“When you see marathon people training and you see the results, you don't know what's inside those results,” runner Eliud Kipchoge says. “Many things are going on behind the scenes. Don't miss the training in the morning and the evening, because the body is counting.”
For the April issue of GQ, writer Knox Robinson visited sub-two-hour marathoner Kipchoge at his ultra-rarefied Kenyan training ground. Robinson, a a 45-year-old amateur, is invited to join Kipchoge for a workout: 11 miles broken into tough 10-minute intervals, with one minute of easy jogging between each, at the camp's 8,000 mile high elevation. Robinson's stats are notable: he runs 70 miles a week, and clocked a 2:33 marathon a few years ago. Kipchogee and his companions lose him almost immediately—and nearly run him over on their return.
Kipchogee looks older than his age. His passport says he's 35, but rumors have swirled that he's in his early 40s. Conventional wisdom suggests he has only a handful of marathons left, and he's aiming to run one of them at the Olympics in Tokyo, which have been postponed from this summer to 2021 in the wake of the surging coronavirus pandemic. He talks to GQ about what's next.
Photo credit is Fanny Latour-Lambert.
Styling credit is Mobolaji Dawodu.
The April issue of GQ is on stands now.
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