KIMbia Athletics

Replacing light fixtures, painting doors/walls, moving furniture, cleaning—ah, the joys of selling a house. Since I got back from Stockholm, Michelle and I have been working hard to get the house ready. Not the ideal time, but it was important that we get the house up and sold so the transition to Portland in the fall is easier.

With all that work I have not even had a chance to really reflect on the race at Stockholm, so here it is. I was happy with the race overall! My only problem is that I am having a hard time getting comfortable in the middle of the race and just going with the flow. I feel like I am pressing the entire race, and that is never going to lead to fast times. Luckily the race was on the slow side and I was able to have some pop left in my legs at the end. With 500m to go, Mottram dropped the hammer and never looked back. To be honest I was not really paying attention to just one person in the race at that time, because I thought if anyone made a move the pack would go with it. Unfortunately, Mottram put close to 2 seconds on us in just 200m. With 350m left I was ready to go but as I started to move to the outside, I noticed Songok was already on my shoulder, and I was boxed in. It stayed that way until 70m to go, and finally a gap opened and I was able to unleash. I really moved well in the last 100 and that made me very happy with the race overall.

When I talked with Jerry about the race, he reminded me of the sharpening work that is still to come. I never really thought about it, but up to this point we have done everything at 61-62 pace, and that makes it really hard to settle into a race. Now over the next couple of weeks adding in a bunch of mile race pace work should make it easier to settle in to the slower races. I mean, if I do a bunch of repeats at 56-57 pace, and I need to race a 62 pace it should feel easier. At least in my head it does!

I am confident that our timing leading up to the Games is going to be perfect. I will be providing regular updates over the next few weeks, so check back and leave me some comments.

Speaking of which, answers to some earlier comments:

Does your wife ever travel with you to your meets overseas? Do you ever take a full day off of running or do cross training? What would be your ideal in how often you’d be running a race during the middle of a season?

Much to Michelle’s displeasure, she does not get to travel with me overseas. She was busy with grad school and now she is finishing up her dietetic internship, so that limits her ability to travel. She does, however, travel to some of the domestic events. And she will be going to Beijing, which is awesome.

I do take full days off, and they are not scheduled. I just read my body and take them when I need them. I do not do anything training related on those days.

I always want to race as often as possible in the summer. I do realize, though, that the races take a lot out of us and recovery is important. At least once a week for shorter races and every 10-14 days for 5Ks would be awesome.

I was curious as to where you train while in Europe. I mean, do you just go run on the streets around where you are staying when you are not on the track, or do you try to find trails when possible? When you are doing track work, are you able to use the track you will be racing on, or do you find other tracks in the area?

We usually decide in the spring where our base is going to be for the summer. I have been in Berlin, Teddington (London) and Hulst (Holland) in the past, and all have been great. We usually are able to find soft surfaces, which is always nice. At the meets it depends on the city—usually there are trails to run, but everyone once in a while it is city streets. Luckily we are only running 5 miles most days. The meet always provides a practice track to do stuff on, and we are never allowed to go on the competition track before the meet.

Here’s the latest dispatch from Peter Vigneron, in Kenya on behalf of the KIMbia Foundation.

There is a tremendously important article in the May/June issue of The Boston Review by the Berkley development economist Ted Miguel. In a meditation on Africa’s encouraging growth rate since 2000, Miguel argues that, for the first time in 30 years, African economies appear to have broken free of stagnant or even regressive growth rates. In the development world, this is big news, and Miguel’s article is one part of a trenchant discussion among economists who are trying to sort out why Africa is beginning, finally, to recover.

But the article caught my eye for another reason. Miguel opened with a description of Busia, a border town in western Kenya that has begun to cash in on trade between Kenya and neighboring Uganda. Busia now has ATMs, car rental businesses, supermarkets and, critically, Miguel writes, “the road from Kisumu, the economic hub of the region and Kenya’s third largest city, to Busia ha[s] become a paved, two-lane highway all the way to the border.”

Miguel’s is a remarkable observation, both in that a major road in Kenya is today well paved, and that in Kenya, the jewel of East Africa, something so basic as a proper highway is cause for celebration. And it is.

The Kisumu-Busia road is one of a few good highways in Kenya. Travelers headed from Nakuru to Kabarnet also will not find potholes, though they may similarly fail to encounter any other cars—the route conveniently links two homes of former Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi, and is ignored by most commercial and even passenger vehicles. Besides Kisumu-Busia and Nakuru-Kabarnet, there are some other good stretches of road, but they’re difficult to find and don’t often last more than 10 or 15 miles. More typical is the road north from Nairobi, the main artery bringing goods from the capital to the cities of Rift Valley Province and beyond to Uganda, which is disastrous. In some stretches, drivers avoid the road itself and follow dirt tracks alongside the potholed and crumbling pavement.

Good roads are good for trade, but Busia’s new road was likely a product of economic growth rather than a cause. I’m told that the smooth, wide roads in Narok District, home to the Masai Mara game reserve, are funded by tourist dollars, and, as Miguel writes, Busia is clearly benefiting from the successes of Kenyan and Ugandan interdependence. But in other regions, the majority of regions, the cost of bad roads to Kenyan society is staggering. Driving 20 miles from Eldoret to Iten takes 45 minutes, a major expense with gas in Kenya over $7 a gallon. Flat tires are commonplace. Suspension systems cannot possibly last—in working condition—more than a few thousand miles. These are major costs to a developing economy, and frustrating and unnecessary costs.

Yet the the real price of Kenya’s bad roads is paid in human lives, not in fuel or vehicle repairs. Each year thousands of Kenyans die in traffic accidents (the government reports around 3,000 deaths annually, but the World Health Organization assumes significant underreporting in most developing nations, and presumably Kenya too) and traffic fatalities occur, per registered vehicle, at a rate 20 times that of the United States. Pedestrian deaths account for nearly half of all fatalities; in the United States the figure is closer to 12 percent.

Driving in Kenya is terrifying. Even the best roads are too narrow, and all are trafficked as heavily by pedestrians and cyclists as they are by cars. The safety features of American roads—stop lights, speed limits, lane marking, warning signs, traffic enforcement—which are almost banal in their ubiquity, are nearly absent in Kenya. Because transit takes so long, when road conditions are good, drivers proceed at wildly excessive speeds. Since March, I have witnessed or heard first person accounts of 4 fatal accidents. Weekly I read about a major crash in The Standard or The Nation—typically when an overloaded matatu, or taxi, has suffered a flat tire and careened into oncoming traffic and killed five or six or 10 people. On two occasions I have seen the charred remnants of tanker trucks sitting forlorn and forgotten in deep ravines by the side of major roads; in May I was a passenger when the vehicle I was traveling in hit a pedestrian (at low speed).

It may seem strange to write about car crashes in a country battling AIDS, hunger, illiteracy. But these problems are less visible to prying eyes, and it may be that the governmental neglect of transportation infrastructure is in fact representative of its neglect of the entire spectrum of social problems affecting millions of Kenyans each year. In 2003, President Mwai Kibaki declared his willingness to tackle the roads question and limit the corruption that allows government officials and contractors to pocket money and leave roads in disrepair. If Kibaki was sincere, his initiative has been slow in coming. Worse, it is almost as if, by maintaining his personal highway, former President Moi is publicly acknowledging the billions of dollars he looted while in office, or the members of Parliament, riding in their Mercedes and Land Rovers, are acknowledging that driving safely in Kenya requires extraordinary vehicles. Few seem concerned that government serves itself first and Kenya last.

I wonder if there is another dimension to the issue of roads, however. At the intersection of traditional Kenya—small farms, big families, village culture—and the new, rapidly growing Kenya—of satellite television, Lexus SUVs, and high-rise office buildings—we find that here the value of human life has not yet synced with the swiftness by which a speeding car erases a person from the earth. Or, perhaps, at the margins, where the modern car and its modern driver encounters those Kenyans still hovering within a society that has changed so little in hundreds of years, there is resentment for the old ways, perhaps even hatred. When a driver clips a cyclist at 70 miles an hour, or swerves too wide around a pothole and catches the drunkard who didn’t jump quite quickly enough, maybe he is unconsciously doing his part to bring Kenya into the 21st century.

These are uncomfortable ideas. They do not seem in line with the Kenyan people I know, who are among the most gracious and caring individuals I have ever chanced to meet. But I cannot decide what to think. It is inconceivable to me that the drivers of these modern cars have yet internalized the corresponding appreciation of human life. If they had, they would have slowed down.

In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, former Bogota, Colombia mayor Enrique Peñalosa said that when a city planner or a politician builds a good sidewalk, he or she is “constructing democracy,” because in developing nations most people do not drive. I imagine that the relationship is slightly different—maybe sidewalks are themselves signs that democracy has taken hold, that citizens can demand a safe place to walk and find that their leaders are listening, or that an effort is made to safeguard life even if it has never been safeguarded before. This was supposed to be the role of government—to serve people.

Africa, or at least Kenya, is developing, and I agree with the unstated premise of Dr. Miguel’s piece, that we in the West should want Africa to develop. It just seems that within this bizarre form of accelerated growth—where many Kenyans sleep on dirt floors and under grass roofs, and other Kenyans fly to Europe for medical care—some essential priority has been lost in the scramble.

Tim Nelson and Sean Quigeley ran personal bests for 3,000m at today’s Grand Prix meet in London. Tim ran 7:48.87, and Sean was close behind in 7:50.02.

Tim and Sean laid off the opening pace of the front pack and move up nicely at the end, with Tim finishing first among the members of the chase pack. He was 7th overall, which we’re mentioning partly so that we can point out that 8th overall with Britain’s Scot Overall. Sean was 9th.

Results are here.

Richard Kiplagat and Fasil Bizuneh are among the elite field in Sunday’s NYC Half Marathon. Although he might not have the fastest half marathon personal best of the field, surely Richard will be the leading cat expert among the top finishers.

Matt Tegenkamp finished 4th in the 3,000m at today’s DN Galan meet in Stockholm, Sweden. Matt ran 7:40.75 behind Craig Mottram (7:37.73), Isaac Songok (7:38.97) and Daham Najim Bashir (7:39.45). (When he ran for Kenya instead of Qatar, Bashir was known as David Nyaga.)

As he describes below, Matt will now return home for almost two weeks before leaving for Beijing.

Results are here.

I thought I would send an update on what’s been going on with me these last few weeks. To say that it’s been a rough few weeks would be an understatement, but if anything it has made me stronger.

A few weeks ago at the Olympic Trials was close to the lowest time during my athletic career, but as I said, I truly feel like it has made me stronger. My parents were able to make it out for the meet and it was nice having them there to help cope with the letdown of not making the team, a dream that I’ve had for my entire career. Now I can joke around about the race that at least I was an Olympian until the last 100 meters. After a few hard and depressing days, I turned around my mentality and was working out great and ready to take on the summer season.

After a solid week of training we ran a 1500 in Madison as a tune-up before Europe that turned out really well in terms of attendance. We put the race together last minute and were able to attract over ,000 people after making it public for only two days. We ran it quite late, too, at 9:20 p.m. on the 15^th of July. I didn’t run very well, however. I took 3^rd behind Matt Tegenkamp and Jonathon Riley; they pretty much kicked my butt in the last 200 meters. I was pretty upset after that race, as I was hoping that it would be the turnaround I needed to completely get over the disappointment of the Trials. However, it only sunk me further. I was frustrated and searching for answers, but still was determined to turn things around.

As anyone who knows me knows, I’m stubborn and I was/am not going to let this get me down and conquer me. I shipped out the next morning for Belgium, where my next race was held. Once I got over here I felt rejuvenated and had a completely new outlook on my running. I wasn’t having any fun the last few months with running, which I’ve never encountered before; it actually felt like a job, and I wasn’t feeling like doing it anymore. So when I got here I decided that I am going into the rest of the summer with no expectations and focus on just enjoying it more like I have in the past.

So bringing you all back up to speed on my race Sunday night. I have very mixed feelings about it. It went really well for 11.5 laps–I was running the race of my life and it was going very well. Prior to the race I had heard that the pace was going to be going through 3K in 7:45, which is 12 seconds faster than I ever gone through 3K. At first I thought I would run from the back and let the lead pack go and run even pace, but after about an hour of thinking that I said screw it, and I didn’t come to Europe and not try to turn around my season to run even pace. I went out the first mile in 4:13 and felt quite comfortable, so I was optimistic about my chances of doing well.

I ended up coming through 3K in 7:53 and two miles in 8:25 and I still felt comfortable, but the pain was starting to creep in. I told myself that I had just over a mile to go and that I was going to get myself in the front pack, so I began to move up gradually and got myself into about 7^th place with two laps to go. I stayed here until the bell lap where I really started to hurt and worried that I would not be able to finish the race, so I checked off, which is what I really regret. Maybe if I would have stayed in the pack I would have gotten the competitive juices and that would have overcome my inevitable dying over the last 200 meters. I crossed with a lap to go in 12:05, so I figured that if I even maintained pace I would run fast and under 13:10.

Unfortunately, my body, though it held up really well the whole race, quickly fell apart the last 300 meters, especially the last 150. I ran 73 seconds for my last lap and ended up hitting 13:18.51. I am very indifferent about the outcome, because I still hit the A standard for next year, but also went 11.5 laps of pain to come one lap short of running a great race. So there is frustration, but I enjoyed being in the race and just competing with no expectations and having fun racing again. I am going to try to get in another 5K in September that should be quite fast, so we’ll see how that works out.

My next race will hopefully be a 3K in either London or Monaco on the 29^th of July. I will be returning to the States on the 31^st of July to train for a month, with a short stop to the Falmouth Mile on the 8th of August, and then coming back over for some more races after the Olympics. Which include most likely right now a 3K at Gateshead on the 31st of August, and then hopefully another 5K attempt at Brussels on the 5th of September. Afterward I hope to have qualified for the World Athletics Final in the 3K in Stuttgart, Germany on the 13th, and return home to run 5th Avenue Mile on the 20th, which will bring my racing season to a close.

Things have been going very well since the Trials. That is a pretty easy statement to make considering what the weeks since Pre were like. Leading up to the Trials I only missed one workout, so I was not losing fitness, it just added a lot more stress (dealing with aches and pains) to an already stressful event. However, I was able to get 100% the week leading up to the Trials–I knew that I had put in plenty of work in the months leading up to the all-important Trials and was ready to go. Everyone knows what happened at the Trials, and I want to forget about that and move on!

Since the Trials Jerry has started the sharpening process, and I am responding very quickly. Part of that process was finding a 1500. It was supposed to be in Europe, but for a lot of reasons it did not work out. This year is a little crazy, and there were not quality 1500s when we needed them. Unfortunately, meet directors over in Europe follow the motto “What have you done for me lately?” I have not run a fast 1500 (or a fast time in any event for that matter) this year. That really limited my chances of getting into a good field. I was on the wait list for some but it is a long way to travel without having the race set in stone.

Luckily for us, our group is very strong and capable of getting in what we needed right in Madison. The one-event meet was an awesome experience. It worked out so much better than we could have planned for. It was perfect weather, an awesome crowd and no stress!! It was pretty cool talking to people after and they would be like, “I found out 30 minutes ago this was going on, so I hopped in the car and rushed down here.” It is great to know we have that support in our community and we are really going to miss it. Portland is going to be a great opportunity and we are looking forward to it, but we will not forget what Madison has done for us!

The 1500 in Madison was a great send-off for Europe. I am in Stockholm now getting ready for a 3k tomorrow. It is a great field, and ‘m really looking forward to competing. I am also glad that I am running early (12:15 CDT) so I can watch the rest of the meet. It is good to see a field of this quality leading up to the Olympics. I will need this because the Olympic 5000 is so stacked and going to be way harder than last year. Plus, I have a feeling that the runners are not going to let it come to a kick like it did last year, as we know how that will turn out!

This will be a one-and-done trip for me, so I better make it worth it. Madison will be good prep leading up to my departure for the Games–it will be hot and humid! I love that weather–that is what I grew up in and have always run well in. Also, I get to be with my wife, sleep in my own bed and relax with the dogs. I will get 12 days in Madison, and then head off to Beijing. Luckily, I get to go to the Opening Ceremonies, which is going to be awesome. I can’t wait, and I am very excited in my training progression.

Leave a comment for me so I know what I should be talking about!! More in the weeks to come.

Although Chris Solinsky ran his second-fastest 5,000m last night in Heusden, Belgium, until late, late, late in the race he was on the verge of a major personal best.

In the “A” heat, Chris was with the lead group of eight as they passed 4,600m in roughly 12:05. A sub-13:10 clocking seemed inevitable. He lost contact with 300m to go, and soon after disaster struck–his back went into spasm with 200m to go, and that last half lap wound up taking Chris 40 seconds.  His time of 13:18.51 is still his second best after his 13:12.24 from last summer.

Results are here.

The soon-to-be-ex men from Madison start the first part of their European tour, and as you can see from these photos, they are ready to roll, and then some.

Chris Solinsky opens tomorrow with a 5,000m in Heusden, Belgium. Matt Tegenkamp follows that up with a 3,000m in Stockholm, Sweden on Tuesday the 22nd. Tim Nelson and Sean Quigley have a 3,000m of their own on te 26th in Oordegem, Belgium.

As he has during past European outings, Teg will be filing periodic dispatches. Curious about something? Use the e-mail friendly version of askteg [AT] kimbia [DOT] net to send our latest Olympian your questions.

Another in an occasional series of our friends’ post-Olympic Trials plans:

I will be hitting the U.S. road race circuit. I will start off with the Falmouth Road Race in Falmouth, Mass., on August 10th, and then follow it up with a series of U.S. championship races like the 20K Championships/New Haven Road Race in New Haven, Conn., on Sept. 1st; the CVS Downtown 5K on Sept. 21st; the US 8K Championships in Akron, Ohio on Sept 27th; and next on to the 10K Championships /Tufts 10K in Boston, Mass.