Then go for lunch, massage, the 4 o'clock run, evening tea, relax, go to sleep. If it is a day for cleaning, we do the cleaning, or we just relax. "Get up in the morning, go for a run, come back. "Our life here is simple, very simple," he says.
There is one nod to his celebrity status - he has his own room while everyone else shares. Despite his wife and three children being only a short drive away in the family home, Kipchoge chooses to spend the week in a basic room in the dormitories here. From Monday to Saturday every week, running is a religion. Kipchoge's weekly routine is certainly monastic. If it weren't for the rows and rows of £200 Nike Vaporfly shoes on racks outside the two dormitories (one for men, one for women) you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a Buddhist retreat. A host of people mill around - at any given time up to 30 athletes live and train here - but the atmosphere is slow and tranquil. But inside the gates, the grass is lush, green and smooth.
The bright orange dust roads that surround the camp are bumpy and rutted. We're a long way from the hustle and bustle of city life. It's taken a 24-hour journey from the UK, with three plane rides and multiple taxis, to reach Kipchoge's camp. The first thing that strikes you is the quiet. The setting is the remote Kenyan village of Kaptagat. The life Kipchoge lives is a simple one, as free from distractions as possible. "Then I just crammed it in my head, rushed home and got a pen and paper to write down what he had told me while it was fresh in my mind."Įighteen years later, Kipchoge - now 35 and a multi-millionaire thanks to his incredible athletic success, the first person to run the marathon distance in under two hours - has unsurprisingly long since replaced the stick and arm method with a training journal.īut many things have remained the same. "I just got a stick and wrote the plan for 10 days down on my arm," Kipchoge says. "You don't know you are running because it is a must," says Kipchoge.īut in 2002 at the age of 18 his life was changed forever when his now-coach Patrick Sang offered him a training plan to channel his obvious talent.
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