Iten Marathon And More…

Richard during the Iten Marathon

22nd July saw a couple of the Arete Squad (Richard and Hosea) taking part in the Iten Marathon. Although the official results are not out yet, we know that Richard finished 17th in 2:27:30 (with the altitude, heat, and course profile, this equates to about 2:15-2:17 on a flat/honest sea level course). We’re not sure of Hosea’s finishing positioning or exact finishing time but we understand he ran about 2:40.

Richard was delighted with his run. To finish in the top twenty of this race is incredible running. And while Hosea didn’t quite have the run he hoped for, he’s still upbeat and looking forward to pressing on with his training and development with the Arete Squad—it’s early days.

Unfortunately, in the final days leading up to the marathon, Stazza had to withdraw Nicodemus from the race. Nicodemus received news that his father had taken ill with typhoid and that he suffered a bad fall, which resulted in him losing lots of blood. Nicodemus had to head home and spend time at the hospital. As well as the stress associated with his father’s illness and accident, Nicodemus had to give blood. With giving blood and all the stress, Stazza decided to withdraw Nicodemus and save him for another day.

Richard and Hosea are recovering well with some easy runs and will begin building back up in a week or so. It’s likely that they’ll spend time working at improving their half marathon times, before starting their build ups for their next marathon. Nicodemus, however, has already started building back up and will compete in the Standard Charter Nairobi Marathon on the 30th October.

During October, Coaches Stazza and Aoife will be out in Iten to work with Nicodemus in his final build up and will support him during the race. Stazza will stay on in Iten after the race until mid/late December (he’ll zip home for Christmas) and will return again in early January for a few months. Aoife will head home to Ireland in mid November and will return to Iten in January/February.

A good number of Stablemates are heading over from October onwards and it should prove an exciting 5-6 months in Iten. It’ll be great for some of the Stablemates to have the opportunity to run with the Arete Squad on the famous blood-orange trails of Iten.

For the next post, we’ll examine Nicodemus’ build up for the Nairobi Marathon…