The Kenyan Running Method, as I actually run it

Before you read this

My name is Martin Karoki Muriuki. I am a professional runner from the Rift Valley in Kenya. My personal bests are 14:13 for 5,000 m and 29:43 for 10,000 m. I have raced for prize money in Kenya and in South Korea since 2018, and I coach runners online through KenyanRunning.com.

You can check all of that. My Strava is public and my coach page lists my results. There is also a long interview with me on a podcast, where two Canadians in Ulsan asked me everything about my life for an hour and a half. I mention it because if you are going to change how you train because a Kenyan told you to, you should be able to look the Kenyan up.

This guide is free. It contains what I actually do, what I tell the runners I coach, and what I think a recreational runner in Europe or America can take from it. It does not contain a secret. There is no secret. That is the first thing to understand.

1. There is no secret

When the podcast hosts asked me what Kenyans do differently, I told them the truth: consistency, patience, group training, and a culture where running is treated as a job you show up for.

People want it to be something else. Altitude. Genetics. Ugali. A special workout. Some of those things help. None of them is the method.

The method is a way of building a week and then repeating that week for years without breaking. Every serious runner in the Rift Valley shares the same six habits:

1. Easy runs are slow. Slower than almost every runner outside Kenya believes is useful.
2. Two or three hard sessions a week carry a purpose. Track, fartlek, long run. Everything else exists to protect them.
3. The long run is the anchor. Built up over months, never jumped to.
4. Hills do the strength work. Few of us lift weights. Many of us run the same climb every week.
5. Rest is part of training. Sleep, simple food, a nap after the long run, one full day off.
6. Consistency over years beats intensity over weeks. The runner who repeats a modest week for three years beats the one who does a heroic month and gets injured.

Nothing on that list is complicated. All of it is hard to keep doing. That is why a book can only take you so far, and why the last chapter of this one is about getting a coach. I would say that, of course. Read the middle chapters first and decide for yourself.

2. My week

Here is what a normal training week looks like for me at home in the Rift Valley, when there is no race that weekend. I gave this same week to the podcast hosts, who could not believe it. I am giving it to you so you can see the shape, not so you can copy the numbers.

That is 150 to 160 km a week. Two sessions most days. Sit-ups, push-ups and squats after training, morning and evening, 30 to 50 reps. In Korea we rest on Monday instead of Sunday because the races are on weekends, but there is always one full day.

Three things to notice:

• Most of the kilometres are easy. Two hard days of intervals and two long runs. Everything else is jogging, and the afternoon runs are slow enough that the hosts laughed when I called them recovery.
• The hard sessions rotate. 400s one week, 600s the next, 1,000s after that. Never intervals two days in a row. "You can't do interval two times," I told them. Your body has to be allowed to absorb the work.
• The day off is a real day off. Sleeping. Water. Maybe a walk in the afternoon. Not a "recovery jog."

The version for you

Do not run 150 km a week. Do not run doubles. Copy the shape, not the load.

For a recreational runner training for a half marathon or marathon, the same week looks like this:

One quality session, one full day off, and the rest easy. That is where you start, whatever you have done before.

I know the ebooks give you three hard sessions in week one. I do not. With the runners I coach, a beginner gets easy running, stretching and light strength work for around three months before I put them on a track at all, and someone coming back from a break or an injury is treated as a beginner no matter what they used to run. Then the second quality session comes in, and much later a third, and only for runners whose bodies have shown they can absorb it.

If you take one thing from this chapter, take the shape and the single hard day. The next chapters are about how to run each piece.

3. Easy means easy

This is the first habit and the one almost everyone gets wrong. When I take on a new runner, this is the thing I fix first, and it is the thing that usually explains their injuries.

Outside Kenya, runners run their easy days at a pace they can be proud of. They see the number on the watch and they do not want it to say something slow. So every run becomes a medium run. Medium runs do not make you fast and they do not let you recover. They just make you tired enough that the hard days are not hard.

In the Rift Valley the easy run is genuinely easy. The afternoon 10 km after a track session is a jog. On the road you would think we were warming up. We call it polepole (spoken po-leh po-leh). It means slowly, and it is not a slogan. It is most of the week.

How I set it for the runners I coach

For the first few weeks I use the GPS data to establish each runner's effort zones. I want to see what "easy" has meant to them until now, and it is almost always too fast. After that I keep giving paces from the watch, because running purely by feel usually means running too fast, and too fast is how people burn out. But I also take the watches away sometimes, in an interval or a tempo session, and call the pace myself: slow a little, hold, now increase. That is how a runner learns what a pace actually feels like.

The rule I use with middle-distance runners is 75/25: about three quarters of the week at easy effort, one quarter at moderate or hard. If your week is mostly medium, you are not training the Kenyan way, however many hills you run.

How to know if your easy is easy

• You can talk in full sentences the whole way.
• You finish feeling you could run the same again.
• The next morning you feel normal, not stiff.
• You are slightly embarrassed by the pace. That is the correct feeling.

If your easy runs pass all four, leave the pace alone even when your fitness improves. Fitness shows up on the hard days and in the race, not on Wednesday.

Appendix A: Glossary

• Polepole (sometimes written pole pole). Swahili for "slowly." The effort of most of the week.
• Ugali. Stiff maize-flour porridge. The staple carbohydrate.
• Mursik. Fermented milk. Sour, unflavoured, more nutritious than fresh milk.
• Fartlek. Swedish for "speed play." Alternating faster and easier sections by feel, usually as a group on rolling ground.
• Tempo / threshold. A sustained effort around half-marathon pace, about an hour's race effort.
• Doubles. Two runs in one day. Morning session, easy afternoon run.
• Strides. Short, fast, relaxed accelerations of 15 to 25 seconds after an easy run.
• Cutback week. A planned lower-volume week, roughly every third or fourth week, so the body absorbs the work.
• Kalenjin. The community in western Kenya that has produced the largest share of elite Kenyan runners. I am not Kalenjin. My community has fewer runners than theirs, and I think that is good: they challenge us, and we challenge one another.

Appendix B: Where to check the author

• Coach page, with results and personal bests: kenyanrunning.com/coaches/martin-muriuki-jr
• Strava: strava.com/athletes/78704652
• Interview: This Korean Life, episode 95, "Professional Kenyan Distance Runner, Martin Karoki," published 7 May 2023. Ninety-six minutes. Everything in chapters 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9 is said there in my own words.

Appendix C: Free tools on KenyanRunning.com

• The base-building, taper and race-week plans this guide summarises, in full, week by week.
• The marathon readiness score: five questions that tell you whether your current training supports your goal.
• The running pace calculator and marathon pace chart.
• The coach-match quiz.
• The KenyanRunning club on Strava: strava.com/clubs/1491093. Join us there.