Kipchoge MIND
DESPITE A SINGULAR FOCUS, HE HAS AMBITIONS T GO FAR BEYOND RUNNING
THE GREATEST MARATHON RUNNER IN HISTORY HAS ALREADY DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE, BUT ELIUD KIPCHOGE HAS MORE HISTORY TO MAKE. OVER THE NEXT 16 PAGES, WE LOOK AT KIPCHOGE MIND, BODY AND SOLE TO UNCOVER WHAT DRIVES HIM, THE SECRETS OF HIS TRAINING AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL LEAPS ON THOSE FAMOUS FEET
Eliud Kipchoge takes a quiet moment at home in Eldoret, Kenya, to read a book
HEN YOU ASK THE greatest marathoner of all time what he’d be doing with his life if he’d never picked up running, you’re going to get a quizzical look. When I pose the question, Eliud Kipchoge’s brow furrows. Not angry, not annoyed, more as if I’d just started speaking Esperanto.
It’s the end of a Monday at his training camp in Kaptagat, Kenya, where he arrived this morning after spending most of the weekend with his wife, Grace Sugut, and their three children at home 20 miles away, and where he’ll stay until he goes back on Saturday, as he does each week. Monday’s work is done (a long-ish run in the morning and an easy hour in the afternoon), and dinner awaits.
So far in our talk, Kipchoge has been affable and polite. In conversation, as on the course, he presents himself as the epitome of clean living, clean training and clean thinking. He is a devout Catholic. He’s had the same coach – 1992 Olympic steeplechase silver medallist Patrick Sang – for more than 20 years. He eats well, runs hard and reads those inspirational books you see in airport bookshops (his all-time favourite is the motivational fable Who Moved My Cheese?). If not for his wife and kids, we’d call him monastic. His answers rarely stray from the subjects of a positive mindset and dedication to peak performance, and when they do, like a patient coach, he leads them gently back.
In a world where we’re used to sportspeople being intensively media-coached, it doesn’t take the greatest of cynics to question whether Kipchoge’s relentless positivity is merely PR polish. But Eliud Kipchoge exudes positivity in such a natural way that after meeting him, you feel it’s all 100% sincere. Talking to him, and experiencing how quickly and reflexively he comes back to it, you don’t get the sense that he’s working a brand, or even trying to fool himself. It seems that a positive mindset is a thing he has committed his full self to.
This is a man who has done the impossible by running the first sub-twohour marathon, and the merely improbable by becoming a globally famous long-distance runner. He’s set the world record multiple times and it seems inevitable he will break it again. Life is running for Eliud Kipchoge. Life has to be running. None of this is possible any other way. It’s why the thoughts have
