As birthday treats go, it’s an unusual one. I leave the house at 7am and head up the pot-holed road out of Nairobi and into Ngong. There, near the top of a hill, I pull off the road and follow a dirt track into a field.
The wind is blowing hard as I come to a halt on the grass and step out of the car. Weathered military tents flap rhythmically along one side of the field. In front of the tents, about thirty men and women in running kit stand in lines listening as a man with a stick under his arm paces back and forth and talks to them in Kiswahili.
I’m 37 years old today. And to celebrate, I’ve come for a morning run with the Kenyan Air Force.
The lined-up personnel all turn to watch me as I walk across the grass to where a few plastic chairs have been left under a tree.
One of the men breaks rank to come over to see me. I guess there needs to be some kind of security check in a military camp. The other people, I presume, are supposed to be standing to attention, but they’re all smiling at me. The lines are not even straight.
I tell the man I was invited to run by one of the coaches, Benjamin Mbusya. It seems to be a good enough explanation, as he smiles, says “Karibu” (welcome) and returns to his line.
The Kenyan armed forces employ athletes to live and train at various camps like this, mostly up here in the Ngong Hills – I pass two more on my way to the Air Force camp. The runners have to undergo some basic military training, and occasionally have to don uniform for a parade, but otherwise they live as full-time athletes with the freedom to come and go largely as they please.
It’s a very loose arrangement and I find it hard to pin down exactly how it works. Nancy Langat, the Olympic 1500m champion, for example, is a member of this very camp, but she’s not here now. I can’t imagine she spends too much time here, to be honest.
Unlike the camps in Iten, which are full of distance runners, this camp includes athletes from every event, from the high jump and shot put, to the sprints and hurdles.
The military invests in the athletes in order to do well in the national championships, where it hopes to beat its arch rivals, the police and the prisons service.
At the recent national cross country championships, the armed forces were outshone by the police, who named some of the best runners in the world, including both winners, Geoffrey Mutai and Linet Masai, among their ranks.
I’m teamed up with a group of eight men for this morning’s one-hour forest run. Coach Benjamin orders one of the athletes to stick with me if I start to drop behind, which is reassuring.
The run starts off at a gentle pace. “Poli, poli,” (slowly, slowly) they say. Falsely buoyed by my recent run with the Nairobi Hash House Harriers, where I was easily one of the fastest runners in the group, I set off at the front.
For one mad moment I even contemplate pushing the pace on, before my rational self steps in to point out that I’m running with the Kenyan military here. The Hash House Harriers it is not.
For the first half an hour or so, I push along happily in the group, up and down the hills, enjoying the sense of movement, the feeling of being part of a group, a tribe of steely warriors making our way purposefully across field and glade.
We follow dirt tracks that meander up to the top of the hills. Up here the landscape resembles a huge British allotment, with small plots of cultivated land and wooden huts dotted everywhere. Except that the huts are people’s houses.
After about half an hour, however, as the pace gradually, almost imperceptibly, increases, I begin to drift back. Up a particularly steep hill, my legs grow suddenly weary.
Once the momentum of the group is lost, I find it harder to push myself on. The man who was ordered to stay with me eases down to my pace, along with another runner. Knowing that they will stay with me no matter how slow I go is not good for my motivation.
On previous runs, the thought that I may end up lost has pushed me on, but here I’m free to give in to my legs’ demands, and slow down. I can’t quite decide, as I run, whether I’m being pathetic, or whether I’ve already been heroic for keeping up this long.
The two runners next to me are finding the new pace very easy. This may be the military, but they’re very good natured about my slow running. There is no “beasting” or shouting, or even any real encouragement to go faster. “Just enjoy it,” one says to me when I apologise for slowing down. These really aren’t soldiers.
As I don’t have a watch, I try asking them, between gasps, how far we have left to run.
“This is the last hill,” says one, as we make our way through a herd of goats blocking the path. “Nearly there.”
It’s amazing, sometimes, how psychological running is. Suddenly my legs feel light and frisky again. Once we get past the goats, I pick up the pace to the top of the hill and start stretching out along the gradual downhill slope on the other side.
They match me stride for stride, of course, relieved to be moving again. The main group is actually not that far ahead. “Perhaps I can catch them,” I think, opening out my stride. It feels great. The last hill is done. It’s lovely downhill all the rest of the way.
Although they call it a forest run, it is only now, for the first time, that we actually head into any forest. The path winds around from one side to the other, occasionally rising up a little short hill. At each turn I keep thinking we must be about to finish, but we don’t.
“Five more minutes,” says one of the runners, sensing that I’m starting to slow again. Five minutes? That’s more than I was expecting. But I’ve slowed them down enough. I can manage.
Finally the finish comes in sight. The other runners are standing around stretching. I make a vague attempt at a sprint, and then we’re done. Hand shakes all around. The others are smiling. I’m panting. But it’s done. Another run survived.
I leave them eating mangoes for breakfast back at the camp as I return to Nairobi, where my wife and children have prepared a big chocolate cake for my birthday.
• The book Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn will be published in 2012
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