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The Health Compass Podcast
Exploring the Unique Running Culture of Ethiopia With Anthropologist Mike Crawley
Imagine a culture where running is not just a sport, it's a way of life. In our conversation, we discover how the Ethiopian running culture is deeply tied to the landscape, spirituality, and even the weather.
The terrain of Ethiopia shapes the training methods of its runners, resulting in techniques that build strength and speed in ways that are unique to this part of the world.
Mike expertly compares and contrasts this with the running cultures of other countries, notably Kenya, revealing a fascinating blend of terrain, spiritual beliefs, and mystical practices that Ethiopian runners use to gain strength.
Wrapping up our conversation, we delve into the power of group training, its role in fostering a sense of sacrifice among Ethiopian runners. We also touch on the rising popularity of park runs and the Inner City Running Club in the Dublin area.
To add a cherry on top, Mike offers listeners three valuable tips for runners, along with three must-read book recommendations.
Mike, welcome to the Helicopter's broadcast. Thank you very much for having me, mike, for the while I'd like to say thanks for coming on. I appreciate you giving up your time.
Speaker 2:No problem at all.
Speaker 1:The fourth question I generally ask anyone that I get on is where, what and why. So it's kind of where you've come from to get where you're currently at, what you actually do or what you're actually doing at the minute, and then why you do what you do.
Speaker 2:Well, that's some big questions. So where am I at the moment? Is an anthropologist working basically on running or kind of endurance, I guess more broadly, and that's something that I've been kind of running competitively for, as my running coach pointed out to me the other day more than half of my life. Now at this stage I'm 30, just coming up to 34. I've been running competitively since I was about 14. So I've always been just mad into running and kind of the culture that surrounds running, I suppose. And then I was lucky enough to be able to turn that into a job by coming up with this research project in Ethiopia where I did this long term piece of field work, living alongside Ethiopian runners and writing about it, which is where the book Out of Thin Air came from. What do I do? Well, I guess I was until recently competing at a relatively high level as an athlete. I ran for Scotland and Great Britain on the roads and on cross country, kind of struggling a bit more with injuries and stuff these days, but hopefully going to get back to it soon. And why? I guess running is just something that's always felt right to me. I guess Once I got into it when I was a kid, I got to the stage where if I don't go for a run pretty much every day, then I start to feel a little bit weird and a little bit not myself anymore. So it's kind of I think it becomes part of who you are and becomes part of your kind of embodied consciousness, I guess, to a certain extent. So that's the why.
Speaker 2:And the why in terms of writing the book about Ethiopia was that basically there wasn't one really. There was a lot of writing about Kenya and a lot of writing about East African running, which I think was mainly about Kenyan running, because it's a bit easier to get to Kenya, the language barrier isn't so much of a problem because it used to be a British colony, Whereas Ethiopia you know, you kind of had to learn on Harik it's a bit less accessible in the sense that people tend to travel by bus to get to their training locations and things like that. So no one had really written anything much about Ethiopian running. So I wanted to kind of go and find out what was different about the culture of the sport in Ethiopia compared with Kenya. So that's kind of that's the why for the book, but it also allowed me to go and do a lot. Do some running for 15 months in Ethiopia, which is just absolutely fantastic as well.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and for anyone who's listened that doesn't know what anthropology is, can you give us a quick breakdown? Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:So I think it's basically well, this is quite a difficult one to answer. Actually. It's kind of the trying to work out what it is that makes us human, basically. So what is it that and what is different about the way that people think about that in different parts of the world? The main way that anthropologists work is through participant observations, so just basically watching how people interact with each other, watching how they behave and then trying to document that as closely as possible. So in my case, with Ethiopian runners, it meant trying to explain basically what the world looks like to a young Ethiopian athlete who is trying to change their lives through running. So that's how most people describe it. They wanted to change their life through the sport, which meant kind of getting to the level where they could make some money out of it. So the point of me spending all that time sort of living and training alongside them was to try and try and understand that as much as possible and then write about it, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in the book you talk about the 1960 Royal Marathon and the Olympic Marathon, I think it was and what significance has that marathon had on Ethiopian women's culture? Maybe give us a quick breakdown of that, because that was a very interesting part of the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that was an incredibly symbolic moment in Ethiopian running history. It was kind of the birth of Ethiopian running. Really, people hadn't done a great deal of competitive athletics in Ethiopia until a few years before 1960. What happened was that the emperor at the time, haile Selassie, brought in a coach from Sweden to coach the members of his imperial bodyguard just in my physical fitness and calisthenics and stuff and the coach realized that some of the guys that he was coaching happened to be very good distance runners and he trained people to run a marathon and a baby beckola obviously one in Rome, but that was. It was especially significant because Ethiopia was unlike pretty much all other African countries.
Speaker 2:Ethiopia was never kind of formally colonized by any country, but the Italians tried to invade in 1896 and were fought off by an Ethiopian army that was barefoot and didn't have the equipment that the Italians had, and that was an incredible moment of like, and still is a moment of national pride in Ethiopia.
Speaker 2:Mussolini did eventually colonize or kind of turn Ethiopia into protectorate in the 30s, only for a few years, but it was the significance of basically an Ethiopian going to Rome in the 60s the former kind of colonial power and being able to win that race barefoot against competitors who were wearing shoes. It was like it had this real symbolic value and that kind of beckola went back to Ethiopia, was kind of celebrated as a hero and that kind of spurred other people on. So you'd see, if you watch beckola win, when he kind of crosses the line he starts doing all these kind of gymnastic exercises and things to warm down which we talked to him by the Army General who went to train the bodyguards in the 60s, and those exercises are still. You still see people doing those now. You know, however, many 60 years later in the forest people are still doing those kinds of exercises that they associate with beckola. So it's like, yeah, it's a really that was a really significant moment really for the sport.
Speaker 1:So fast forward. Mike, I really was in Ethiopia. Go out for his foreshadowing. Tell us about that experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was. That was great, I mean, because that was a bit. Obviously you go somewhere completely new like Ethiopia, hoping to do some research, hoping to meet people who you can talk to about running and the kind of research questions that you have. You don't really know, though, how people are going to react to you just turning up and trying to join in. But yeah, as you say, I basically woke up 5.30 one morning.
Speaker 2:The second morning that I was there, I think, went up into the forest and just kind of started jogging, and these guys, a group of guys, came past me and just basically like physically grabbed me as they ran past and sort of put me at the back of the group, and I just had to kind of keep up as far as I could. We did this amazing run in the forest, kind of zigzagging backwards and forwards in the trees, and it was. It was brilliant. And then at the end we stopped and sort of sat around doing some stretching and things, and one of the guys spoke decent English and he kind of explained to me that in Ethiopia it's just really not socially acceptable to run on your own.
Speaker 2:It's like if you're trying to be an athlete, then that's. That should really be a social process. It should be something that is done in the group and then if you want to improve, then you need to be kind of embedded in that kind of group environment. So you know already, like two hours after I'd kind of started my research, going up for that run and then being you know the conversations we had afterwards, I felt like I'd already kind of started to understand what was going on, even just after that first run with the, especially that you know in terms of the emphasis on the group as the way of getting better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of significance in just the group dynamic and one isn't there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's less so here. I think, you know, lots of people do see running as quite an individual sport. In Ethiopia it was, you know, very, very much not a thing to go running on your own, in the same way that it was very unusual to eat alone in Ethiopia. That was seen as something that you should always be sharing with people and that was a definitely seen as something communal as well. So I think it's kind of a broader part of the culture, but they definitely believed that in order to get to the kind of level that they wanted to get to, you had to be pulled along with other people.
Speaker 1:Basically, and this is a bit of a long question but I really wanted to give it, because I've listened to you on a couple of podcasts and one of the most intriguing things about the book for me personally was where they actually trained, so like the different areas that they ran in, the surfaces that they ran on, and then kind of the types of sessions that they were doing and then the significance of each individual place. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, basically, I think they really believe that being good at running was about kind of situating yourself within these different environments in a way that would improve your condition, which is the way they tend to talk about fitness. And so the highest place that we went to was in Toto Mountain, which is about you could run up to about 3000 meters above sea, 3,300 meters above sea level there, and that was somewhere. Usually each place was kind of also combined with a particular way of running. So on that mountain the idea was that you run pretty slowly but kind of meandered around, using this, the slope to kind of improve strength and things. But the idea was that you'd run quite slowly and in that kind of in a long kind of line as a group. And I think that that kind of particular kind of meandering way of running was also sort of linked in some ways to the fact that there were loads of Orthodox churches on the mountain, so it was kind of seen as quite a spiritually important place to people as well. So that was somewhere that people tended to not wear GPS watches and things like that. It was seen as like a different kind of running to something that you'd want to measure like that.
Speaker 2:And the opposite end of the spectrum would be when we went in a bus to like an asphalt road and place where there were kind of kilometer markers on the road, white kilometer markers, so that people could have a really objective sense of what they were doing. And there they would. We're just going to run as fast as they could, basically, and measure it. And then we would go a place called a car key, which was much lower altitude, so down to sort of 1800 meters above sea level, and that would be somewhere that they would specifically go because it was hotter, because they could run quicker there. So we sometimes also do runs that were like a whole hour downhill with a bus following us, in order to kind of increase leg speed and things like that. But it was very much.
Speaker 2:The sense was that in order to improve particular kinds of running you had to go to specific places and that would sometimes mean that we'd be sitting on the bus for an hour and a half to get somewhere and then sometimes like two and a half hours to get back into Addis during rush hour. So it was really kind of it made training exhausting because we'd sometimes leave the compound at 5am and get back at lunchtime and we wouldn't eat in that time. But it was because they, you know, there was this such a strong belief in different areas. And then they would also sometimes go somewhere like they. There was a part of the forest called Boston, because it was particularly cold, where people would go to train for Boston marathon. So it was like, yeah, places were kind of connected as well with other places around the world in interesting ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I could imagine sports nutrition is reading the book and pulling the hair out the top, not having a book out. Nutrition to us after the tour decay run.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that was pretty, pretty regular occurrence that people wouldn't eat for two or three hours after running. You also had orthodox Christians. Particularly strict orthodox Christians sometimes don't eat at all until three o'clock in the afternoon on particular days of the week. So you know, I didn't know how they, how you manage that when you're running as much as they are, and sometimes people don't drink either until three in the afternoon. So but I mean I do wonder sometimes that obviously sports nutritionists would look at that and say that's not particularly sensible but to a certain extent it must train your body to be able to to run with whilst relatively depleted, which is obviously what you're doing at the end in the last eight kilometers of Martin anyway. So I wonder whether there's an element that that helps in some way.
Speaker 1:There is some research coming out. You know about this kind of train low approach and how competing yourself definitely some merit to it. And you touched on there about the Georgia and stuff and what role does fight play within the Roman culture in Ethiopia.
Speaker 2:Well, everyone's religious. Basically, in Ethiopia there's very few people who would describe themselves as an atheist, but I think the main, most, most people feel like there's a some sort of higher power that determines how well they do with their running. Essentially and I think what that does is it means that people don't put quite as much pressure on themselves as they might do otherwise. So if people had a bad race and so basically they would normally get over that quite quickly and be able to rationalize it by saying something along the lines of you know it, perhaps it just wasn't in God's plan for me to do to run well today. Maybe the plan is for me to run particularly well in sequence time, you know, but who am I to know? But sooner or later it'll work itself out.
Speaker 2:Basically, people basically felt like there was, to a certain extent, things were in the hands of God, but that didn't mean that you didn't behave in particular ways. So, in order to be a good Orthodox Christian, I think a lot of the kind of dispositions that you would need to adopt in order to be a good Christian were also good for people's running. So it was kind of things like patience, consistency, sharing with other people equally. Those are all things that helps people with their running as well. Not spending time hanging out in cafes and going to play pool and things, but just living a very simple life. Those are all things that help people with their running as well, I think.
Speaker 1:How high was it to switch the mindset from a well-known, quite traditional way of trying another Western philosophy compared to what you were doing in East Africa? I didn't need the obvious. So you're coming from a you know, walking with the running club as you're far down, following certain methods, obviously based on sound principles, and then going to Ethiopia and having this kind of shift towards a completely different way of trying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think I was brought up in a particular kind of running culture that comes from the northeast of England I guess. So my coach was a member of Gateshead Harriers in the 80s when they had Charlie Spedding and Brendan Foster and a load of really top athletes, but their attitude was basically be just go out and run pretty hard all the time. But you know, even my coach's steady runs even used to be, you know, under six minutes per mile and that was so like everything was quite hard for them and that's kind of what I was brought up on. And in Ethiopia it was very much like you do your three hard sessions a week and then everything else is just super easy. So you've got a real like polarization at the different paces and that did get.
Speaker 2:It took me a while to get used to that because I'd be like, you know, we're almost walking on some of these runs and this doesn't feel like it could possibly be helping us to improve in any way. But then I'd have to kind of remind myself that the guy at the front of the group is like a 207 marathon runner, I'm like 20, whatever, you know whom. Yeah, I had to kind of reevaluate that thing of me thinking you know, I, you know I know better than these guys do. Obviously I didn't. You know the expertise really is with them. You know they're the guys who are running that quick. So I had to really kind of recalibrate how I thought about that.
Speaker 1:It's funny. The funny part of the book was when we talked about using the carmen, the GPS. He actually would use it to see how slowly could run. Complete white paper would use it, you know I mean they use it to see.
Speaker 2:So on the days where they go to like that flat road that I was talking about, they're using the carmen to see how quickly they can run as well. But yeah, on the easy days it would be like almost like a joke or like a game to see who who can run the slowest kilometer of a run. Sometimes it would be like you know, in nearly eight minutes for a kilometer of kind of weaving in and out of the trees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Some of them sessions on the asphalt sounded Very intense. I know I remember you talking about the splits. Oh, it was like a 4K with a row on the kilometer, yeah, and they'd be really hammering the home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so those runs, that's a quite a standard session like either either three or four K chunks of hard running and then a one K float, but the the one K float would be like 330. So that would be like me more or less. Flat out in Ethiopia, the altitude and then the faster sections are like 255, three minutes.
Speaker 1:And what's the? What's the altitude on the asphalt where the and it depends?
Speaker 2:on the. So there's two, two main asphalt roads that we use one in the place called Sebeta, which is like maybe 2100. That was nice and flat and slightly lower, and then the other place was it called Tendafa, which was more like 2500, 2600, it was really heavy so they wouldn't run quite as quick as the 255 K when we were there, but on the flat a bit of road, yeah, they would really get going. What about the?
Speaker 1:track sessions. I know you didn't get to do many because of access to the track was quite limited. Yeah, they'd get to the track. Describe the sessions that went down there.
Speaker 2:So some stuff that's quite similar to what we would do, you know, 400 meter reps with short recoveries, things like that. But sometimes we'd go to the track and do stuff that was just purely on the watch, so like things like 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds steady, and they wouldn't really be too worried about measuring the distances on those runs. It would be like kind of 200 meter sprints roughly, and they would just do that for like 45 minutes or 50 minutes to build speed. The most impressive sessions I saw with the kind of sessions where it would be like 3000 meter reps, so like four times 3000 meters, something like that, and they're all run.
Speaker 2:You know you'd see guys running around the track. You know you'd see guys running 3000 meters in eight minutes and then having a couple of minutes jog and then doing it again. And that's what they do when they're training for like 10,000 meters on the track. And those sessions are amazing and they're just about, yeah, just training yourself to speed, endurance I guess. But in a way that's really quite tough psychologically, I think, to do those really long reps like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think one thing that stood out for me, I think, was the was it the Kaili? The 16 lap, a 61 seconds per lap before he broke the 10,000 meter?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the rumor. I heard that from a number of different people. Yeah, but that was the session. So some of the track sessions were very, yeah, simple but like really hard, so like just going.
Speaker 2:The one thing we used to do actually was to to go and just run laps, but not that quick, like 70, 76 seconds, 78 seconds, something like that but just run laps for like an hour, so like long, long, long temper runs on the track. And that was something that people said was just to get you used to the monotony and kind of the boredom of running long track races. But then something that people used to do when they're training for for kind of 10,000 meters was to go and just run as hard as they could for 16 laps. And the deal with that session was that actually it was, it was kind of 16 laps, but it was. It was only 16 laps if you hit the splits. So it was like, essentially the session is you run 63 seconds of lap or 66 seconds of lap or whatever it is, until you can't, until you miss your split, and then you're out.
Speaker 2:So usually you'd have like yeah, so usually you've got a group starting that. I don't know when the Kaley did his like 16 laps at 61, but there was probably a few guys who started that session and they all just dropped out as as and when they were. They were done Because you know, going to be going through 1600 and 404 with that session. There's not many people who could go many laps more than that.
Speaker 1:So that was one of the.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can see how that indicates for them what sort of shape they're in when they go abroad. It's just kind of like a time trial.
Speaker 1:But yeah, absolutely yeah. I know it's interesting that when they do now not at an Olympic level, but certainly when they go to round races around Europe they're generally competing against, if nowhere near the caliber that, what they would be competing against when they're in the Ethiopia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what people would say to me. You know, at least, at least when you go abroad, you've maybe got five or six other Ethiopians and five or six Kenyans, but you've not got to race like 100 Ethiopian guys in one race, which is true.
Speaker 1:But I think going back to the training thing.
Speaker 2:I think it is interesting this idea that you've got kind of a couple of days a week where you want to be really, really objective and have that have hard data on what you're doing, whether that's the times for laps or like GPS splits for a long run, but then the rest of the time you're not. You're not looking to be completely objective, you're actually running for different reasons, whether that's like recovery or just to just to get the miles in, and those runs were often done in a way that was like just trying to keep training as interesting as possible. So running in, running in particular parts of the forest that were more interesting to be in and things. So I think it's important like that's. That's one thing that I think is quite important is that even for people who are performing at this really high level, a lot of what they're doing it's still trying to trying to enjoy the sport and trying to keep it as interesting and adventurous as they possibly can. But I think it's quite important.
Speaker 1:I think it's right. I think there's a lot to be said for that. I think there's an over obsession with it which drive it and the watch, even from people who are only getting into it, people that always speak that I've been on the couch the full of K and they're obsessing over splits, which is insane. You know it's about. You have to enjoy it. You know, especially by compliance, the more you enjoy it, the more you're going to want to do it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, and one thing as well that's interesting about the different. Like when people think of East Africa, I suppose they think of Kenyans and they think of maybe they're all doing the same thing. The reason why the Kenyans are good is the same reason why the Ethiopians are good. What difference between, let's just say, kenyans and Ethiopian monocledge? What are the main differences there?
Speaker 2:Well, I've not spent a huge amount of time in Kenya but I've read a fair bit about Kenyan approaches. I think there's definitely similarities in the sense that you've got this real polarization of the really hard training from the really easy training. So I saw the journalist Kaffal Denihir, I think he's called Irish journalist. He posted a great video of Kip Choky going out for an afternoon run yesterday and it's so slow, it's like that. You know that Kenyan shuffle that people talk about. So then they've got similar sort of philosophies around that, making sure that the hard days are really hard and the easy days are really easy.
Speaker 2:But I think a lot of the easy Kenyan runs are on these kind of like soft, like red dirt roads but still in quite like a monotonous sort of relatively hard surface compared to what the Ethiopians do most of their easy running on. So what? The main difference in Ethiopia is that quite large percentage of the training of most of the guys I knew would have been was on like really steep hills with kind of tree roots everywhere and like rocks and things to jump over and and you know, just really quite difficult terrain for running on and that was seen as really important for developing kind of for staying free of injury because you're moving constantly, like changing direction and using different muscles. So I think, yeah, that was the main, that would be the main difference, just this, like the fact that Ethiopian running just looks like trail running, or what we would describe as trail running, a lot more than, I think, what the majority of the Kenyan athletes would be doing.
Speaker 1:Did only run on the tarmac, probably once a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in Ethiopia it was yeah, once a week on the tarmac. That's probably not dissimilar from Kenya. I think they probably avoid the tarmac as well. But yeah, they're kind of really extreme forest running that I describe in the book about Ethiopia. I don't think that happens so much in Kenya.
Speaker 1:I think. Well, I don't know. I've read a lot about the Kenyans. I think the difference, I think there's more of it, or maybe I know a lot of my religious in Kenya too, but there is seems to be more of a mystical void going on in Ethiopia for the areas that they're trying and even like what you talked about with the churches, and then even I think in one place that they ran the eucalyptus trees, they believe that they get them some kind of strength.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eucalyptus is sometimes used to like people would sort of put the leaves up their nostrils and things to clear if you've got a cold and things. So yeah, but yeah, yeah, I think that's probably true. I'd have to spend more time in Kenya to kind of to know if you're. But yeah, there's also kind of some beliefs around particular kind of witchcraft in Ethiopia that runners can perform on each other to get sort of power from other people and things like that. So there's just a there's a little bit more going on, I think in terms of I don't know if that's the case in Kenya, it may well be actually good. There's a lot going on under the surface. That took quite a long time for me to work out what was happening yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's.
Speaker 1:That was one part of the book that I found interesting, that they actually thought they could, if they took a piece of another runner's kit and brought it to a witch doctor, they could actually take that runner's strength or adapt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, people did believe that and often if people were kind of really struggling with their running or feeling like they were lacking in kind of energy or, you know, had their form wasn't very good, they would often think that that was potentially one of the reasons why so yeah, I think with another thing that's really obvious, both from Kenya and Ethiopian women culture is the sense of belief.
Speaker 1:when they start, when they step up on that start, knowing they all don't believe that they can actually win, you know it's powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:I mean definitely the race that I described in in Jan Mehta when I ran the Ethiopian national cross country, I think just also the structure of that race is like that they take the top six or eight to the African championships, so everyone's basically just which I mean.
Speaker 2:But that's also true of the of like the Irish cross country or the Scottish national cross country that they take the first six will go to um, will sometimes usually be selected for, like the home countries in Smashville or something.
Speaker 2:But the difference is that in Ethiopia on on that day it was like everyone, everyone thought I could be in the top six of this race, whereas that's not the case on the on the start line impact, the Irish championships or whatever, um, and everyone races with that in mind. So it's like it's just the first couple of K are just carnage and then people start dropping out when they realize they're not gonna not gonna do what they wanted to do. So, um, it's just kind of a different approach to to the sport. I guess it's a bit there's a lot more in many ways there's a lot more riding on it for people in Ethiopia if they are, you know, if they're relying on, on running to change their lives, as they put it, then they've kind of got to give everything they've got, and then they've got to believe in themselves a bit more for that reason as well.
Speaker 1:In the, in the, in that Pokemon in the canyons they talk about when, say, if they go to Europe and let's say they win a foot care, a tank care roll race and they get a decent pause for a a little one would just come home and not run again and buy a farm and a couple of cows. Was that similar in Ethiopia?
Speaker 2:Um, no, all of the guys who I I know, who've made decent money are still running. If they've, if they've got the option to, most of them have, um, have other plans. They have plans for when they've finished running. So they're like. Some of them have got ideas about opening a shop to sell running kit, for example. Or the ones that do really well, often set up businesses while they're running and kind of put family members in charge of aspects of the businesses. So, like Jamal, who I talk about a lot in the book, who's he's done really well, um, he bought a mini bus that he's given to his younger brother, who who basically rents that out to transport people up and down a road, for example. So people, people tend to diversify with their prize money in a way that means that when they stop running they've got businesses to fall back on or they buy property or something like that.
Speaker 2:But most of them you know they're pretty they're aware of the fact that the running's going to only last so long and that they need to. That's the main. That's the best way of making money. That's the only. You know. You cut, there's nowhere.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult in any other sphere of life to go and make $40,000 in a day, you know.
Speaker 2:You know, like like Jamal Khan when he goes to Boston Marathon, for example, something like that. So they're aware that they need to make the most of that time before you do get the odd, the odd athlete who you know goes and makes $50,000 and ends up gambling it away or just kind of goes off the rails a little bit and ends up in nightclubs every night and kind of loses the money. But I feel like that, from what I've read, that seems to be a bigger problem in Kenya. That that's. You know there's a lot of athletes at least ex athletes really struggling with alcoholism and things like that in Kenya because the money, in the same way that some of the other athletes, some Premiership footballers, have that problem in the UK. I guess that the the sudden influx of lots of money in a context where there's there hasn't been very much in the past is difficult to cope with, but that that wasn't an issue for any of the athletes that I knew well.
Speaker 1:The as far as there is. There's so many misconceptions about why. Why the East Auckland's are actually good and I think one part of the book and I've got this from other books that you know kind of at the end of the East African run and culture is just the support, especially in Ethiopia, the government support. Can you talk about the support system and maybe the training camps and give people an idea of how they produce these athletes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. That's like one of the main things that surprised me about being in Ethiopia. Because you read these accounts about, you know they explain East African running in terms of basically people growing up relatively poor and running to and from school barefoot and then sort of just automatically becoming championship champion athletes, right. But in Ethiopia there's just this huge infrastructure around running. So they've got in Addis Ababa there's all the first division clubs which are run by the bank, the cement factory, the defense forces, the prison service. They all employ like 30 to 40 athletes. They pay them a salary that's enough to live off. They give them somewhere to live. If they want somewhere to live, people can go for meals in the canteen of the organization. So we used to go.
Speaker 2:I had friends who ran for the electric corporation. We used to go for lunch in the electric corporation canteen with all the guys, all these electricians basically. So they were supported, like they had a salary from the electric corporation to run. And that was true of several hundred athletes in Addis, right. So you've got that's like a serious number of people supported full time to run.
Speaker 2:But then in all the rural areas around Aromia region and Amhara region have got just training camps all over the place. You know probably 100 training camps across those two regions for young athletes between the age of maybe like 12 and 18. And they so I stayed in a couple of them and it's kind of just barracks style, army style, barracks style accommodation. People will sometimes go to school for half the day but then they train for half the day but they're training, you know, full time basically and paid to train full time. So this idea that I think that we often have, that it's kind of that sort of poverty leads naturally to success, or that the success comes, yeah, because people are like naturally or just genetically better, doesn't really make any sense. I think, you know, if we had, if we had hundreds and hundreds of athletes who are paid to run full time in the UK, I think we'd find a lot more Callum Hawkins is and a lot more Stephen Scullions. You know, it's absolutely that seems quite obvious to me, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's actually this idea of like they just like what you said. They're going from running, running barefoot to going from school or jumping on the plane and then going to winning an impagode is so far from what it actually is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah absolutely In terms of what they ordered in the training camps. I mean now like the more. Volume is like what you said if you had training camps all over the UK that were funded, you'd produce more champions. So it's just like volume and you're going to get the kind of best of the best, of a large volume of off-rush. And what are reasons? They see? What have you seen? What do you see? What are the reasons? What are the camps to where you feel that Ethiopian run is so successful?
Speaker 2:So I think I think one of the big ones is this the kind of group mentality that I was talking about, this idea that you're kind of able to sort of pull energy in the group and use the group as a vehicle for success. So I think definitely people see success as something that's produced collectively rather than something that's done by an individual. So having there's not very many places in the UK, for example, where you've got a decent number of athletes who are all at a similar level all training together, that's happening across lots of different regions in Ethiopia and I think just there's a real like expertise of running in Ethiopia. That means that people get the best out of themselves and I think that that's what I've talked about already in terms of people running, doing a lot of their running very slowly and using the forest in particular ways to ensure that they're not over stressing particular muscles and things. The rate of injuries is pretty low in Ethiopia in spite of them running huge volume, and that's because they've kind of developed this expertise around how to train at a level which is, you know, how to train very close to your limits without going over them, basically, and that's something that people have learned, you know, just kind of over the years and that's developed as an expertise and it's something that I think the group environment also helps them to do that, because sometimes with the function of the group is not to push each other on to run faster, but it's to hold each other back and make sure so they often, if they were trying to run at a particular place on like a rough road, for example, in the long run they'd put somebody who they thought was particularly sensible and particularly good at controlling pace in charge and nobody was allowed to overtake him.
Speaker 2:So it was like that his job was to hold everyone back and make sure that people weren't over training. So, yeah, that kind of expertise that comes from being in a group with, with particular people who who are trusted and respected for knowing about running, but for knowing about running in a way that's very much like comes from an apprenticeship as opposed to like a specific external expertise. So it's not like there's some support scientists telling them what to do. It's like people are respected for their ability to have have learned by doing and then pass on to other people. Basically, yeah, yeah. Now it definitely makes makes total sense.
Speaker 1:and one other thing, mike, was the 3am hill rep session that you're doing. Give us an idea of like, first of all, world was like to do it yourself as a runner, and why they felt that was so beneficial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think this comes down to like what we were talking about in terms of it's not necessarily what you do in Ethiopia, it's like when you do it and kind of where you go to do it. And there's like particular forms of training session are imbued with like a particular kind of power as a result of where and when they're done. And that's definitely the case with the 3am hill reps, because it was basically the logic of that was that if you get up in the middle of the night to do something, then you're making it more difficult, on purpose basically, and therefore you're kind of proving to yourself that you're willing to make sacrifices of that kind and so therefore, any transformation happens as a result of that. That one hour of running up and down the hill is more powerful because you got up in the middle of the night to do it. So we were also.
Speaker 2:The other thing about that hill rep session is that you're running it's like a 400 meter long hill on a road and it ends at church, and the church is already at four in the morning, got people queuing outside to get into it, like you know, usually group of old ladies and with like cloaks on and stuff. So it just feels like you're doing something kind of special and unusual, I suppose, when you do it, when you do a hill session and like that, in a way that it wouldn't feel that way if it was three o'clock in the afternoon. So I think part of that is also just being able to then go and stand on a start line of a race and think, well, no one else was getting up at three in the morning to go and run hill reps here. So therefore, you know, I feel like I've done more than anyone else and therefore I'm going to run well today. So that kind of goes back to your other question about people's belief in themselves, and that belief is kind of cultivated by doing things like getting up at three in the morning to go and run up and down a hill. Was that?
Speaker 1:the session where the Hainan's were roaming around the town.
Speaker 2:No, we didn't see them on that one. We did a long run, also in the middle of the night, where we saw Hainan's. Yeah, we saw Hainan's actually relatively frequently. It was like not that unusual to see them. People weren't that worried about Hainan's normally, but the way that Hainan my friend put it was that he said that a couple of runners a year are normally taken by Hainan's. But he was like well, they're just like people you know, most of them are all right.
Speaker 1:And then you get the odd crazy one.
Speaker 2:That's all right then.
Speaker 1:Just make sure you're in the next little pack.
Speaker 2:I was always the one getting drops off the pack.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and nearly there I'm, like I'm gonna keep you most longer and I know you're a busy man. So before we go, I usually, you know, ask for three, because it's the health compass podcast. It's kind of like three health tips that you give to anyone and for this I would say, maybe three tips to give any runners that are listening and that maybe want to go to the next level, or maybe people who are just looking to get started. It's three tips that you would recommend.
Speaker 2:Sure, I think the first one would be just, you know that even if even the top, the very best runners in the world are spending a lot of their time working out how to make running as enjoyable as possible, then that's probably the most important thing to get right. If you're, especially for beginners, who you know I would I would sort of shy away from getting too into kind of tracking things with a GPS watch and things like that, and instead focus on how can I make this as interesting and enjoyable as possible, whether that's through running with other people and being able to have a conversation while you're running, whether that's like looking for interesting places to go and run to kind of break up the monotony, or whatever. I think that's that's a really important one. The other one would be just I guess just extending what we were saying earlier, that rather than I think that one of the mistakes a lot of people make is that they just do all of their running at the same pace every day.
Speaker 2:So it'd be to try and get some variety into that. So consciously do some running really, really slowly in order to then save the energy that means that you can do some running a bit quicker and kind of have that separation of two different kinds of running. And then the third one would be just get off the roads as much as you can, you know, and either it was like you run on the road once a week and that's it, because otherwise it's you're going to kind of not so much to get injured, but just that it kind of kills this, the speed and the bounce in your legs, and makes running, you know, less kind of smooth and dynamic, I suppose. So, just as much as possible, get onto the trails and try and try and find more enjoyable places to run in the roads, because they usually are.
Speaker 1:So it's been my three, I think right now, the power of running in groups is because it's really taken off running, hasn't it? At a recreational level, it just, I think, has probably pushed it. I think it was going there anyway, but it's definitely pushed it on. Yeah, it was, you know, a lot of people's kind of outlifts throughout the last eight day and months, which is just a belted or un-golfed jog yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:I mean I actually did. I went to the park run I'd never done a park run before until last a couple of weeks ago and I went down and it was just it's so great with you know the number of people who were down just in Durham you know it was 250 people or something, and it's that you know, being able to do a 5k where you've got people all around you the whole time and stuff, that's just it's great. There's more opportunities to do it now than there ever were, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen in the Aounair area does it the club that you'll start up called the inner city running club, and shout out to any of them that are listening and they basically start from scratch and it was for mainly for beginners, yeah, and they started up there about a year ago I think, and it has absolutely exploded into maybe a couple of hundred members at this stage and a lot of people that probably hadn't got a background in running and I do see them out a lot of time in their groups and everyone's just loving it and I want to. It's, it's a powerful thing, it really is, yeah yeah, no, it keeps you going.
Speaker 1:If you've got a group around you, definitely yeah and then that last question um, three, three books you'd recommend, probably similar to to Elton and to your own books, some things, maybe three books that are similar. We'd say four books, because we put, we put your book in right yeah, yeah, so I would one of them.
Speaker 2:You've already mentioned um running with the Kenyans. I think that's a great book. Um, if you want to understand a bit more about the other kind of East African powerhouse, um, I've had around Finn's also written a book about ultra running recently which is really good. It's called the rise of the ultra runners. Um, my favorite running book is running with the buffaloes. Um, which is about a season sort of um spent on the inside of the NCAA running cross-country running program in the States. But it's just, it's fantastic. So it's really well written and gives an insight into Adam Gouch's training when he was, I think, university of Colorado. But that's, that's a really good book. Also about kind of the camaraderie of the team um coming together for a for a cross-country season.
Speaker 2:That's by Chris Lear. Um, yeah, is that? That's that's. Don't forget your own book, no more. Oh, yeah, my book, yeah, yeah, it's out in paperback in three weeks time, so, okay, should be nice and affordable as well, so, yeah, um, yeah, I've read, I've read, yeah, I've read the two rows of the ultra runners and one of the Kenyans.
Speaker 2:But I'd definitely check out uh one of the buffaloes that you said yeah, yeah, it's a great book yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 1:I'll definitely check that out. Um Mojica I think that's it.
Speaker 2:Thanks for coming on, thank you for having me, it was pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good story yeah, I'll um keep you posted and when we're gonna post the upload, the podcast, and maybe we'll keep you staying in contact and I'm a chassis on yep, sounds good, man, and um yeah, uh, sorry it took a while to get around to organizing it.
Speaker 2:Ah, sure there eventually appreciate it pal thank you.