Hello, and thanks for taking the time to read my blog

Not long left now, until Myles and I are boarding a plane back to the UK . I'm currently living at 2400 metres altitude where the temperature gets into the 30's, and in ten days I'll be at sea level and enduring days where it won't get above freezing. I though ten weeks would drag a bit, but it doesn't seem like were here that long, and the next ten days are sure to fly.  

On the 15th of October I ran a cross country race, and it was an experience I'll never forget. I ran the Ndalat Cross Country, which is famous here for the amount of athletes who run it each year. Athletics Kenya requires every athlete to run at least two cross country races in Kenya every year if they want to race outside Kenya . This means that some of the local cross country races will have Olympic and world champions running them. It makes for great viewing, and even better racing, and the organizers can bring in bigger sponsors.  

The race was only 45km away. We left at 7am and only got there at 9.15. The roads if you can call them that were atrocious and so for the most part we were reduced to a crawl. I travelled to the race in a matatu with the some local athletes. As I mentioned before Linet Masai is my landlady so there were three of her younger sisters and their friends in the matatu.  

When we got there the place was mobbed with athletes. It was free to enter and so there was over 2500 athletes registered to run the various races. There were races for primary school kids with a first team prize of KSH30000, which is about £186 or €214, so not a huge amount of money to a lot of people at home. Out here many people work for less than £1/day so it's a hell of a lot of money. The old rumors that we all here in the western world about no-one out here having a passport a true, and because of this you can stay in primary school until your well into your 20's. The guy who won the primary schools boys race looked older than me. No-one questions age out here; you're whatever age you say you are.   

Warming up, was a little strange as everyone I ran past just stopped what they were doing to stare at me. One guy stopped me and said not many people in that part of Kenya had every seen a Mazungo (white man) before. Even on the start line there were guys just staring at me. I guess I looked about as alien as ET to most of them. Some were pointing and laughing and it was then I realised I was in for a hard day. 

There was a false start but at the second time of asking we got away fine, with Janet Jepkosgei starting the race. I was in the 4th row on the start line, as I had heard that the race goes out way to hard, I was content to sit in and run even splits. Asbel Kiprop was right to the front of the pack with Jake Robertson close behind him.  

The race was supposed to be 12km. Kiprop only ran the first lap of 6, and dropped out, as did Robertson, and dozens others before the first lap was even over. Apparently it normal to just use these types of races as speed work. The fact that so many guys run to the front and drop out soon after doesn't help with the pacing of the race, and I found myself running near the back of the field f about 400 runners for the first two laps. 

Starting the second lap, I began to pass people. By that stage there were athletes just dropping out all over the place. I was told after the race that if a white man passes you in a cross country race in Kenya , it's time to drop out, and sure enough a lot of guys I passed stopped soon after. 

I wore my GPS watch to keep an eye on my heart rate and pace. I normally wouldn't but I was using the race as a tempo run. I'd already done 112 miles that week before the race even started and so was keen to record the event. The race was 12.8km and I kept an average pace of 3:11/km, with only 10 seconds between my fastest and slowest lap, so fairly consistent splits, which was the goal. 

I'm still unsure what to think about the race itself. I was three minutes off the winner in the end, but he has run sub 27 minutes for 10 km on the track after the world champs, in the same race as Rupp set the American record. The guy is obviously one of the best runners in the world, and the standard of the race was extremely high. However to finish 94th in anything is disappointing. 

Then I look at how fast I ran at altitude and during 36 degree heat, which was harder than the altitude, and I think it's an OK run. Dieter Baumann ran a cross country race here in Kenya when he was the Olympic 5000m champ and finished in the 80th, so it brings some credibility to my efforts. Granted Baumann wasn't a cross country specialist, but when your Olympic champ at 5000m your endurance should get you around 12km pretty easy.  

It was an experience anyway, and I'm pretty sure, racing at sea level where there aren't 400 Kenyans next to me on the stat line will feel a lot easier in a few weeks. 

Thanks for reading