Mo Farah on his African training trip
Mo Farah was the star of the show at the Aviva International Match in Glasgow last weekend setting a British Indoor 3000m record. spikesmag.com caught up with the rising endurance star to chat about how training with the Kenyans has helped reinvigorate his career.
If the first stage in the realisation of what it takes to be a star distance athlete came in 2005 for Mo Farah - when he lived and trained with a group of Kenyan athletes in the London suburb of Teddington - the second stage might just have arrived this winter.
For much of the past four months the Somalian-born Brit has lived and trained in East Africa, an experience Farah candidly describes as "completely different".
Yet there may be a few more British (not to mention other Western-based athletes) who may be willing to take Farah’s lead. Not least because the former European Cross Country champion has returned a fitter more battle-hardened athlete, a fact confirmed by victory at the Aviva International Match at Glasgow last weekend in which
he posted a stunning British 3000m indoor record of 7:40.99.
Farah was prompted to head to East Africa for training on the recommendation of his Irish agent, Ricky Simms, after he endured a disappointing Olympic Games in which he failed to qualify for the final of the 5000m.
And it was a challenge the 25-year-old, who has regularly trained with the Kenyans in England, did not shirk.
Farah enjoyed a week’s holiday in his native Somalia before moving on to Ethiopia for a month’s training alongside European Cross Country bronze medallist Mustafa Mohamad of Sweden and steeplechaser Bob Tahri of France, the European Championship bronze medallist.
It was an enjoyable experience. He even visited the homes of world marathon record holder Haile Gebrselassie and World 5000m champion Meseret Defar before returning home and winning the silver medal at the European Cross Country Championships in December.
Shortly after he embarked on the second part of his African odyssey, flying out to Kenya for what proved a stark wake up call for the British athlete.
“Kenya was different, it opened my eyes,” explained Farah. “As an athlete for many years I’d gone to different training camps, but how they train is completely different.
You wake up in the morning at 6am and you’ve got loads of guys to run with. I turned up at the track at 8.30am on the first morning and there was 50 guys or more just doing a track session, so when you do a track session you never get an inside lane.”
He spent the first five days or so living at the house of 2005 World 5000m champion Ben Limo before moving on to a spell at Kaptagat training alongside other Simms’ athletes such as his good friend Olympic 10,000m bronze medallist Micah Kogo, Limo, and sub-13:00 5000m runner Mike Kigen. He later moved on to Iten to be based at the high altitude training camp of World Half Marathon champion Lornah Kiplagat.
However, whereas he would often rise for training in Teddington at 8am he quickly discovered the Kenyan approach was very different. He slept in a small bed with a mosquito net over it and shared the same room as three or four other athletes.
He would rise at 6am and ten minutes later he would be out of the door on a one-hour run. Only on his return would he eat breakfast often followed by a one-hour sleep. He might have a lunchtime gym session followed by lunch, a further sleep, and a second run of the day before sunset.
He even trained twice on Christmas Day.
“It is run, eat, sleep that’s all I did,” he added. “The intensity and environment was completely different and you have 50 guys to run with – in Teddington you maybe have only 15 to 20 guys.
They all run with great hunger. You know if they don’t, they don’t feed their families. For them, they ain’t got no choice.”
Training up to 120 miles per week Farah faced no distractions at the training camp. There was no TV or internet access and this allowed him to focus 100% on training.
He spent much of his downtime reading – a Muhammad Ali autobiography – and he admitted the only thing he missed about life back home was struggling to keep abreast of the results his favourite football team, Arsenal.
For the future, though, Farah has not ruled out returning to train in East Africa next winter and believes British athletes can learn from a similar experience.
“For sure we need a bigger group to train with and to eat, sleep, run,” he added. “I think we are doing the right thing towards 2012 – people are learning.
In terms of my attitude we need to get tougher, get [more] people running and get a lot more people in the group involved and train harder.”
***Watch Mo Farah in action at the Aviva European Trials and UK Championships in Sheffield on Feb 14-15 and Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham on Feb 21.
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