6 mins quicker = happy Thomas

Friday is an easy day here at camp, we just do one easy run. Today we did 71mins, after this I rested for the rest of the morning then after lunch went on a little adventure down “in the valley”. It was an adventure mainly due to our means of transport which was the camp truck (by “camp” I mean the running camp not any other type of camp!), it's pretty old, quite rusty, has a dodgy radiator and only goes into first gear once out of about 20 attempts.

The Truck

Going down the hill was fine, I sat in the back and the views were spectacular, the further we travelled down the hotter it got and by the time we arrived at our destination we were all sweating a lot. Our first stop was to get some fruit from a small market at the side of the road, we got two bunches of bananas and two bag of paw paws. Nest stop was an off the beaten track “shamba” (farm), this is were the adventure really began as Edwin accidentally got the truck semi stuck in a small ditch on quite a steep hill. Whilst trying to get it out the radiator hose popped off draining the radiator of all its water, luckily there was a stream near by so we could refill it. Once the truck was back on track and parked up we hiked up a hill to pick some sugar cane, more bananas and some mangos. We must have got over 100 bananas about 40 mangos and a load of sugar cane all for 200Ksh (less than £2), bargain!



Kids in the valley



We picked up a few hitch-hikers and started back up to camp. A few more stops to fill up the radiator, then we filled the back of the truck with two big bags of charcoal and a huge pile of firewood. Now the truck was fully laden, Edwin couldn't get it into first gear and due to the weight of the truck and steepness of the hill he couldn't start it in second. This happened a lot and the journey back to camp took over two hours when it's normally a twenty minute journey! On a number of occasions we drew quite a crowd of kids who thought it amusing that a muzungu and his truck was stuck!

Saturday and it's long run day again, this morning it was 25km, I started with the guys this morning (rather than the girls who have a 4 minute head start) and stuck with them for about 5km, really tough run but managed to knock off 6 minutes from two weeks ago, chuffed :-)