So I arrived in Kenya to bright sunshine !

The flight was long but luckily we had brand new movies as it was the 1st November! I watched the Smurf movie and Friends with beneifts so that passed the time! I travelled with my physio Toby as everyone else had gone out the week before but I stayed behind to run the BUPA Great South Run.

The first day I did a steady run in the evening with Steph and it was harder to breathe than in the UK! My calfs were really stiff from the plane journey and although it was only at a slow pace but felt much harder because of the altitude. The Kenyan trails consist of thick muddy dirt which gets stuck to the bottom of your trainers.

Kenyan food so far has been good…a standard breakfast would be a choice of…eggs/sausages/pancakes/bread/porridge. A lunch would be…soup/bread/salad/rice/lentils/pasta. And dinner has been…ugali/pizza/beef stew/chapatti’s/rice/veg. Pudding has been all different types of fruit and there is always coffee/tea/juice and hot chocolate!

The weather here is insane! Its been so random…one moment it will be bright sunshine and the next will be POURING with rain! The 2nd night we had the worst thunderstorm…lightening was pink and covering the sky and the lights were flickering!

The Kenyan staff here have been really nice and helpful so far, they do anything that you ask them (within reason). They have cleaned our rooms and brought us snacks and drinks whenever we have asked.

The rooms are nice too…I have my own double room which is nice. The beds are comfy…the only negative is the shower is rubbish! The water is hot but its not powerful at all…one thing I cannot wait to get home to is a nice hot bath!!

Overall the facilities here are awesome. The track is a 5min jog away and on site we have a gym and swimming pool both of which are really good! We also have physio, massage and a doctor from UKA here to use whenever we need. The physio on the camp is Toby Smith who is my physio back at home so thats good and the massage therapist is Becky who is one of the best i’v ever seen and a great laugh!

I am not loving the bugs here in Kenya…they are huge!!!!

Just done my first session…wow my lungs felt the lack of oxygen in the air! I can honestly admit I did not expect it to be THAT much harder to breathe! It was myself, Jonny, John, Charlene, Stevie, Steph and Hatti with coach Mick Woods and physio Toby Smith on the bikes. We did timed efforts on the trail down the road from the camp. The trail we ran on was like mud but it was soft + stoney. I am absolutely dead now and could not wait to have my For Goodness Shake and peanut butter when I got back!!!! No wonder the Kenyan runners are so good.

Did my first long run today…ran with Hatti Dean. It was such a tough but good run, hills everywhere and little Kenyan children along the route saying “how are you!” which I must admit did get slightly annoying after a while! Also in the group was Steph and Stevie with Mick following along on the bike! After the run I saw the physio for some work on my knee and chilled out by the pool as today was a sunny day! Tonight we have a BBQ night which should be good, all the food is cooked and made fresh for us daily, the bread is baked daily and the milk is from the cows on the farm so all good food and I am starving .

Week two:

Track session in Eldoret on tuesday morning…a 45min bus ride to the track was an interesting experience. The buses have no seatbelts and the chairs are falling apart but we arrived safe + sound . The session was 3min efforts on a gravel/dirt track. I was alone in the session as Steph and Hatti trained on the trails and the others were doing a different session, so it was just me and all the boys! It was a good session which I was finding easy until we hit the 5th rep and then the lack of oxygen started to hit me!! The physiologist took my blood lactic levels…apparently the higher the better as this means your muscles have enough glycogen stored in them. My blood lactic at the end of the session was the highest out of the group .

In between run’s and sessions there is little to do out here except for sleeping and eating. I have lots of university history essay’s to write though so this is keeping me busy! Although the rest of my spare time has been taken up by internet shopping, skyping my family + boyfriend and playing on The Sims…which is really addictive!!!

We celebrated Charlie Grice’s 18th birthday Kenyan style on monday night!! The Kenyan chef’s made a cake which was giant and really cool .

Getting physio and soft tissue massage from Toby Smith and Becky Nuttall has been massivley benefitical for me out here. Previous to this camp I was recieving physio of my knee twice a week and soft tissue once a week. The constant treatment has enabled me to train harder and improve flexibility around this area as my operation in june created a lot of scar tissue which is taking its time to be broken down!

Wednesday the new camp arrival’s arrived and Becky Nuttal the massage therapist left . I did my first morning pee sample which Barry Fudge our physiologist makes us do every now and again to check our hydration levels out here as it’s very easy to get dehydrated at altitude. I am glad to report that my pee was fine .

Sunday I completed an awesome week of training! Long run done…90mins done with the group. Think the boys were a little shocked that I kept up for so long! We did 14miles…Great week of training done. Sunday night = BBQ night…chicken and chipatti time! The best dinner of the week by far! Although I do love the Kenyan ugali + Kenyan sweet chilli sauce combo now .

Week three:

I began week three with a long morning run with my training partners Jonny Hay, John Mcdonnell, Steph Twell and we were joined by Paula Radcliffe. We did a loop which was hilly but ended with the last 20 mins on road. After the run I went back to my room and was not happy to discover that for some reason the shower was freezing cold so it was a quick shower for me and then off to the gym for some S+C.  Monday morning is always really busy in the gym with about a million Kenyan men doing drills and sprinting up and down the middle!! It is mad. At lunch today we had spinach soup which was actually suprisingly nice! Although it was BRIGHT green! And then I found out that I have been nominated for European Athlete of the month again for my race in Edinburgh. Monday afternoon was chilled out, the usual…physio/massage/gym and then 2nd run of the day. Today is Ricky Stevenson’s 23rd birthday…all he keeps going on about on this trip is the strawberry oat Lucozade Bar’s so for his birthday I gave him one of those…he said it was the best present ever…think he has been in Kenya a bit too long!

Mick has gone home this week, it was good to have him here in Kenya as it meant he could monitor all our training and set our run’s and sessions easily. He came on every run with the group (on his bike!) and timed all our sessions.

Here is a photo of a typical Kenyan dinner during our stay…The meat is fish, then Ugali and Kale.

Unfortunately on thursday during a training session I injured my knee running down a hill in the recovery. I then had my knee examined by the physio and spoke with the UKA doctor on the phone later that evening. He decided that it would be best for me to fly back the following day to get medial treatment on my knee. On friday I flew back h

ome, as this was going to be the best decision for my knee.

I really enjoyed the whole experience of the Kenya UKA altitude camp as the facilities are perfect and everything you need is there for you. The center is awesome and the staff are really helpful.

The weather was not “typical” Kenyan weather for November as it rained every day which I was there resulting in the trails becoming muddy and cut up.

The only negative’s I would say are the terrain out there. The trails were rocky and everywhere we ran was uphill and muddy…this for me was not ideal as my running style is not suited to rocky undulating ground as was a major contributing factor to my knee injury.

However apart from the injury, I loved the whole Kenya experience and would recommend it to anyone who has the chance to go!