Any
race, every weekend:
There is no short cut. No secret to victory. Only grinding
hard work.
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Page: B4
Section: The Citizen's Weekly
Byline: Alex Hutchinson
Source: The Ottawa Citizen
One Monday morning
in early May, 32-year-old Joseph Nderitu is getting
ready for work. He shuffles unhurriedly across the living
room of the small Hamilton apartment where he rents
a room for $200 a month, toward the door, where a half-dozen
pairs of running shoes -- the tools of his trade --
are piled haphazardly.
Even at rest, Nderitu's
long, impossibly slim legs suggest motion -- not explosive
power, but the fluid, untiring stride of the long-distance
runner. This morning, though, he walks with a slight
hitch. His right Achilles tendon, connecting a bony
heel to a sinewy calf, is thick and puffy, the casualty
of the sudden change to Canadian cold from Kenyan heat.
The delicate tendon became inflamed during a 30K race
in late March, just a few days after his flight to Canada,
forcing him out of the race. "Probably I didn't
warm up enough," he admits.
The tools of modern
sports medicine -- MRIs, ultrasound therapy, anti-inflammatories
-- usually aren't part of Nderitu's injury philosophy.
They're not part of his insurance, either. By necessity,
his approach is much simpler: Just keep running. "If
you stop running, then when you start again, it comes
back," he says. To make the pain tolerable, Nderitu
has carefully cut a vertical slit down the back of the
right heel in each pair of running shoes, to take pressure
off the Achilles. And when the swelling gets too severe,
he takes a razor blade and slices next to the tendon
to drain the accumulated blood and pus. Several long
parallel scars run down his ankle.
With just three
weeks until Ottawa Race Weekend, the smart thing would
be to stop running, let the tendon heal and look ahead
to a marathon later in the year. That's what any Canadian
runner would do. But Nderitu is not running for pride
or glory -- he's running for survival, and moderation
is a luxury he can't afford. Depending on him are his
wife and four children back in Kenya, as well as his
elderly parents and 13 siblings. Add the cost of a transatlantic
plane ticket, and rent and food in Hamilton, and Nderitu
has no margin for error.
Though he can run
at a steady pace, the injury still prevents Nderitu
from sprinting or speed training to achieve peak shape.
The previous day at a 10K race in Toronto, he was narrowly
outsprinted for fourth spot by two other runners after
matching them stride for stride for most of the course.
The winner earned $2,500, fifth place won $300, and
Nderitu, three seconds behind in sixth place, got nothing.
It was the same story several weeks earlier in London:
Nderitu placed fourth in a 5K race, but prize money
was offered only to the top three.
After six weeks
in Canada, he has earned a grand total of $200, for
winning a small 15K race in Guelph. So, pulling on his
running shoe over the swollen tendon, Nderitu heads
out the door for his morning run.
- - -
About 28,000 people
are toeing the line in one of the nine races taking
place in Ottawa this weekend, seeking faster times,
firmer bodies, or perhaps raising money for charity.
But for a select group of runners, including Joseph
Nderitu, the stakes are much higher: the top man and
woman in this morning's marathon each takes home $15,000
plus bonuses.
This purse, by
far the richest in Canada, has drawn some of the world's
top marathoners, champions at such major international
races as the Chicago Marathon. More than 100 elite athletes
from around the world are in Ottawa to vie for the money,
split evenly between the ING Marathon and the MDS Nordion
10K. But the drop-off after first place is precipitous:
place 10th in the marathon, win $300. The same spot
in the 10K wins $100. Eleventh place earns you a free
T-shirt and a bagel.
About three-dozen
of the top athletes are from Kenya, a country whose
domination of long-distance running has become almost
proverbial in recent decades. At the Olympics, tightly
disciplined national teams from Ethiopia and Morocco
have started to challenge Kenyan supremacy. But in the
chaotic free-for-all of road racing, Kenyans still rule.
There are about 500 Kenyans in North America at any
given time, turning up in small towns and big cities,
weekend after weekend, wherever there's a footrace and
money on the line. Last year in Ottawa, Kenyans took
five of the top six spots in the ING Marathon and six
of the top seven spots in the MDS Nordion 10K.
Many theories about
Kenyan dominance have been advanced, ranging from superior
genetics to the lack of home videogame systems. Growing
up thousands of metres above sea level, which teaches
the body to make do with less oxygen, certainly helps.
So too do the rigours of rural life, where young children
often run as far as 10 kilometres each way to school.
There is an apocryphal tale about a Kenyan coach, who
was asked about the difference between the good runners
and the great runners in his training camp. "The
champions went home for lunch," he explained.
But there is another,
simpler explanation: the average annual income in Kenya
is about $500, and the unemployment rate is 40 per cent.
For a Kenyan runner in this morning's marathon, even
a 10th-place finish could help buy freedom -- a piece
of land, a few cows -- from a life of unrelenting menial
labour.
- - -
Joseph Nderitu
is a fixture in Ottawa, says Manny Rodrigues, the elite-athlete
co-ordinator for the Ottawa Race Weekend. Nderitu has
competed here every year since 2001, winning the marathon
three times and placing fourth twice. But his path to
Ottawa was anything but direct.
Ten years ago,
Nderitu was 22, and had been supporting himself as a
labourer for six years. His course changed when he heard
about the exploits of a rival from his school days:
Joseph Kamau was making headlines with top-three finishes
at the prestigious Boston and New York marathons. "Kamau
was running very well, and I heard it on the radio,"
Nderitu recalls. "And I thought, 'I used to beat
that guy.'"
Nderitu grew up
about 20 kilometres from Nyahururu, which at 2,360 metres
above sea level is the highest town in Kenya. (Canada's
highest town, Banff, comes in at just 1,383 metres.)
His father was in the British army, and after Kenyan
independence in 1963, became a farmer, earning about
a dollar a day to feed his family of 15.
True to the cliches,
Nderitu ran back and forth to Kirima Primary School,
about three kilometres each way, carrying with him books
and water. Coming home in the evening, he could slow
down and walk. "But at lunch, I had to run very
fast." By the time he reached high school, Nderitu
knew his talent for running extended beyond transportation.
He ran races for his school -- and won -- but his ambitions
didn't extend any farther. "I was just a kid,"
he says. "I didn't know there was a whole world
of running."
What he did know
was a life of extreme, grinding poverty. At 17, he moved
out of his parents' house and into a hut of mud and
grass that he had built. For the next six years, he
worked, digging ditches and carrying heavy logs in the
forest. He packed on muscle, got married and let running
fade to a memory.
Meanwhile, some
of his boyhood rivals were flourishing. Kamau was winning
races in North America, and Eric Wainaina -- who grew
up a few minutes from Nderitu's home -- was charting
a course that would lead to medals in the 1996 and 2000
Olympic marathons. Nderitu decided maybe he, too, could
do it.
In 1996, with help
from Kamau, the 22-year-old Nderitu received an invitation
to a running camp in Nyahururu organized by John Ngugi,
a former world champion. Like many successful runners,
Ngugi was nurturing the next generation of Kenyan runners
by giving hopefuls a chance to train hard and prove
themselves worthy of a trip to Europe or North America.
The regime was intense and uncomplicated: an easy run
at dawn, followed by a very intense training session
at 9 a.m., sleep for most of the day, then another run
before dinner. Repeat ad infinitum.
Nderitu gambled
everything. He stayed at the training camp for three
years, from 1996 to 1999, earning no income. "They
had to give me soap," he says. The camp provided
food, and his parents took in his wife and first child.
The training camp ran from October to August -- but
in the off-season, Nderitu stayed on and continued training,
visiting his family only on weekends, waiting for his
chance.
There are obvious
parallels between a runner like Nderitu and an inner-city
basketball player in the United States -- the push of
poverty and the pull of sporting riches, and, never
far below the surface, the desperation of knowing it's
this or nothing. But, although the odds of making it
to Madison Square Garden from a Harlem playground are
depressingly long, physically it's just a 20-minute
subway ride. Between Nyahururu and the cash prizes of
North America, there's the Atlantic Ocean -- a barrier
that can only be surmounted with a ticket that costs
thousands of dollars. So Nderitu waited.
- - -
In the late 1990s,
Tim Forrester was a decent local-level runner who owned
a running-shoe store in Hamilton. One of his friends
was a top over-40 runner, and as a favour, Forrester
acted as his agent, phoning race directors and making
travel arrangements. "At these races, you always
meet Kenyans," he says, "and they're always
trying to find the Next Best Thing." Runners would
ask him to be their manager, or tell him about their
friends back in Kenya who were fit and waiting for someone
to bring them to North America.
As road races and
prize money continued to bloom, Forrester decided to
give it a shot. At a race in Connecticut, a runner told
him about Jesse Maina, a runner who was in Kenya but
ready for the big-time. Maina was living at the training
camp in Nyahururu, with Joseph Nderitu and others. Forrester
arranged to bring a group of the camp's best runners
-- Nderitu included -- to Hamilton, paying their airfare
and promising room and board until they won enough prize
money to pay him back. After that, whatever they earned,
minus an agent's cut of typically 10 to 15 per cent,
would be theirs to keep.
It was the break
Nderitu had been waiting for. "I got here, and
I was just thinking about making money so I could start
building a life back home," he says. After arriving
on Sept. 23, 1999, Nderitu won a low-key 5K race in
Hamilton (with no prize money), then went on a tear.
He finished fourth at a half-marathon in Toronto, picking
up $600, then won a 10K in Hamilton, competed in a 15K
in Tulsa, a race in Tampa, and came second in another
half-marathon in Jacksonville, Florida.
Eight weeks after
his arrival, he returned to Kenya with his expenses
paid and $600 in his pocket. With his earnings, he bought
two calves for $100 each. Life was changing for Joseph
Nderitu. He spent one happy month with his wife, before
returning to the Nyahururu training camp.
The next year brought
even better results, and Nderitu was able to buy a three-quarter-acre
plot of land for $2,500, and build a five-room house
to move his family into. Just thinking about it makes
him pause, eyes half-closed, and shake his head in disbelief.
He bought another cow -- "the first cow for milking
ever in my family," he says with pride.
From Forrester's
point of view, the results from the rest of the group
were mixed. Maina was running several minutes slower
than Nderitu over the half-marathon, making it impossible
to earn money,
Forrester recalls. "And there was one other guy
and a girl – the guy stunk and the girl was terrible.
They still owe me probably $2,000 between them,"
he says.
As word spread
about the agent who was bringing runners to Canada,
Forrester began to receive a steady stream of e-mails
from runners in Kenya, desperate for a ticket out. Forrester
says he still receives 15 to 20 messages a week. The
problem, for an agent who has never been to Kenya and
has no plans to visit, is figuring out which runners
will pay off. During the past seven years, Forrester
estimates he has brought about 50 Kenyans to Hamilton,
relying on recommendations from other runners and coaches.
"Of them, I'd say probably 10 could actually make
a living here no problem," he says, with another
10 capable of scraping by.
The successes could
be very lucrative: "I had one girl, Lucia Subano,
she came here the second week of April (in 2000). By
July 3, she'd made 62 grand," he says. "She
just won everything." But such successes were outnumbered
by runners who struggled. And as Kenyans with agents
based in the United States began to eye the prize money
north of the border, the competition became more intense
-- and the economics of being a running agent became
even more precarious.
"The pie is
getting sliced too thin," says Ken Royds, who coaches
and manages a small group of runners, including Kenyan
road-runners Pauline Githuka and Abel Ondeyo, in Milton,
Ont. "There are too many guys, and there just isn't
enough out there."
Royds flips through
a thick book listing just about every prize-money race
in North America, along with the previous year's results.
"There are 50 agents, all trying to figure out
which race was weak last year," he says. He points
out the Utica Boilermaker, a 15K race in upstate New
York that offers $6,000 for first place: 18 of the top
19 finishers were Kenyan, with Tanzanian Fabiano Joseph
breaking up the sweep.
The situation is
the same at the opposite end of the spectrum, Forrester
says. Small-town races offering $200-$150-$100 will
attract five Kenyans. "When I first started doing
this, you could go to these races and run (the comparatively
slow 5K time of) 15:30," he says. "But it's
not so easy anymore, even at these Mickey Mouse races.
There's more mediocre Kenyans."
The cut-throat
competition may be hard on the agents' bottom line,
but it's even on harder on the Kenyans who don't find
immediate success. "They come over with a gym bag
... and that's all they have," Forrester says.
Suddenly they're carrying the debt of an airline ticket,
rent and food -- and finishing a few strides out of
the money becomes a catastrophe. "If you're not
running well, or if you get an injury, then pressure
builds, and that makes it worse," Forrester says.
"It just spins out of control."
- - -
Every Kenyan runner
is acutely aware of the scant few seconds that can separate
feast from famine -- witness Joseph Nderitu's run of
near-misses this spring. For Nderitu, the pressure was
relieved two weeks ago, when he won the Forest City
Marathon in London. After running side-by-side with
Antony Gitau, another Kenyan who trains in Hamilton,
Nderitu sprinted to the tape to take the $1,500 winner's
cheque.
For those with
the luxury to pick and choose, most coaches recommend
a maximum of two marathons in a year. For Nderitu, attempting
two marathons -- London and Ottawa -- just two weeks
apart is a financial necessity, thanks to his injury
and the disappointing race results that had followed.
The gamble paid off -- but not everyone is as lucky.
Last December,
a few days before flying back to Kenya for the winter,
Nderitu dropped by a Hamilton apartment shared by several
Kenyan runners, including 26-year-old David Njuguna.
"He asked for money for food," Nderitu recalls.
This was by no means an unusual occurrence -- knowing
first-hand the difficulties, successful Kenyans routinely
subsidize new arrivals and those struggling with injury
or poor form. Nderitu gave Njuguna some money, and,
a few days later, returned to Kenya.
When Njuguna first
arrived in Hamilton in 2003, he had every reason to
be optimistic. He started by taking an impressive third
at the MDS Nordion 10K race in Ottawa. During his first
year in Hamilton, he earned thousands of dollars.
But in 2004, Njuguna
struggled. He managed a fifth-place finish in Ottawa,
but ran a minute and a half slower than the previous
year. Similar results at other races put him out of
the money. At the end of the year, he decided to stay
in Canada over the winter, apparently to take computer
courses. But in the cold Canadian winter, he was unable
to train properly, making success in the 2005 season
impossible.
"He went to
Ottawa, and dropped out after two kilometres because
he was behind the ladies," says Forrester, who
stopped representing Njuguna as his interest in running
waned.
While Njuguna the
runner had been a valuable commodity, Njuguna the ex-runner
drifted off the radar. On the morning of Dec. 31, Njuguna's
roommate, Peter Ntabo, woke to find blood on the kitchen
floor, leading in a trail to Njuguna's bedroom. The
young runner had committed suicide early that morning.
"David phoned
me that day," Forrester says. "I just got
a message, I didn't actually speak to him. 'Tim, it's
David, just wishing you happy New Year, I'll speak to
you soon.'"
- - -
These days, Joseph
Nderitu doesn't have an agent. After seven years of
twice-yearly trips to Hamilton, he knows his way around,
he knows the race directors, and he can pay for his
plane ticket upfront. Hamilton knows him, too. A local
massage therapist, Donald Smith, donates his time to
help keep Nderitu's wiry muscles loose. And two years
ago, a local Grade 7 teacher named John Smith (no relation)
recognized Nderitu at the airport and convinced him
to speak to his class at Glen Brae school.
After hearing Nderitu
speak, the class organized a fundraising race to build
toilet facilities for schools near Nderitu's village
in Kenya, raising $3,125 the first year, and $6,580
this year. Nderitu supervised the construction while
he was back in Kenya, returning with photos -- and receipts
-- to show the class. "People here need verification,"
he says. "They want to know what they have done."
Nderitu has made
the transition from young runner struggling for survival
to local benefactor, and he's well aware of the distance
he's travelled. The apartment where he now rents a room,
which belongs to a friend of the Grade 7 teacher, is
located next to a small, two-storey strip-mall on Hamilton's
Main Street West. In 2002, Nderitu was one of 16 runners
sharing an apartment above a run-down Chinese restaurant
in the same mall. "We had bunk beds and double
beds, and some slept on the floor."
It cost $800 to
rent the apartment, but each runner was paying $200
a month. "We didn't know anybody," Nderitu
says. "We were new." After that year, he decided
to organize his own trips, though he still considers
Forrester a friend.
In the years since,
Nderitu has earned a reputation among race directors
around the province as a reliable performer. His consistency
in Ottawa has earned him a reward this year: he will
be paid a guaranteed fee to reach the halfway point
of the marathon in one hour and eight minutes, to help
pace those just below international class. (The top
Canadians in the race have run around 2:18 or 2:19 in
the past few years; the Olympic qualifying standard
is 2:16.) After hitting the halfway point, he is free
to race as hard as his fitness -- and Achilles -- permit,
ideally finishing in the top 10 to earn more prize money.
The arrangement
makes a lot of sense, Rodrigues says: the competition
will be tough this year and Nderitu would be hard-pressed
to challenge for a victory, even if his Achilles was
full-strength. And time is passing. At 32, Nderitu may
have a few seasons of good racing left, but he is unlikely
to get much faster.
- - -
As hard as the
races are, leaving his family behind for months at a
time is just as difficult. In the drawer of a small
bedside table, Nderitu has a stack of phonecards as
thick as a quarter-deck of cards -- his only link to
his wife, two sons and two daughters during these months.
His eldest daughter, born during his long apprenticeship
at the training camp in Nyahururu, is already nine.
"She's running good," he says with a smile.
Despite the hardships,
Nderitu isn't ready to leave Canada, or the running
life, just yet. He is interested in coaching and is
looking into the visa requirements to be able to pursue
that when he stops racing.
But that's still
in the future. Jogging easily around the grassy perimeter
of a park near his Hamilton apartment, Nderitu focuses
on the present: the marathon in Ottawa. Despite the
hot sun, he wears a full tracksuit, the green jacket
tucked tightly into the brown pants. He circles slowly
around the two-kilometre loop, allowing plenty of time
for the tender Achilles to loosen up. As joggers go
by in the other direction, shirtless in the 20-degree
heat, Nderitu shakes his head. "You must let the
heat rise up in the body," he says.
After 15 minutes,
a local runner recognizes him and settles in alongside.
The runner peppers Nderitu with questions about how
to train for an upcoming 5K race, and Nderitu answers
each question carefully. Patience is key, he says. Start
by running long, slow runs for several months until
the body is ready to run faster. Then add hills into
the program, and begin to increase the pace. Don't work
on sprinting until the very end, just before the race.
But the race is
in three weeks, the questioner says. Nderitu smiles,
sweat streaming from his brow. He has no shortcuts to
offer. There is no secret, just grinding hard work.
"You must come and train with me in Nyahururu,"
he says finally. "You will work very, very hard,
and at first you will be far behind. But eventually
you will catch up -- and when you come back here, no
one will catch you."
After 40 minutes
of running, Nderitu's muscles within the green tracksuit
have warmed up, and even the troublesome Achilles has
loosened up. "Now the muscles are ready to run,"
he says, and accelerates.
