Valley of Champions

During the fall of 2019 in Vienna, Austria, a long-distance runner named Eliud Kipchoge achieved something no human being had ever done before or since. He ran a marathon—26.2 miles—in under two hours. 

The very next day, at the Chicago Marathon in Illinois, Brigid Kosgei became the new women’s world record holder in the 26.2-mile race, a title she defended at the London Marathon this past October. 

Like many professional athletes, Kipchoge and Kosgei are disciplined and dedicated to their sport. But they also have something else in common. They are both from a region of western Kenya that makes up part of the Great Rift Valley. This small corner of Africa has a population of about 10 million. That’s 0.13 percent of the world’s 7.7 billion people. Yet this region is home to nearly half of the world’s best distance runners.

Researchers have long studied why Kenyan athletes from the Great Rift Valley consistently dash across finish lines ahead of their exhausted competitors. One secret, they say, may lie in the region’s towering elevation.

The Great Rift Valley is a series of valleys that extend some 4,500 miles across Southwest Asia and East Africa. 

Kenya’s portion of the valley is set high in the mountains. Parts of the region where many runners train have an altitude of more than 8,000 feet above sea level.

At that height, running is harder than it is at lower elevations because the air contains less oxygen, which supplies the muscles with energy. In high-altitude environments, runners draw in smaller amounts of oxygen per breath, which can leave them feeling weak and sluggish.

As athletes acclimate to high altitudes, however, they start to produce more red blood cells, which are responsible for carrying oxygen throughout the body. 

This becomes a huge advantage for these athletes when they go on to compete at lower elevations. Because there is more oxygen in areas closer to sea level, they can take in greater amounts of it with their extra blood cells. This gives them a natural energy boost, often allowing them to run faster.

It’s no wonder that professional runners from around the world go to western Kenya to train.

But Kenyans born and raised in the Great Rift Valley may still have an edge over their peers who merely visit.

Many children in the region are active from a young age, often running to school, which helps them build endurance. People there also tend to eat healthy, unprocessed foods.

And finally, there’s the motivation factor. Few jobs are available in the Great Rift Valley other than farming, so aspiring runners train especially hard to make a career—and a name—for themselves. 

As Adharanand Finn, author of Running With the Kenyans, told reporters: “Running offers a great chance to make good money, to transform lives, [and] even to transform whole communities.”