Kenya to pucelana

Iten is to athletics what Africa to the world: his heart. At the Kenyan highlands, many European cross-country skiers flock to spot check the recipe for success in a sport where suffering is proportional to success. Far from sophisticated methods and large media and consumerism apart from suicidal temptations, lies a race whose supremacy is based on the exaltation of the simple. The echo of their own feelings as a way out of poverty that traps them. No apologies, tears and capricious complaints, just no work. The survival of their families is at stake.

"The experience was a blast," said Alvaro Rodriguez ( Valladolid, 1987 ), the last Spanish elite middle-distance runner in visiting the home of athletics, still amazed by the quantity and quality of anonymous people Fajana athletes in the Valley Rift. "In Iten 300 uncles gathered on the slopes. Many are desperate, baseless."

"They get up at six in the morning, running on an empty stomach and take a nap, come back to train, eat and take another nap." Sleep, eat and run, the trilogy of daily cyclical in Kenya: some athletes "do not understand peak form" and who exercise more than 2,000 meters high.