The Gazelle

07:22

The nectar glow of sunrise infuses the horizon as the Jeep moves along the track, a plume of dust in its wake. Amani whistles in the driver’s seat. He has just run a new personal best. With four weeks left til Chicago it is exactly where he wants to be, tossing out records, making new ones. Something springs across the track—a burst of energy and flesh. It flashes in a fawn arc before the grille of the Jeep.

03:30 

When he awoke, he found his avocado juice pressed on the counter. Thabiti helped with his nutrition, and before his early runs she would make his juices. He pulled on his singlet and a long-sleeved top. There was a chill in the early darkness, but the thinner air at higher altitude would have steel in it. 

The Kaptaget forest is 2,400m above sea level. The team trains there a couple of days a week. It is favoured by the coach who insists on a steady load of high-altitude training in the lead-up to big races. After the long drive to get there, they start at 5:15, so their distance can be completed before any heat bleeds into the day. Their shorter runs are saved for afternoon and evening sessions. 

05:43 32km to go 

Amani, as usual, led out the group. He pushed hard every time he laced up, and in turn the others were inspired to reach for their limits. With the marathon four weeks away, Amani had sights firmly on the prize money. More perhaps than ever before. He had a special reason for anticipating the windfall; Thabiti was expecting their first child. Previous earnings had built their house and helped him create the comforts of life they’d always dreamed of. Now, with the patter of little soles soon to fill it, he would put the Chicago money in a trust to ensure a good education for his son or daughter.

The thin air filled with the sound of rubber soles gently patting the hard earth. There was the cracking of twigs giving way underneath the men. The day was still under the night spell of indigo skies. Along the periphery of the wood the fog of breath hung beneath the canopy like an eerie low sky. But these men had a mission and darkness was no enemy. Their strides coursed through the morning air, sharp bursts of their arms slicing through it. Their eyes didn’t look at the path but rather were fixed on the back of their teammates’ runners cascading through the shadows. Around bend after bend, legs shifted into faster paces, knees rose and fell in a steady frenzy of steps that kept the men in their tight formation progressing along the path in one moving mass of twenty athletes. Amani’s headlight spilled a violet whitebeam in front of him as he turned towards a gap between the trees. More dried kindle cracked under determined feet and the morning air absorbed the collective rise and fall of a unit of running men. Amani set pace a metre or so ahead of Kiprunge who would also be racing in Chicago. Kiprunge was fresh from a win in Amsterdam and had ambitions of getting a good performance in the Midwest. Like the others, he had dreams of building a home, and building a home takes money. 

06:08 25km to go 

Over the crest of the hill they went, a neat arrowhead in twos and threes. And just as the last pair of calves kicked over the crest and out of sight, the sky changed to a lighter shade of denim blue that promised the surety of impending daylight. Amani treaded the ground with steps that were sure and gentle. He could probably run the route with his eyes closed, but he ran it with the gusto of someone who had a score to settle. He blazed the terrain, eating the distance with an endless ribbon of strides that rotated to kick red dirt in the folds of the socks. His legs were striped from lines of dusty sweat. His face wore a gentle smile, not conveying any of the effort that he was surely exerting. He took a stride and his right foot landed on a flat stone on the track. He remembered his win in Rome. It was on the cool cobbles of Piazza Navona that he pulled away from the Ethiopian who had been on his shoulder since the start. He was 100m into the Piazza, with cheers of assembled spectators rising to meet him, when he spotted a paving stone that was shaped like a love heart. His thoughts went to Thabiti and the painting she had done for him on their first anniversary. Amani felt charged with warmth, not the burning heat of effort, but a soft, warm feeling. Love. And he smiled and his body carried him faster in that final 4 km than any other point in the race. Metres of a gap grew until the gap was such that the race was his and his alone. As he powered towards the Coliseum and the finish line there, Rome was his. He won. Still smiling. And the first person he called after his victory… Thabiti. 

She had cried and called him her hero. He told her his heart belonged to her. And then when he travelled home, she was at the door with the widest smile on her face.

‘We did it’, she cried, ‘we’re having a baby.’

The embrace that followed seemed to last forever.

06:56 5km to go 

With a few to go, his legs were still springy. This was his fertile ground, the precious final quarter where he unloaded his arsenal and ate into the distance. He moved featherlight on his feet, his legs kicking back in great metronomic rotations that didn’t skip a beat. The crook of his knees became perfect right angles. Kiprunge, close behind him, released wind. Amani smiled and glanced behind at his chasing colleague. 

The track rose for a final time before receding into the valley below. The pack leaned into the forgiving slope, punching air with the fever of those who can smell the finish line. 

Thabiti would be up when he got home. His breakfast would be waiting. She would kiss him on the forehead and make a funny face at its saltiness. She would tell him he needed a shower and he would joke that she should join him. This was their usual ritual after his long-run sessions. And once breakfast was eaten, Amani would go for a nap and Thabiti would tidy up and head to work as a nurse in a local clinic.

07:08 Watches stop at 42.195km  

Who knew Amani would hit a PB today? He hadn’t expected it. Yes, he would be pushing for it on race day in a few weeks, but he had surprised himself and come good today. His time was received with a flurry of handshakes and hugs by the others. A PB for him was a new PB for the group—inevitably he set the standards. He had feet of fire that burned new records into the books. His coach said he was ready for race day. He nodded, ‘I feel ready. I want to run it now.’ Amani walked towards his Jeep, and turned back to his coach to say, ‘Thank you. See you later.’ He would enjoy the relaxed pace of strength training later. There would be no PBs, just hard work. 

07:21

The Jeep turned onto the road outside Eldoret and Amani was already halfway through a mental replay of the morning run. There had been a bend he hadn’t run as smooth as he wanted. He needed less arms and more legs going into it, and though he had done it a thousand times before, he knew that he had let his mind slip for a moment approaching the bend. He knew it was the point when he had been thinking about what kind of father he would be. And there it was again. The smiling face of his unborn baby looking at him as though it were real enough to touch. To kiss. Eyes that were wide and bright looked into his own. Lips so tender and tiny you just wanted to protect him from the world and all of the bitterness of it. But with only four weeks to go til Chicago, he needed to go through the run in his head. Re-running it was the rich ground of small margins into which Amani liked to dig during every training block. The pull and the burn of errors would underscore what needed finessing. Seconds count for everything. 

07:22:13

The honeyed hues of winter dawn haze across the horizon. The tan silhouette of a gazelle blazes in front of the Jeep. He hits the brake heavy and hard. The Jeep spins and careers towards a rocky outcrop that overturns it. The airbags inflate but it is too late.