Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award
After years of watching Kenyan athletes win the world's biggest
races, from the Olympics to big city marathons, Runner's
World contributor Adharanand Finn set out to discover just what
it was that made them so fast - and to see if he could keep up.
Packing up his family (and his running shoes), he moved from Devon
to the small town of Iten, in Kenya, home to hundreds of the
country's best athletes. Once there he laced up his shoes and
ventured out onto the dirt tracks, running side by side with Olympic
champions, young hopefuls and barefoot schoolchildren. He ate their
food, slept in their training camps, interviewed their coaches, and
his children went to their schools. And at the end of it all, there
was his dream, to join the best of the Kenyan athletes in his first
marathon, an epic race through lion country across the Kenyan plains.