s other famous land disputes—in Palestine, Kashmir, the Balkans. Kenyatta should have known better.

Matt Tegenkamp and Chris Solinsky opened their outdoor season with a 1500m at Saturday’s Sun Angel meet in Tempe, Arizona. Matt ran 3:40.12 to finish second behind Lopez Lomong. Chris was fourth in 3:40.68, with their training partner Jonathon Riley squeezed between. (See for yourself.) Matt’s post-race take:

So, flying home from the race, you’re feeling _____ about it?
Satisfied. Where we are in training right now, I am very pleased. Last year at this time I opened up with a 3:43.

How much of what you would consider mile-relevant training have you done?
Training has been going great, especially since spring is coming to Madison. This week I came off a month at 90 Badger miles, and two weeks of that we threw in 4 workouts. This week we still did four workouts (Tuesday being 10K worth of work) and Thursday being a little play day. Thursdays are the only day we get a taste of mile-specific work, so we have had 3 days of it so far. 57 for the first 400m didn’t feel so hot.

Did you have that feeling of not being able to switch gears, but that you could have kept going at near that pace for a little longer?
From the 800 mark to about 1275 was really nice, but that is because we slowed down. That is the thing in the early season, is that you have to know in the back of your mind that at some point the race will get easier. However it does take a few races to really remind yourself how to dig in and finish; that’s why it was nice to be in a quality field this early. I think if I had to do it over again, here is my thinking: Solinsky took the lead with 300 to go and went pretty hard. I went with it, but I should have gotten pole position before the turn. That was the biggest issue. But at this point I was thinking that I don’t know if I want to hurt; do I really want to dig in and hurt, and by the time I decided it was too late. Then once we got to the straightaway I got could smell the line and was like, “Okay, I can make it.” At the end I played into Lopez’s strength, but it is early and things will come around. Already off to a better start than last season.

What’s the meet like?
Congrats to ASU on a great meet. More people should head to Tempe. It was perfect race conditions and they had the one thing Stanford doesn’t, a crowd!! I think this meet could continue to get better in the years to come.

Did the kids in sunny Arizona laugh at your pale Wisconsin-winter legs?
Well, my wife says that I have permatan, so it must not be all that bad. You know I spend around 5 months a year running around in the little short shorts and no shirt; it seems to make up for no sun the rest of the year.

In Kenya for the next few months on behalf of the KIMbia Foundation, Peter Vigneron has a few thoughts about running in the Rift Valley.

I’m staying at Silgich Hill Academy now, where even the gardener is a better runner than I am.
On my morning run Sunday, as on many of my morning runs since I’ve come to Kenya, a group of children playing near the road fell in alongside me as I passed by. This morning one boy raced me, and he almost won. Before he dropped I was wondering how long I would last if he didn’t get tired very quickly. I realized when I finished that since my arrival to Kenya in early March, this boy, this nameless, anonymous child, is the first Kenyan who couldn’t hang with my pace. I don’t think he was older than 12.

There’s been a lot written about the successes of Kenyan runners over the last 15 years, some of it by very smart people. I may not have much to add to the discussion, except to say that I think there are a lot of reasons why Kenyans are so good and why they are so good in such numbers. I think that in Kenya there exists a perfect storm of reasons, that there are layers of explanations and some work for some athletes and don’t work for others. I’ve read that Kenyans are fast because all Kenyans run or walk miles to school everyday, and that no American will ever be able to match that type of childhood aerobic development. Then I read that Paul Tergat rode the bus as a kid.

One afternoon early in my trip Paul Koech pointed to a group of children playing soccer at a local school and told me that probably one of them could be a world record holder. “It’s just a matter of organization and encouragement,” he said, “the talent is here.” That talent isn’t in the United States or Europe, or even Uganda or Tanzania, Kenya’s neighbors to the North and West. In must exist to an extent in Ethiopia, a country that has produced the world’s two best male runners, but Ethiopia’s depth is not comparable to Kenya’s. The talent is very much right here, in Rift Valley Province. Paul was exaggerating about the children playing soccer. There cannot be a potential world record holder every 100 kids, as he boasted, but I’d believe it if that ratio always produced a runner who reached world class.

There are significant, identifiable reasons for Kenya’s sustained success at distance running, of course. In fact there is an abundance of identifiable reasons, and the stories about walking and running miles to school everyday have a lot of truth to them. The Rift Valley is where Kenya produces most of its corn, and like farm communities worldwide, population density here is low. A school might have to cast its net miles to find enough children to justify hiring teachers, and there are few cars and buses to carry children those miles to class. Not every Kenyan walks 10K to school everyday—there are buses at a lot of private schools, some kids cycle, and some must live next door, after all—but many do. Even so—children run and walk to school the world over. Kenya isn’t the only poor country with farmland.

Wednesday afternoon I found myself chatting with a young man called Sammy. He had seen me go for a run that morning from Silgich, and he wanted to know about my training. Sam is the gardener here. He came because he is an orphan, and after he completed 8th grade the family he lived with turned him out, reasoning that he was old enough to fend for himself. (Incidentally, he may have been. I’d say he’s 19 or 20, and class is a notoriously unreliable way of estimating age in Kenya. A lot of kids don’t finish high school until they’re 22 or 23.) Paul houses and feeds Sammy in return for his labor, and perhaps pays him a modest wage.

In the course of our conversation, I learned that Sammy is a marathoner. He runs every morning at 5:00 before going to work at the school all day. Last year, at 5000 feet, Sammy ran 2:25. He asked if I wanted to join him for training the next morning. For the most part, I’ve been guided by an “always say yes” policy since I came to Kenya. I reason that most of the worthwhile experiences here are going to make me a little bit uncomfortable, and most of the people I’m around are intelligent and unlikely to make me do something I cannot or should not do, so I said yes.

I’ve read that the Kenyan diet is they key to their success. I’ve read that it’s the altitude, and I’ve read that it’s because they lie down and sleep in the grass everyday between runs. I’ve read that it’s because they do so much mileage, that it’s because they run twice a day every day, or even that it’s because they run thrice a day everyday. A rowing coach I met in Colorado told me it was because they sprinted all their runs. He was certain that they didn’t do high volume. I’ve read that it’s because they are poor and desperate and view running as a way out of poverty. I’ve read that it’s drugs. I’ve read that it’s genetics, and that the rest of us should just forget about beating them.

I don’t know if any of this is true. Distance running is a greatly understudied activity. Part of the confusion here is probably because we don’t know empirically if a high-volume program gets better results than a low-volume one, for example. We have loads of anecdotal evidence for what works, but it’s tough to tease apart the components of success in this sport, even on what should be a basic question like mileage. It would be one hell of study that controlled for sleeping in the grass everyday.

When Sammy and I began running Thursday morning the moon was shining and I had a terrific view of the stars. We started at a jog. The footing was difficult in the dark, but starting slowly seems universal to Kenyan runners, regardless of conditions. The first half mile is never, ever, faster than 4 minutes. Each time I run with them I get artificially confident as I warm up, and then the pace drops and suddenly I find myself fighting for every stride, running the tangents, and wondering if today will be the day I don’t get dropped. On Thursday I made it 55 minutes before I called it a morning and waddled home to school. Sammy added another loop and still beat me back. On Friday I found that my achilles had tightened, and I took Saturday off. Sunday saw my glorious victory.

Sammy is the rule in Kenya, not the exception. On Thursday morning we passed 5 guys just like him, all wearing faded Nike gear from the early 1990’s, training in torn shoes, most wearing winter hats against the early morning cold. When the sun rose we could see Mount Elgon, the site of a month-old government counterinsurgency campaign against a violent rebel group, looming ethereally against the fading dawn of Western Kenya and Uganda.

At World Cross Country in Scotland last month, a guy nobody had ever heard of named Leonard Komon took second behind Kenenisa Bekele and ahead of 2007 champion Zerseny Tadesse. I don’t mean nobody in the West had heard of him (which is certainly true), I mean nobody anywhere. None of the athletes I’ve talked to recognized his name beyond seeing it on the roster for Worlds. The Sunday Standard reports that another athlete discovered him in 2005 training in jeans and leather shoes. He finished 3 seconds behind Bekele, the greatest distance runner in the history of the world.

I’m a betting man, and I bet altitude has a lot to do with Kenyan success. I bet poverty is a powerful motivator, I think their diet helps, and the type of training they do should be studied and replicated further. But I also think that being the best in the world at something means that everybody else is not as good, and I’m not certain that the Kenyan dominance can be easily distilled and copied.

Peter Vigneron is in Kenya for the next few months to work on Kimbia Foundation projects. Here’s his account of the Iten Peace Run, held last Saturday in Kenya’s unofficial running capital.

A little after 8am I arrived at the soccer field in Iten center, shepherded by Paul Koech and with 30 girls from Silgich Hill Academy following in two matatus. Already I was traveling with a former world champion, and presently I would meet another, then an Olympic gold medalist, then a reigning world champion at 800 meters. I snagged a picture of the man who holds the greatest record in track and field, and—true to form—he made an early exit from the scene. This was the start to my fourth day in Kenya, 74 hours into the trip.

Toby Tanser and Lornah Kiplagat have held a girls race in Iten since 2004. This year’s edition was scheduled for January 5th, but events intervened and the race did not proceed. On February 28, Kenya’s rival politicians signed a power sharing agreement that has brought a nervous peace to the country, and the event, which in normal circumstances promotes education and athletic achievement for young girls, was recast as a peace march and 4k cross country fun run. This year, it featured nearly every prominent Kenyan runner of the last four decades.

When the idea for a peace run was born, Kenyans had made precious few serious gestures toward peace and reconciliation nationwide. In fact there is still a disheartening shortage of such gestures, but the running community is beginning to make its voice heard. “Actions speak louder than words,” Olympic bronze medalist Mike Boit said after the race, “and we have told everyone that we want peace in Kenya.”

The elephant on the field Saturday afternoon was a report published by the International Crisis Group (ICG) February 21 that accused runners of funding and organizing some of the post-election violence in Rift Valley Province. It quoted sources who suggested that Kalenjin runners with military training helped to drive the Kikuyu supporters of Mwai Kibaki out of the Rift after the election, and were thusly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people and the widespread destruction of Kikuyu homes and shops.
These allegations came several weeks after several athletes received SMS text messages threatening violence against runners if they purchased abandoned Kikuyu land. The ICG paper reports that runners involved in the violence had “partly economic” motivations for supporting Kalenjin militias, and the SMS threats were probably intended to deter athletes from buying Kikuyu land at low cost. Moses Tanui, who owns several large commercial buildings in Eldoret, was also harassed by police, whom many Kalenjins say sided with the government against the opposition.
Tanser recruited nearly 600 girls from local primary schools for the race, and gave each a yellow t-shirt bearing the Shoe4Africa logo and the words “Run for Peace.” Tanser’s organization distributes running shoes to underprivileged Kenyan children, and each girl received a pair of sneakers at the finish line.
Each elite athlete was also asked to don a shirt, and so shortly after 10am, a parade of yellow clad runners—past, present, and future—marched through the small commercial center of Iten. 1988 Olympic silver medalist ‘87 world marathon champion Douglas Wakiihuri carried the Kenyan flag at the head of the parade with Luke Kibet, the reigning world marathon champion who was injured in the violence. Wakihuri is Kikuyu and Kibet Kalenjin.
The 31 page ICG report contains only one paragraph on athlete participation in the violence, but that paragraph has attracted worldwide media attention. An article on ForeignPolicy.com noted how disappointing it would be if athlete role models were responsible for or involved in violence. It is a concern that has deeply offended the Kenyan running community, who view themselves as the face Kenya shows to the world.
After the march, KIMbia athletes Chris Cheboiboch and Tim Cherigat led the girls through the two-lap 4k course. 14 year old Paskaline Kosgei took an early lead, running alongside Cheboibach for a solid victory over Chelimo Ng’etich and Gladys Cherop, who were paced by Cherigat. Kosgei won a Compaq laptop for her school, and Ng’etich and Cherop took home 12,000 and 8,000 Kenyan Shillings, respectively, or roughly $185 and $125 USD. All but a few girls racing went barefoot, and the scene at the finish was at times both chaotic and comical. Race organizers and staff rushed to hand out shoes but were quickly overwhelmed. At one point the queue for the finish grew to over 100 meters.
The athletes I’ve spoken with are furious that the paragraph implicating runners in the ICG report has been seized upon by the media. “It’s all political,” one told me. “It’s people taking advantage of the situation to tarnish big names in the running community. They see an opportunity and they take it.”
In Iten, business is back to usual. The hundreds of runners who normally train on the town’s famous red dirt roads have returned. KIMbia athletes Cheboiboch, Cherigat, James Kosgei and Mike Jeptoo put in a very good 25k effort on Wednesday, and Charles Kibiwott ran 2:08 at the Seoul International Marathon on Sunday. World Cross County is coming up. The athletes would like the violence, and now the accusations, behind them.

International athletes in attendance, Shoe4Africa Run For Peace:

• Daniel Komen
• Janet Jepkosgei (The Eldoret Express)
• Lornah Kiplagat
• Yobes Ondieki
• Joyce Chepchumba
• Amos Biwot
• Moses Tanui
• Luke Kibet
• Moses Kiptanui
• John Yuda
• Paul Koech
• Mike Boit
• Douglas Wakihuri
• Ezekiel Kembio
• Jephart Kimutei
• Ben Maiyo
• Matthew Birir
• Kimutei Kosgei
• John Litei
• Durka Mana
• Silvia Kibet
• James Kosgei
• Rebbie Koech
• Peter Tanui
• Christopher Koskei
• Paul Cherop
• Ben Kogo
• Rose Tatamuye
• Wilson Juma
• Jonah Birir
• Luke Kipkosgei

Paul Koech’s take on the sad situation in Kenya of the last few months. Paul is a captain in the Kenyan Army, and recently spent a year as part of a peacekeeping force in Darfur, only to return home and find senseless political violence occurring in his own country.

Hope this will find you and your family in a fine mode. We are coming to terms with what transpired in our country in the last two months. Although things are returning to normal, it is at a snail’s pace and suspicion and tension remain in several areas. We have high confidence with the results of the mediation team led by former UN Secretary General Koffi Anann. The team has a positive intention towards stability in our country. We hope that the government is ready for change, as they will be significantly affected.

The cause of this conflict actually is power greed, which is what most of our old guard leaders were brought up with and thus they believe that they can stay in power as long as they wish. That is, as long as they control the arm of security forces.

Those involved were surprised by what occurred after all their plans of rigging were exposed before the election actually took place. They had tried to use administrative elements to ensure victory, but then realized that many of these people were not on their side in several areas where they were not popular. They then decided to use Administration Police, whom, since President Kibaki took power in 2002, have been trained and equipped to support the government in case of any uncertain resistance by citizens to any government project. There is evidence that these police were sent to several polling centers, which were unfriendly to the government, with marked voting papers, with an intention of stashing them into the ballot boxes.

This plan failed when some of these very police passed the information to the opposition. The opposition leader went to the press and condemned the presence of police at the polling centers. Thus, this marked the end of government power in unfriendly areas, as any suspected police in civil or uniform were aggressively stopped.

With this plan aborted, they staged another scheme whereby they waited for the results from various regions and then altered the figures in favor of Mwai Kibaki. The alteration of these figures was noted and complaints were raised by returning officers, who had been in the poling station. They were then threatened and replaced and the specific forms used in placing results were changed and signed by the different officers. Also, the chairman of Electoral Commission was forced to announce the doctored results. He complied since, as it has been suggested, one of his tribesman was bound to be vice president and could eventually take over leadership after Kibaki’s term ends.

The act was not just vote rigging, but even more significantly, the stealing of Kenyan rights. The events from the time Kibaki was announced as the winner to swearing in was a clear indication that there was a scheme hatched prior to the election, for the normal ceremony protocol was not followed when the announcement of the winner took place. This immediately marked the beginning of the clashes on December 28.

It is also interesting to note that it took the Electoral Commission three days to announce the presidential election results, while the parliamentary results were announced immediately. In the party result, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM, led by Raila Odinga) had 99 members of parliament against 43 for Party of Nation Unity (PNU, led by Kibaki). Other small parties had 65. This indicates that Kibaki had the support of less than a quarter of the MPs. When ODM raised complaints of rigging in the specific areas, their pleas were ignored as the legal system appears to have favored the Kibaki and his government. If this continues, legal arguments against PNU will most likely take several years before it is deliberated or given a hearing.

The negotiating teams made considerable progress, and on February 28 the two leaders, Kibaki and Odinga, signed a power sharing agreement. The parliament was constituted on March 6 and will address needed changes to the Constitution to accommodate the signed agreement. The proposed changes designate that there shall be a president, who will be the head of state, and an executive prime minister, who will be the head of Government, with Kibaki and Raila taking the above positions, respectively. Although the general population accepts this compromise in a effort to save the country from breaking apart, in reality ODM followers are bitter about what occurred.

As a result of this controversial election, it may take Kenya ages to heal and to return to where we were. The most affected areas are the core ODM areas, where anger ruled over justice and common sense. People destroyed properties by fire and even hanged rival supporters who were living in the area. Destruction in some areas was not tribal, but rather as a result of political rivalry.

Our country is divided into eight regions, where Central Province is almost entirely Kikuyu. This is the largest tribe in Kenya and the tribe of Mwai Kibaki. The property in this area is owned almost exclusively by the Kikuyu. Kikuyus are also found in all the other regions and own many businesses and properties. The reason behind this dates back to colonial time, when the Central Province, in general, was not occupied by the whites, but the Kikuyu were used by the colonialist to fight other tribes and worked for them. By virtue of their close relationship, Kikuyus had early access to education and hence were able to prosper.

Thus after independence, the Kikuyu had an upper hand to succeed to most of the positions in the government. The government of our first president issued land to Kikuyu, through a settlement scheme, in the areas which were perceived to be for other tribes.This did not sit well with the other tribes, and as a result of resistance to this act, many were jailed and intimidated. People have been hiding their anger for the last 40 years, only to resurface by the election dispute.

Despite all of this, I remain optimistic and I hope that we have learned some positive lessons from this conflict. It is clear that the greed and selfishness of a few can negatively effect the lives of many. I hope that this is a lesson that we do not forget.

I feel that we should be especially indebted to Kofi Annan and to President Bush and Secretary Rice for their efforts to see us through this turbulence of greed.

To say that I’m angry would not do justice to how I’m feeling right now. I’m not going to sit here making any excuses or pointing fingers at anyone else; my performance today was poor, and it was my fault.

I went into today knowing that I was going to be facing a likely sit-and-kick race after seeing I had drawn the first heat. I was still confident, and after the warm-up and some strides I felt great and was in good spirits. Everything was going my way, I could breathe well, I had a nice bounce in my step (something I had been missing for the entire winter), and very confident that I belonged in the final. The race started, and I had decided before the race to lay low and stay out of trouble for the first kilometer and not worry about fighting for position, which I did fairly well at avoiding.

The problem was we went out right around 3:00 for the first K. I didn’t panic, took the next K to move up a bit to improve my position and attempt to ready myself for the finish. I got bumped around a bit, but managed to get myself in the middle of lane one and felt great.

We picked it up a bit, which was expected, but my mistake was not running MY race–I got slightly intimidated at the wrong time. After being so confident before and at the beginning, when I wanted to/ should have taken the lead with about 2 1/2 laps remaining to get some free running and stride out, I hesitated and left it for a kick. At the bell I felt good and was holding position of 4th, and even with 100 to go I was right there in 4th, but around the curve I got lit up. I thought I could kick hard that last 100 meters and was dead wrong. I ended up finishing 7th in my heat in 8:06 and found out later I closed in 4:03.

I crossed the line feeling like I could keep running, but I couldn’t change the gears to maintain or improve my position. It is the worst feeling to know that you are better than many of the people in the final and not be there because you screwed up and took yourself out of the race. I am incredibly frustrated with myself, but I learned a lesson (the hard way, once again) that I can’t be apprehensive to make a move that suits me for doing what I need to do. I had a plan going into the race and let the opportunity to execute that plan slip away, which now leaves me out of the final.

I learned to not worry about anyone else and just run MY RACE! If I have any advice for the younger runners out there, it is to do just that. Don’t be afraid to run YOUR race, no matter the level; if it works for you, DO IT, don’t alter that strategy or you will be on the outside looking in and finish a race with a lot of regrets.

If there is one bright spot I can take out of this it is that I did close in 4:03 at this time of year with only 3 track workouts under my belt feeling pretty darn comfortable. This means we are on track for the summer, which is the big picture. I’m glad I made these mistakes here and not the Trials or the Olympics, because those are the main focus for the year, not the Indoor World Championships.

Jonathon did make the final in the second heat, finishing 6th with a 7:59, so root for him. I know I’ll be in the stands cheering him on. Well, I guess it’s back to training for me and get ready for outdoors. Bring on the speed

Update: Chris was in the slower, first qualifying round, and didn’t advance to the final. Jonathon Riley was in the second, faster heat, and got through on time to Sunday’s final. Results

Hello again. So, an update on the luggage situation: Jonathon and I woke up to a phone call that our luggage was downstairs in the lobby, so that probably could have been the best way to wake up this morning!! I opened up my bag and felt like it was Christmas Day, because I could finally change my clothes!

After that great beginning, Jonathon and I went for our pre-meet run and strides. We ran through the great park that they have here It was formed by diverting the river water because of flooding problems, so the river dried up and they decided to turn this area into a enormous green space with many playgrounds, statues, amazing bridges, and fountains. We did a medium 35-minute run followed by 5 strides, and spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching the movies that finally arrived in my luggage.

So now for the important stuff. Tomorrow’s race is early–we race at 10:55 a.m., which is 3:55 a.m. Central Time. I’m not too worried about it because I’m just going to approach it like cross country, and that went alright for me. There are 24 entrants and 12 make the final, with the top 4 from each heat getting the auto bids, and then the next 4 fastest times getting in. I’m pretty confident going into tomorrow because I’ve been getting better and better with each week, and we closed down in 2:26 for the last kilometer in Boston all in the last 800, so that fits well with the prelim.

It is easy to be nervous, though, because it is a new level and a new level of championship that I have never really done before, but I figure that if I race as I always have, I should be fine. Plus I only have to beat half the field to make the final If anyone wants to watch the heat tune into www.wcsn.com for live coverage, or tune into the VS channel Saturday and Sunday to catch coverage.

As I said all along this year and last summer, I am not afraid to run with anyone in the world, and in my mind everyone in the world is beatable on any given day. I am just going to put myself in the position to capitalize on that day. I’m excited, a little nervous, but more excited to get out there tomorrow and get through to the final, so I can really have some fun there. Wish me luck, and I’ll talk to you all on the flip side for the reaction of tomorrow’s race.