Back To Brum

After a busy week at work with endless trips to and from the Canadian Embassy, I had my first experience of the Megabus up to Birmingham to see my old University friends Tom Bigham (aka Bigears) and Duncan Tipton (aka Tippy, Whipper, Pea Helmet....). I met up with Tom at New Street and we had a little wander and some lunch reliving some old memories then back to his place in Moseley and watched the machinist on DVD, I can't believe how much weight Christian Bale lost for that movie!! We then drove over to Stourbridge to have a delicious Thai meal at the restaurant where Duncan's wife works. Had a great evening laughing about old times and making plans to meet up again in the future.

Mr Duncan Tipton

I've finally booked my flights back to Kenya (15th June), I feel my injury is on the mend and the time is right to start pushing on with some serious training. As I'm back in London now I will take a walk tomorrow with my Kenyan house mates to watch the London 10km, should be a good one.

Another Night, Another Bed....

Back from a rather unsuccessful trip to Den Haag with a few of the Run-Fast lads. They were taking part in the Royal 10km, and unfortunately both had a very unsatisfactory race, not even breaking 30mins. I used the race as a tempo run and paced the lead women round to a new personnal best. This race actually turned me into a proffessional athlete as I was paid an appearance fee of 200 Euros! I will try not to spend it all at once! Apart from the race we had a good weekend including a "Europe vs Africa" pool competition that I am happy to report Europe won 3-0.

I'm planning on going back to Kenya in 3 weeks time, and will be doing things differently than last time. To start with just a one month stint up in Kenya, building things up slowly and trying to get comfortable running at marathon pace at altitude. Can't wait to get back to Kenya and refocus on running.
Before I go I have lots to do an sort out. Finances to get in order (doesn't everyone!), friends and family to visit, training and racing to plan.

We have a few of our Kenyans going home this week so on Wednesday I am taking them for a sight seeing tour of London, all the usual sights and probably the natural history museum, I think the Kenyans should enjoy it especially knowing that entry is free!

Sometimes living with the Kenyans is like living with children, last night one of the guys (mentioning no names.... Elisha Meli Tarus!!!) nearly burnt the flat down. Elisha decided to pour some oil on a very hot hob causing a rather large chip pan fire, he then paniced and threw the pan on the floor, luckily fireman Kiprop was on hand to save the day and I calmly covered it with a damp tea towel putting out the fire! Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't been there! All good fun in the Run-Fast Flat. After all the comotion we enjoyed our 33rd night in a row of ugali and cabbage stew... joy....

Tworkout

How do you fancy winning a 12 months free health club membership? Well I found this little Twitter app that is a great time passer when your stuck on the train, got nothing to do on your lunch break etc.. Its called Tworkout and basically it is a workout for your fingers?!! You have to log in with your Twitter ID and then take the test which entails typing in various "fitness" words as quick as you can. The top three on the scoreboard at the end of 31st May win a free health club membership to a Nuffield Health Gym, can't be bad!!

Anyway give it a go on http://www.tworkout.co.uk/

And the sessions begin

This week I had my first physio appointment so made my way down to Teddington to see Paul Hobrough at www.physioandtherapy.co.uk. After a few tests and finding out I have one leg slightly shorter than the other Paul thinks I have a tight rectus abdominis and a weak pelvic floor. He has given me various stretching and strengthening exercises to do before I go back next week. The good news was that Paul wants me to start doing sessions to see how this effects the injury, so Thursday I did my first session since the London marathon, 5 x 5 minutes at threshold pace. Legs felt ok which was good news and my abdominal injury didn't flare up at all

If all goes well and the injury keeps improving I am planning on racing myself fit over the next three weeks then back to Iten :-) for a months worth of altitude training before targeting some races through the end of July and August.

This weekend I'm down in Pompey to work for Alton Sports at the Hampshire County Track & Field Championships. If anyone needs a good deal on a pair of shoes of some kit the pop along and we can sort you out.

Thanks for the ride...

Another eventful weekend started off with a rush to catch various trains starting at Morgate tube station and ending at Farnham via Gatwick. After a days work at Alton Sports in Farnham I went for an hour long run with Mr James Ellis over the army grounds around Farnham, some really good off road runner to be done around the Aldershot area. James then dropped me off at the Wise family household who had very kindly offered to put me up for the night (thanks Clare).

Sunday morning I was working in Alton so decided to run to work from Clanfield. If you drive from Clanfield to Alton on the main roads it is roughly 19miles, I decided to go cross country and ended up zig zagging all over the place, some amazing scenery and a great run but after 2hours 20mins I still had five miles to go and would have been late for work so decided to have my first ever go at hitch-hiking! Luckily this worked a treat and about the third car that went by stopped and this lovely family dropped me right to the door in Alton :-)

Always makes running worth while when you get views like this

Another hour run in the afternoon with Toby Lambert probably pushed me over thirty miles for the day, my biggest mileage day ever, and I felt pretty good on it! On Sunday Toby had booked me into the White Horse in Alton to spend the night, a very comfortable bed, peaceful room plus 30 miles of running meant I slept like a baby for 10+ hours.

This week I have a physio appointment and then hopefully back to some serious training.

Bigears

What a busy week it's been. I wanted to blog about an excellent Ethiopian restaurant I went to on Tuesday but I haven't had chance since. We went to the Queen of Sheba in Kentish town and I was really impressed, delicious food and really friendly service all accompanied by good company (thanks to Ben, Amelia and John) and the sound track of everyones favourite Ethiopian musician ???? Damn I've forgotten his name.

I've started to immerse myself in the world of athlete management, working for Run-Fast and worryingly I am enjoying it a bit to much. When your passion is running and all day you get to search through races, look at results, speak to athletes etc and get paid to do it things can't be too bad!! A lot of my time is spent picking up and dropping off athletes from various UK airports and today one of the athletes I picked up was a guy called Isaac Kimutai. This is Isaacs first time out of Kenya and seemed as excited as a school boy when he arrived in London. He is one of the nicest guys you could ever want to meet and I really hope he does well as he really deserves this break he has been given.

Isaac racing in Iten

This evening I had a brilliant time meeting up with my best friend from university, Mr Tom Bigham (aka Bigears). As a typical man I am and have been totally rubbish at keeping in touch with friends but through the powers of facebook finally arranged to meet up with bigears. I think this was the first time we have seen each other for about 4 years but it was great to see him and I'm sure I won't leave it that long again. We had a good laugh about our crazy uni days and what we used to get up to.

Off to Hampshire tomorrow for three days of Alton Sports work.

Good Night.
Kiprop
x

My Uni friends Bigears (on right) and Tippy (on left) during their travels after finished Uni. (don't ask what they are doimg!)

Busy Boy

I've been very busy recently and I think this has been exaggerated by the fact that apart from running I pretty much haven't done anything else for the first four months of the year! On Friday I took Edwin Kipyego down to watch the big wedding, we couldn't get anywhere near the procession route and ended up watching it on the big screens in Trafalgar Square which was good as there was a fantastic atmosphere. I think Edwin really enjoyed it although he was a little disappointed that he didn't get to see the happy couple.

Edwin and myself in Trafalgar Square

Edwin flying the flag for the UK

After all the excitement of the wedding Edwin decided to sleep for the rest of the day but I took a trip to see Mr Nick Anderson which was really good as he had pretty much the same theories as I did to why I didn't run well at London and a lot of good suggestions of how to improve things. On Saturday I was back at Alton Sports in Farnham where we had a really busy day.

On Sunday I had my first ever taste of running around Richmond Park in London and boy was I impressed! Beautiful place to run. We had a really multicultural group, Myself representing the UK, then we had one Kenyan, one Somalian, an Eritrean and an Australian! I ended up doing 90 mins and didn't feel to bad apart from this niggiling abdominal injury I have that hopefully can be fixed by a visit to the physio this week. I'm working for the next 18 days straight and building back up into full training so will be a busy boy before I go back to Kenya.