Marathon champion Edna Kiplagat on family, diet and growing up

By JONATHAN KOMEN in MOSCOW

Edna Ng’eringwony Kiplagat, the world marathon champion who scooped the first gold medal for Kenya at the 14th IAAF World Championships in Moscow, is an affable woman who enjoys cooking simple meals for her family when she is not training.

Apart from keeping dairy cattle in their home in Iten, Edna also grows traditional crops for food.

At their home on the escarpment in Iten, she has set aside a piece of land lush with a variety of traditional vegetables. She relies on the quarter-acre size plot for the natural diet.

“We were advised to take either organic or natural foods. We plant them using organic fertiliser as it reduces stomach upsets,” Edna The Standard on Sunday on Tuesday night at Cosmos Hotel in Moscow.

She says she normally cooks her meals with the ordinary milk cream as artificial foods and fats have high possibility of exposing them to positive dope tests.

Having grown up in a unique lifestyle­—a mix of cultural and Christian blend in a lush topographical setting—Edna horned her running skills while attending school.

Born a distance from the scenic beauty of Torok Falls on the sidelines of the Elgeiyo escarpment, Edna would train while herding her family’s goats at the nearby Kaptagat Forest and trek to her ancestral farmlands in Kerio Valley.

Other former goat herders-turned-global track stars include double world champion Vivian Cheruiyot, former world 21km record holder Lorna Kiplagat and Boston Marathon winner Sharon Cherop.

A Kenyan first

The experience was quite helpful for Edna as she raced to victory at the 14th IAAF World Championships marathon contest, to become Kenya’s first woman to defend the world marathon title.

“The hilly trip to school gave us the stamina and experience to hold back during races. You become more relaxed and move at your pace,” says the soft-spoken Edna, who attended Kapkoi Primary School in Keiyo North. She looks at her career with excitement, revealing that she started running after her games teacher advised her to try her luck in athletics.

Although she was a classmate of 2008 Chicago Marathon champions Evans Cheruiyot and 800 metre sensation Vincent Kemboi, she harboured little interest in athletics.

“I was a swift striker but my teacher told me to run in 1995. I represented the school up to divisional level. I enjoyed it because we were used to running home for lunch,” she said.

It was at the divisional games that the Iten-based athletics coach, Brother Colm O’Connell, spotted Edna and Rose Kosgei, the 1997 World Cross Country junior champion, and enrolled them for the holiday training programme as student athletes in December.

That is where she met her husband Gilbert Koech, the 2009 San Antonio Marathon champion. The training paid dividends as Edna made the team to the World Cross Country in Johannesburg, South Africa, the following year, finishing fourth in the junior category.  After gaining some experience, she teamed up with Cheruiyot and Kosgei—who were at the neighbouring Matungen Primary School—to start training runs on the forest trails and escarpment paths.

Through hard training the then Standard Eight schoolgirl comfortably booked her 3,000m ticket in the World Junior Championships in Sydney, Australia, in 1996, where she bagged the bronze medal. She ended her yearbook running in the Ekiden relays in Tokyo, Japan.

She then joined Form One at Kipsoen Secondary School, where elite runners— among them Olympic champion Brimin Kipruto, Nancy Kiprop, Jepkorir Aiyabei and Elizabeth Ewoi—studied.

Despite training with seniors at the school, she missed a podium finish at the 1997 World Cross Country in Turin, Italy, managing fourth position as training mate and neighbour Kosgei clinched gold.

She sat her Form Four examinations and resumed training as an individual in Iten and, after some time, was drafted into the Hamilton City race in Canada.

Colourful wedding

“Coincidentally, I met Gilbert on the plane and we shared our experiences as the relationship grew,” she said. In 2010, Edna and Gilbert pitched tent in their training base in Colarado for months, leaving behind their children Carlos Kipkorir and Wendy Chemutai. A win in New York Marathon would follow.

Edna is happy that they staged a colourful wedding ceremony last December in Iten, an event graced by top athletes and friends from “around” the world.

“I could not believe the number of people who attended the ceremony. Friends from far joined us and this could be part of the blessings,” she said. Edna and Gilbert are police officers based in Nyanza. She says she loves her policing job because she helps maintain order.

“The police job has sharpened my life both at family level and on the track. I can strategise well.”

Gilbert helps her in coaching, contacting race organisers, organising races and negotiating endorsements.

Edna credits her tremendous showing in energy-sapping courses to their rural homes’ undulating terrains and also because, unlike many high-achieving athletes, the two chose to stick to their rural lifestyles.