Track and Field Blogs - Francis Coral - Mellon

flotrack blog readers,

I wanted to update everyone on my what my situation has been like in Kenya with the election violence and what I am doing these days.

I left my camp in Eldoret for Nairobi on December 23rd, before the violence started. I then remained cooped up in an apartment for much of January venturing out in the mornings to go for a 75 minute run. To say the least, my level of training had dropped considerably. I kept in contact with some of the athletes in Iten to be updated on the situation. As you can imagine they were training very little also, I heard stories of athletes only staying within 500 metres of their houses for very short runs. Gladly I can say that things have somewhat returned to normal in Iten and athletes are back to their full training levels. The election violence is still happening in some areas of Kenya, seemingly those places that remained peaceful directly after the election while the rest of the country was in chaos. It seems from the news that the mediation talks organized by Kofi Annan have been going very well, which should speed up the return to normalcy.

In the past few weeks on my runs I met a Scottish guy named Alan, who has lived in Kenya since 1976. He is in his 60's and he is still running. He took me for a couple of runs through a park, which was fenced in with an electric fence. One day he told me a story of how a leopard came out of the bushes and he confronted it with his arms up in the air for a couple of minutes, and then continued on running as it followed him growling. The guy still went back there and ran the next day, wow. I then realized that this place was a sort of animal conservatory, and felt a bit scared, but it had some really nice trails.

Today I met with one of the few athletes training in the City of Nairobi, Edward Gitonga. He came 6th at the Kenyan National Cross trials one year and has been involved in athletics for quite some time. He works as airport security two days a week and trains at a high level in the city. I took a mattatu (city bus) with him to his apartment block on the outskirts of the city and we sat and chatted for a while before we decided to go for a run so he could show me his training route. Since he told me we would be going for an easy jog I was very surprised when he immediately picked up the pace right out of the door. I believe he was testing me a little, people turned and stared as we raced by, I failed the test miserably and died after about 25 minutes into our run. He slowed down immediately after he noticed that I wasn't behind anymore after a particularly testing hill. Man, that guy seemed to float up those hills. I felt a little embarrassed to be dropped on a "jog", but I got over it and we went back inside for some tea. He then told me that his fastest time for the route we just did was 33 minutes. We did it in 37. So we weren't jogging.

Anyways, after making a few new contacts in Nairobi, I have been invited to visit a couple of training camps in different parts of the country, Nyahuru, Kinangop and Ngong. These training places are new to me and I am excited to learn more about the different areas of Kenyan running. It couldn’t hurt to take my Camera along and interview some athletes. I have been thinking of doing some written athlete profiles for those that I meet, i.e. Hobbies, PB's, training history and schedule and various other questions. Then I will film their living conditions and training locations. It would be something nice to have even if it has nothing to do with my film.

Until next time, from Francis

p.s The photos are from a kids race held at the track by the Dutch edition of runner's world. The kids swarmed for participation prizes of balloons after the race. Check out the clothing that some of them raced in.