Scouting Report: Gikuyu Running Club, Part 1

Yesterday I visited a small running club or “camp” that’s located just a few kilometers from Nairobi in a place called Gikuyu. Organised by Coach Pius Ndung’u, this camp provides a training environment for some of the talented runners in the area.

I first visited where the runners sleep and eat and generally hang out. It became obvious that they are operating on a shoestring budget if even that. They rent 3 rooms- 1 bedroom for the ladies, 1 for the men and a common room for cooking, eating and everything else. But these rooms should not be mistaken for a suite at the Four Seasons. Each room rents for $6/month and is as Spartan as it gets- a door, 4 iron sheet walls and a concrete floor. Training is what’s important to these runners, not luxury.

At any one time, the camp accommodates roughly 20 athletes although today 12 show up for the mid-morning workout. They go for the morning run around 6am and obviously that is just too early for me to be around for.

But I was able to be there for their 10am speed work session (pushed back to 11am since they had to make me a cup of tea first). We walked about a kilometer to Kanjeru “Stadium”. I used quotes for “Stadium” because, well…judge for yourself whether it qualifies:

They start off with 5 warm-up laps around the 500 meter loop.  

The coach tells me that the camp has had greater success in producing successful women runners as witnessed by two of the runners here, Margaret Njuguna and Hannah Mbugua, who have both run in Asia in marathons and half marathons. In fact both of them returned to Kenya just a few weeks ago, having been in SE Asia the past 6 months.

Today’s workout is 1x1000, 2x800, 3x400 and 3x200 with minimal recovery in between. Keeping in mind that all of the runners are training for the half and full marathon, they do not go very hard during this workout. 



Continued in Part 2.