Camp Summary

Our February 2020 Kenya Experience Original camp was an all European affair with 8 guests from 4 countries who joined our expert team in the Home of Champions for the running holiday of a lifetime. The group included Tim from the UK who was heartbroken a year earlier to have to return home early due to an injury. It was great to have Tim back with us for round 2 and to complete the full camp injury free! The smaller than usual group size meant for an increased group camaraderie and togetherness, it wasn’t long before 8 strangers became one family of training partners ready to take on some tough running at 2400m altitude. 

After some unusually wet weather in recent months the sunshine had finally returned and once again, Iten was back to its usual perfect climate – warm and sunny with cool mornings and evenings, ideal for training hard and relaxing during the day. The group were quick to make the most of the beautiful weather with some idyllic 6.30am easy runs along the country trails as the sun rose over the mountains. It is vitally important to keep the training easy during the first few days of the camp. This is to ensure that a) our bodies have time to recover from the long journeys to Iten and b) to acclimatise to the high altitude (and hills!). That means the first few days of the camp is the perfect time to get stuck into some core stability work, strength training and seminars with our coaching team, while the running itself is low intensity. 

Coach Hugo began his series of coaching seminars with a discussion about the Kenyan way of training. Tackling the wide ranging topic of what makes the Kenyans such good runners and what can we, as Westerners, learn from them? Having lived, trained and coached in Iten since 2008 as a professional marathoner and now professional coach, Hugo is the perfect man to lead this discussion. Our guests found it incredibly useful and bombarded coaches Hugo and Collins with questions (which they love!) in a lively and engaging session. 

After a few days of building up the mileage and intensity of the runs it was time to get stuck into some more intense training. The Kenya Experience coaches have found that the best type of work for the vast majority of runners to do when on an altitude training camp (from middle distance athletes to marathon runners) is to focus on threshold running. There are a variety of reasons for this which Hugo goes into during the camp itself. To practice what we preach, threshold training was our first ‘quality workout’ of the camp. The group tackled a long session of 5×6 minutes at threshold effort (again explained by Hugo)  with 2 minutes recovery. The idea of this session is to maintain a hard tempo for each rep, but not so hard that the pace slows or that you are completely exhausted by the end of the session. Coach Hugo says, “when you finish the last rep, you should feel like you could at least do one more rep at the same pace”, that is a good way of telling you are at your true threshold pace. This is harder than it sounds when you are running for the first time at 2400m altitude on a hilly route!

Throughout the camp we had a number of visits and talks with guests from within the running Kenyan running scene. We were delighted to visit the home of Sylvia Kibet, previous national record holder, 69 minute half marathon runner, 2x world silver medallist in the 5000m. Sylvia invited us into her home where we shared some stories over Kenyan chai tea and had the opportunity to ask questions about her training, lifestyle and what it was like to have ‘The Home of Champions’ as her home training grounds. Quite the opportunity to see behind the scenes with a world class athlete. Sylvia was an amazing host and gave us an incredible insight into the Kenyan running scene and the world of an elite (super elite!) athlete. 

With Coach Collins Kibet as part of our coaching team we will always have incredible links within the local community. Collins attended the famous St Patrick’s High School in Iten before developing his running career in the States, and so he was able to show us around well known ‘running school’ giving us an amazing tour of the grounds while introducing us to the local athletes. 

Camp Gallery 

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