Mo Farah has credited training and living with Kenyan athletes as the key to his success.
Somali-British former long-distance runner Sir Mo Farah has revealed the secret behind his success in distance races, and Kenyans have everything to do with it.
Mo Farah capped off his career with four Olympic gold medals to his name, six gold medals and two silver medals at the World Championships.
He also claimed six gold medals from the European Championships and his transition to the full marathon also yielded a win at the 2018 Chicago Marathon and third place at the 2018 London Marathon.
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His career was not built in a day and he had to live with some of the most accomplished distance runners, Kenyans, to take his career seriously.
Mo Farah revealed that his manager at the time was also working with some Kenyan runners and during his college days, he would come across them training and he admired their zeal.
At some point, his manager advised that he join the Kenyans in some of their pieces of training and Mo Farah admitted that he struggled to cope with some mechanisms.
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“At that time, I saw the Kenyans and they were training very well, my manager was looking after most of them,” Mo Farah said in an interview with Untapped.
“They would come down in the summer and base themselves in Teddington and at some point I would see them when I was on my bike and I was like, ‘Oh my God, they look so good.’
“My manager then asked me to train with them for a bit and I could keep up during certain sessions but not all the time because they were so good.”
After some time in university, Mo Farah opted to pursue his running career and there was no better way to start it than by living with the athletes who were ruling the world at the time.
Mo Farah moved in with several Kenyans and had to change a series of things including his lifestyle to fit in. He described their lifestyle as ‘eat, sleep and train’.
He then moved to Kenya and found out that the people he was staying with abroad also emulated the same training routines.
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“After I finished university, my manager asked if I could live with them and I did, in the same house and they would just eat, sleep and train but my lifestyle was different and I had to ask myself some questions,” Mo Farah said.
“I decided to do everything the same as them and that was the best experience I ever had. Sometime later I went to Kenya, in the Rift Valley, up in the mountains and they were doing the same exact thing. I observed what they were doing and tried to live life like them. It felt like the right thing to do.”
His decision to move in with Kenyans and make sacrifices is not regrettable as Mo Farah rose to be one of the greatest threats to the people who taught him how to be great.
