A surprise trip to Iten and Kerio Valley!

Today was a great day! Shona and John (from GSK House) were over, with Stanley, Liz and Martin from GSK Nairobi. They work in consumer healthcare, and had come over to look round AMPATH, and then wanted to look around the high altitude training camps, with the aim of finding new promotional material for Luzcozade sport. I wasn't even aware that they were coming, it was just when Evelyn asked whether I wanted to be introduced. We looked around the laboratories together, and then I invited myself along on their trip to Iten (where the High Altitude Training camp is.) I just found myself talking non-stop in the car journey there (just 30mins from Eldoret). I explained I'm not normally like this, but I think I'm missing company, now Mira and Mike have left!

There was a 25m swimming pool, and an amazing gym. 

Peter (Lornah Kiplagat's coach) showed us around. Apparently, this is where athletes from across the globe come to train, and at around 6.15am, some 900 athletes travel to run round that track! There is a gym there, which is one of the best equipped gyms I've ever seen. We saw round the physio therapy rooms too. Then we met Lornah herself (just before she went off on a 35km run), she just missed the qualifying time to run in the Olympics (which is set at sub 2:27:24 hr), however, did receive an invitation from the organisers of the Amsterdam 2011 marathon to run and qualify in October. We all managed to get a picture with her. 





Me and Lornah

 After eating a runners lunch (light lunch of mushroom soup, a roll and fruit salad), the rain came on. We drove up to see the track itself, which didn't look that impressive at all, was just like a mud track, however, as Peter says, people travel miles to train on this track, so despite its appearance, it gives results. After leaving Iten, we drove up to Kerio Valley. We visited Kerio view resort and had amazing views over the rift Valley. After a juisi ya mananasi (pineapple juice), sadly it was time to go home. It was such a great day out, I was sad to to leave my new friends. Shona has roped me into organising a team from Eldoret to do “Run for Good”. She's aiming to raise over £500,000, building on a successful 2010 AMREF run, raising money for your own charity, or one of GSK's 8 charities. I'll see if I can advertise it at my next training session. 

The setting sun from my garden

View of Kerio Valley

Here I am attempting to use one of the machines