Scouting Report: Gikuyu Running Club, Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

With the workout done, we slowly walk up the hill to where the rooms are and I talk abit with one of the runners, Samuel Waweru.

Turns out he hated running in school! He only started running when he watched the Commonwealth Games on TV and thought that there was nothing special that these runners were doing. The next day he went for a mile run and felt a “burning in [my] lungs” but was not deterred. He continued to train from his home in Nairobi but one day he was attacked while running and so decided to join this camp.

Back in the common room, the day’s lunch was almost ready. A typical Kenyan meal – ugali (corn meal) and sukuma wiki (collard greens)! I’ve been eating this stuff for the past 12 years but I can’t remember when I was served it in such large quantities!  

The ugali was served in a huge plastic basin and I tried to show the before and after pictures of our ugali consumption:



With our stomach’s full, we started talking abit. The biggest complaint these athletes had was about the hardships they endure while training. Money, or lack of it, is the biggest difficulty. New running shoes cost about $70 although they usually buy used shoes at less than half that. Still it’s a lot of money for most of them.



Coach Pius has a tough job in trying to keep the runners and the camp together. Much of his time is spent calling relatives of the runners to solicit for money for food, transport to races and other essentials. Not many parents see the benefit of having their son or daughter training for races that might not earn them any money so Coach Pius has a tough sell most of the time.

I left the camp having a better understanding of what these athletes are struggling with and the amount of talent that is never realized due to the lack of opportunities for runners here. It’s really a sink-or-swim situation whereby if you cannot start winning money in the first year or so of serious training, there’s a good chance you’ll have to give up and do something more economically beneficial.

I’ll share some more thoughts in another post. I also hope to visit more training camps, especially the ones in the Rift Valley that harbour the elite runners. But I feel I’m off to a good start so far!