My Time in Valparaiso

My first trip to Valparaiso was interesting and and very enjoyable. After landing in Chicago airport, my first stop over was my sponsor’s place where I was highly welcomed by my sponsor Tom and his wife Annemarie. I stayed there for one week and had very busy moments with a lot of welcoming friends who loved training and running. They had interest on me as I was a professional athlete. They invited me to train with them and did some training with them for three days. I had my first workouts on track,half a mile four times and run with everybody in all different paces. After we finished, I had a talk for ten minutes where they asked some questions on how I do my training and running races. Other questions were the type food I eat daily of which I told them my traditional food i.e Ugali made using corn, meat, milk, vegetables, honey and tea which is common drink in my country. On Saturday morning we went training with OE runners an had some fun with them. I encountered a challenge from a guy by name Arnie Bergman who is twice my age. When we started running,he dashed in front of all runners and lead the pack opening a wide gap. I liked the way he was running looking strong and relaxing. In my country when somebody older passes you then people will laugh at you so Bergman was infront of me for some miles and passed him after some miles but he still looked strong. They have been training under there coach George Nietert who is a very welcoming and hardworking coach. I told the OE runners that one must be discipline in all fields so as to participate well in a competion. I told them when am training with my Kenyan running team, I have to make a schedule for everybody to make sure he keeps time when its time for training and being ready to face present challenges in our life,and stay focused always.
Also, I had a chance to attend a yoga training in Valparaiso International Center and later went back after two days to make [chai] a drink made using tea leaves, sugar, milk and water by boiling. I taught them on how to make chai by experimenting. I made chai for a number people who were there and after each of them tasted, they were very happy and I could see a smile from everybody so special thanks to Andrew Jones and his wife Kate for having given me a chance to make chai at VIC. Also,thanks to all my new friends we met for for the first time in Valparaiso. To the opportunity enterprise runners is that I wish them good training, and everyone to follow programme from their coach who is a hardworking coach training both young and old people. Special thanks to coach George Nietert. I appreciated the training we did together with his OE runners. I wish him good health as he do training and racing marathons with the OE runners. My training as an elite marathon runner is that I must schedule myself for daily training with my patners never missing any workouts for everyday. My advice all other runners from every part of the world is that discipline and hardwork is the key to success.
Benson Cheruiyot.