Samuel Wanjiru: London Marathon Record Breaker

27th April, 2009 - Posted by Helen Harrison -

Yesterday the streets of London were packed with thousands of runners and even more thousands of spectators as the London Marathon took place. The British weather came up trumps and provided good conditions for both runners and spectators (no mean feat, and even harder given the usual pattern of weather for this fair isle!), and the result was a new course record of 2 hrs 5 mins and 9 secs, achieved by Kenyan runner Samuel Wanjiru.

Now, I can’t find anywhere whether Samuel actually does much of his training in the Eldoret area, but there is a high chance that he does, because it is the centre of all the long-distance runner training for Kenya. And this raises a question for me: have I ever run past him?

On my two previous trips to Eldoret, to take part in the wonderful work going on out there, my days have usually started as they do in the UK, with an hour running out in the country. And whilst the UK runs don’t see many other runners, the Eldoret runs always involved seeing some very fast, fit runners out on their training runs. There is no razzmatazz, or posh running gear, or high tech equipment, but these guys are fast and clearly training for more than just to keep middle-age spread off (my reason for running!)

Hence my question of earlier, although I ought to clarify that if I did ever run past Samuel Wanjiru it would have been when he was going in the other direction, otherwise clearly he would have been overtaking me in a cloud of dust!
Eldoret: home to some children’s whose lives have been transformed through Open Arms, and home to some world-class runners. Who knows, maybe in years to come we will have a world-class runner whose life was transformed through Open Arms!