Training (hard) with Bekele's coach!

20M double; tempo run & steady run & core strength exercises
10M am tempo run at 7.00-5.15min/M effort at 2700m
Core strength exercises (with the group)
10M pm steady run at ~6.00min/M effort at 2700m

Oof. I was expecting a gentle run this morning here in Bekoji after yesterday's track session in Addis. But the timetable here is different, with Saturday and Monday being the light days.

On top of that, I suggested a light one in the afternoon and was served up a fair portion of steady running.

The town has a population of about 30,000 and about 200 of them turn out for the regular training sessions overseen by coach Sentayehu. There are different groups, from middle to long distance. I was assigned to the long distance group who headed off across the fields for an hour's run (athough I was told it was 40-50mins before we started).

From about 15 minutes in the pace was picked up to a pretty healthy lick. And we were flying by the end.

It's the home of Tirunesh Dibaba, Kenenisa Bekele and Derartu Tulu among others (all of whom were coached by Sentayehu) and boast something like 8 Olympic golds, 10 world records and 32 world champ golds, so I thought it best to put up a fight and try to stick with the pace, despite the altitude and my inferior running heritage.

I didn't do a bad job and was really chuffed to stick with the front of the pack for all but the last sprint for the line. I was really done for!

The guys were really encouraging to me all the time, saying things like 'good', 'very strong', 'strong British' and 'hup, hup' to keep me going.

We ended with 20 minutes of core work and form exercises. Just like in the trailer for the Town of Runners film shortly to come out about Bekoji. Made me feel like a proper Ethiopian!

Anyway, the effort was well worth it and I've been assigned one of the fast runners (Ibrahim) as my guide for the week I'm here. I imagine Ibrahim will be hard to stick with, he looks intimidatingly scrawny!

Sure enough, my afternoon session with Ibrahim was no easy ride. The coach, he and Biruk (our minder here) picked me up at 4pm after my snooze and we took a horse cart up to the Bekoji cinder track. Ibrahim and I ran for an hour around the surrounding grounds - some light cross country. The first 15 minutes were gentle. The ensuing 45 were at a building pace, but never crazy... which was good after this morning. We finished with more Ethiopian arm and leg waving warm down exercises plus some extra jogging and walking. I've never warmed down so thoroughly.

It's so weird and amazing to have such great attention here in the home of Bekele. I couldn't stop imagining him flying around this afternoon's circuit as I ran. Unreal.

I'm pretty tired now, but tomorrow will be lighter (though with a good number of steady miles if I can engineer it).

Coach Sentayehu has latched onto my 6 weeks to London needs and Sunday is 40K of 'asphalt training'... better get my long run head on.

I'll stop typing now. I think I'm a little over-excited!