Intervals with Coach Ahmed – Co-Coach of the Dibaba Sisters (day 12)
On Sunday evening we bumped into Ahmed – who had been coaching the Dibabas for the hill session on Saturday morning – in our hotel. The next morning he was going to be overseeing an interval workout with some of the athletes from the Somali national team, to which he invited us to join.
At 6:30, before the sun had even started to appear over the horizon, we joined Ahmed in front of the hotel. He hailed a passing minibus and we bundled in. 1 birr (4 cents) each for the quick ride to the centre of town. We alighted and immediately Ahmed opened the door to a bajaj (tuk-tuk) and ushered us in. The bajaj unsteadily made its way down the bumpy street, passing between many concrete hulls of the unfinished (and seemingly abandoned) houses. Partially constructed buildings are ubiquitous in Ethiopian cities and towns, sometimes it seems like there are more buildings that are under construction than those which are complete.
After a short trip in the bajaj we arrived at the house where Ahmed is living with a group of Somali athletes that he coaches. We spent a quarter of an hour stretching in the courtyard as the athletes prepared themselves. The house was very simple, with bare concrete walls. A woman was in the courtyard washing dishes in a large plastic basin, using water from a freshly boiled kettle to battle the chill of the water from the tap.
The group rolled out and we followed them to the field where we went on some of the initial easy runs around Sululta. None of the athletes spoke much English so Matt and I spoke between ourselves intermittently, shivering in the early morning cold. The vast expanse of the field, which is on the edge of town, is known as “Satellites” due to the massive set of satellites that are off to one side. We arrived to see multiple groups running around the edge of the field, some warming up but some already in the depths of an interval workout.
A 15-minute jog took us around the edge of the field and back to Ahmed. The athletes were quiet, conversation was quite minimal. We imitated the drills that the other athletes were doing as part of their warm up, lots of hip mobility and focus on hamstring flexibility as well. After a short stretching session, Ahmed began rousing the group into action. The workout was set to be 10 x 1km, aiming for 3:10 in each interval.
We ran a roughly triangular circuit, not quite flat and rough underfoot in some parts. According to the Garmin each lap was a tad short, closer to 950m than a full kilometre. However, each lap was slightly varied. Empty, flattened bottles on the grass served as inadvertent points demarcating the route – the amount of rubbish spread over the Satellites field is really disturbing.
The group was quite close together for the first two intervals but as the workout progressed there was a group of three that maintained the pace, and the rest of the group (ten in total, including us faranjis) lagged behind in their wake. Still adjusting to the altitude, and struggling with achilles issues, I only made it through five of the intervals, Matt pushed on for eight. Some of the athletes also didn’t run the full ten; a couple 800m runners only ran six of them. The final lap was completed and after a short break, gasping with hands on knees, we all went for an easy lap of the field to warm down. As the group disbanded we farewelled the athletes and Ahmed. We jogged out to the main road, stopped by a local shop for some avocado juice (a very popular treat here), and headed back to the hotel to put the legs up and recover. Not a bad way to start the morning.
[Specific training information/research from this trip in Ethiopia will be accessible to our subscribers only. To subscribe, click here.]
