about how relentless innovation complicates the eth-
ics of the world’s simplest sport. But amid all the talk
about pacers and Alphaflys it was easy to forget what it
was that got Kipchoge into the ballpark of two hours in
the first place: spending six days a week for nearly two
decades in his camp’s monastic seclusion.
Back in the garden, that’s what Kipchoge wants to
emphasize. “What we’re looking for here is consistency,”
he tells me. “Are you really training for all those four
months? Are you eating well? Are you actually building
in a positive way? That’s what’s required in sportsmen
and -women in order to run very fast.”
Consistency. The dedication to becoming great. The
amazing thing about Kipchoge is that none of this
came easily. The path to marathon immortality wasn’t
a straight one for him. He started out on the track. In
2003, just a year after he took up professional running,
he pulled o≠ a huge upset in the 5,000 meters at the
World Athletics Championships in Paris. It seemed
his future would be written on the oval. But then...he
went dark. After medaling at the Athens and Beijing
Olympics, he was left o≠ the Kenyan Olympic team for
London 2012—a failure that forced him to reevaluate.
The marathon was his plan B.
I’ve followed Kipchoge since that Paris race, but it was
only after seeing him up close that I understood just how
he’d gotten so good—and kept it up for so long. His secret
is that there are no secrets. You just put in the work, sea-
son after season. The things worth focusing on are the
simplest: the steady accumulation of miles underfoot.
EVEN IF THERE WAS no great mystery to reveal, I still
wanted to know his strategy for the marathons ahead.
How was he going to beat Bekele? Could he become the
first repeat Olympic gold medalist in the marathon since
Waldemar Cierpinski, the East German who did the dou-
ble in 1976 and 1980?
If there’s an answer, a good place to look is the camp’s
library—a simple room with three shelves located
between the men’s and women’s dorms. Kipchoge often
spends an hour there in the afternoon and another hour
after dinner. “I read the business books,” he says. “You
can translate business into running.”
The shelves o≠er a range of pop psychology and self-
help: The Tipping Point, SuperFreakonomics, Running
a Marathon for Dummies. Lately Kipchoge has been
immersed in a new book, The Infinite Game, by Simon
Sinek. He’s been thinking about one passage in particular,
about Sinek’s time speaking at “education summits” for
Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft’s executives, Sinek says,
were obsessed with the company’s market share, whereas
Apple’s were focused only on creating the best products.
“At Apple competition is out of the question,” Kipchoge
explains. “You just work, but they don’t compete.
Microsoft people have a finite mind. Apple people are the
infinite minds.” He flashes his famous smile and gives a
knowing look. “Who is ruling the market now? It’s Apple,
iPhone is everywhere—even most people in Kenya are
buying iPhone.” He pauses. “We were really talking of
marathon, so what I’m trying to say is this: We don’t run
and compete, but we have competing minds.”
Of all the East Africans to dominate distance running
over the past four decades, Kipchoge is the first to take
hold in the collective imagination and become a global
ambassador—an understated, guru-like Usain Bolt. “I’m
dreaming that I will reach more than
3 billion human beings,” he says. “I want
everybody in this world to treat running
as a lifestyle. I want to see people know-
ing that at five o’clock I need to run for
30 minutes. If I get there, then I will be a
satisfied man.”
I once had a professor who said poetry
is about revealing a truth in the listener.
Sitting in the garden with Kipchoge, I real-
ize that he’s revealing a truth in me. Every
time I ask him something, he pivots—what
about my marathon, my team, my moon
shot? As he goes on, the birdsong overhead
gets louder. We sit together for another
half an hour in our plastic chairs—two
dads, two dudes, sharing pictures, talking
about our kids. He tells me they’re closing
up the camp for two weeks for the holidays.
Everyone’s going back to their homes, and
he’s going to see his family too. But don’t
worry, he tells me—he’ll be coming back to
walk the grounds, just to check in.
And that’s where I leave him. He’s got
another run this afternoon—another
steady hour—but first he wants to walk the
garden. He wants to make sure everything
is in its place.
knox robinson is a writer and runner
living in Brooklyn.
74 GQ.COM APRIL 2020
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