Running in Iten

About coaching and how to shoot a movie

For those who are wondering what keeps us busy, living here in Iten, a tiny village in the highlands of Kenya: let me describe the past few months. Let me not go too much into detail about our family life, raising a one year old daughter, etc. It's great 🙂 but not to describe on this website.

In June we were lucky to host a film crew from VICE New York. Some great film/documentary makers came over to Iten to shoot a short film about the runners in Iten, with a special focus on their diet (the ugali, mursik, sukuma wiki....if these words are all new to you, I will post the link to the film so you can find out what it is). It was an interesting week. The VICE guys and ladies stayed in our guesthouse and during their stay we tried to help them as much as possible, arranging meetings with top athletes, farmers, etc. We followed world champion Abel Kirui in training, using a drone. We went to the market and visited farmers at home. On the way I learned a ton about film making and realised especially that it is very, very hard work.

After VICE left, we had some tourists coming over from South Africa, some from the USA and some from The Netherlands. That is the great thing about living in Iten; there are so many people coming here from different countries. Even though it's a small village here, pretty remote and natural, it's still kind of cosmopolitan.

I also realised that more and more people find this website. In July several athletes (from India, Singapore and the UK) contacted me because they were coming to train in Iten and were looking for a coach. So I coached them. It's always nice to meet and coach athletes, to get to know them, work with them on their goals and see the improvement. After returning to the UK, the British guy managed, due to a combination of altitude and training harder than ever before, to improve his half marathon personal best from 86 to 73 minutes - also breaking his 10K personal best on the way.

In August my Indian team came to Iten for a camp of 5 weeks. Or at least, part of the team. Our EDRP team (Elite Distance Running Program, set up by Procam International and Global Sports Communication) has 24 athletes at the moment. The 7 best came to Iten and, together with my good colleague coach Paul from India, I have been working with them, preparing them for the Indian championships. We are still to see how they will do, but they have trained well.

Apart from this, I am happy to work with some Kenyan ladies; Gladys Chesir, Ivy Kibet, Carolyne Jepkoech and Antonina Kwambai. Also Adero Nyakisi from Uganda is part of this group. Gladys is the most outstanding athlete, having run 30.41 in the 10K (on the road) and 66.57 in the half marathon. But it's equally satisfying to work with the others, who are running between 32.40 and 33.10 on a 10K. Most of them are going for races in Europe this month, so it will be exciting to see how they will do.

Finally, I'm coaching 6 athletes online right now. These are athletes from 6 different countries (Indonesia, Dubai, Egypt, UK, Germany, Iceland), from different levels. One runs a half marathon in 2 hours and wants to make a marathon debut. Another runs a 5K in 15.10 and wants to improve on that. They all have totally different home situations and goals, but one thing in common that connects us; they all want to be better runners.

So, there is enough to do. What is so interesting about coaching? For me it's the whole process. First of all; you have to get to know someone. You don't have to know everything about someone, but it definitely helps when you understand their character, how they behave in training, how they respond to stress, etc. Then you start making a training program. I normally make a program of 4 weeks. In order to do that, you have to know stuff like: what someone has trained before, what his/her goal is, which event he/she is focussing on and how much time he has to train and to rest. Even though I make a program for 4 weeks, the longer term should be clear; the athlete and I should know (roughly) what the rest of the year looks like. And what the plan is for the next 2-5 years.

And after making a training program, the second part of coaching starts; adjusting the program as you go along. It almost never happens that a program of 4 weeks, stays the way it was made. I mean; we change the program on the way. An athlete gets tired so we have to adjust the program. Or a longrun is done much harder than planned, so we have to change the next session. Or someone does really well in one area, but lacks behind in another, so we decide to put some more emphasize on the weaker area. It's a process that never stops and that makes it interesting. The famous Brother Colm ones told me; "When you stop learning, you stop coaching". He meant; as a coach you continuously have to learn from your athletes. Once you think you 100% know an athlete and you are very sure how to coach him/her, you stop being a good coach. Because you have stopped to look at them and learn from them. Athletes change, because they get older and because different things happen with/to them. That is what makes this job so interesting. I'm looking forward to keep on doing this!