A Glimpse into Life in a Kenyan Training Camp with Coach Peter Bii
Article by Tait Hearps
Peter Bii, coach of the Asics Chojo Project in Iten, Kenya told us all about how his athletes live and train. He also gives us great insight into what life in the training camp looks like for athletes, and the pathways for junior athletes in Kenya.
Peter, who competed in the middle distances as an athlete himself, stumbled into work in coaching after returning home from his studies in France due to the pandemic in 2020. He initially started coaching his wife and other women before some success here saw him approached by Mezzo Management who offered an opportunity to coach a group of athletes and set up a camp in Iten.
The majority of the athletes are road racers. Members include Hillary Koech (59:42 half marathon), Ronald Kirui (59:39 half marathon), Alfred Kipchirchir (60:58 half marathon) and Vicoty Chepngeno (who won Houston in 65:03 this weekend). The average age of the athletes is 24-25 but there are a handful of juniors coming through the ranks.
Recruitment of athletes comes from a combination of time trials put on by the group, races around Kenya (cross country and road), as well as through group members identifying other local runners with good potential. At any given training session Peter says there will often be athletes who aren’t in the group who come along to train with the group and try to prove themselves to join the ranks of the managed athletes. This however gets challenging, due to logistics, when the group travels outside of Iten to train.
The Chojo Group has roughly twenty athletes living on site, at the camp most share rooms (two per room) and all meals are in-house. Athletes room together based on the distances they are running, in order to synchronise schedules as much as possible.
The diet of the athletes looks like a very typical diet in Kenya, however Peter says it has evolved recently to try to provide more calories to the athletes. The diet consumed in a standard day will look something like this:
Breakfast – Oats, banana, tea (with milk and lots of sugar). Generally eaten after the morning run which is typically started before sunrise.
Lunch – Potatoes, green peas, rice
Afternoon snack – Porridge made from millet and sugar
Dinner – Ugali (maize-meal cake) and vegetables, or occasionally beef and chapati
Until recently the athletes consumed very little sports nutrition products, however Maurten have recently come on to support the group and they use their products during hard sessions and long runs.
Peter outlined what a week of training will generally look like for the group.
Monday – AM 16-20km, a couple hours later ‘slope’ = 50-60 minutes of 300m climbing, 300m back down, steady pace. PM marathoners skip slope and run easy around 4pm.
Tuesday – AM Fartlek (eg 15 x 1 min, 10 x 30s – on 2:40-2:45/off 3:20-3:25), PM drills + strength
Wednesday – AM Easy early (17-18km), 10am they go for drills and plyometrics in the forest nearby
Thursday – AM Long run, anywhere from 25-40km. The group had just returned from a long run at lower altitude (~1600m) where they had run 30km at around 3:00/km in preparation for Sevilla Marathon. See example of 35km long run with the group here.
Friday – AM Easy, maybe only 40-60 minutes if they’ve done a very hard run the day prior, followed by drills + strength
Saturday – AM Track, either on dirt (Tambach) or Tartan (Eldoret), both around 2000m altitude. These often involve longer efforts from 1600-3000m, Peter says he has the group doing lots of threshold work. Approaching races he will do more speed work with reps shorter than 1000m. PM easy.
Example track sessions (YouTube videos with Peter giving some insightful commentary)
Sunday – Rest
Throughout the week, easy runs aren’t at a prescribed pace, as Peter says if athletes are feeling tired he doesn’t want them pushing at all. Often they will run these progressive, starting out slower than 5:00/km and build to as fast as 3:20-3:30/km for the last two or so kilometres. These are normally on dirt roads that can be quite hilly and rough underfoot.
Gym work isn’t something that the group have capacity to do given lack of access, however strength work is something they do consistently with bodyweight exercises and plyometric drills. Peter says that the hilly, uneven trails they run a lot of their easy runs on are also integral to developing strength in the athletes. Early in a training block they might use hill runs on Thursdays instead of long runs, anywhere from 200-300 reps up to 1km climbs.
Peter speaks about the talent development pathway in Kenya and how he envisions the path going forwards for providing the hugely talented youth of Kenya with opportunities to compete on the world stage, and also to make a living from the work they are doing. A distinct lack of formalised races with accessible, reliable results is something that Peter sees as a significant problem here. In the same vein, there is a lack of clubs that are established to provide opportunities and support to the runners. Peter thinks that corporate support is one of the most viable ways to develop and support this talent pool, potentially by developing a race series with corporate teams competing in a similar setup to what goes on in Japan.
Our full conversation with Peter can be accessed wherever you listen to your podcasts. We thank him for sharing so much with us and for allowing us to be so intimately involved with the Chojo Group in Iten.
