Hellen Obiri recently won the 2023 Boston Marathon, Didn’t my training partner do well?

Didn’t my training partner do well!

Hellen Obiri is one of the most versatile and consistent distance runners of all time.  The winner of the 2023 Boston Marathon is also the former winner of the World Cross Country Championship (2019).  She is a two-time Olympic silver medalist, a four-time World Championship medalist, twice a World Indoor medalist, and a 2018 Commonwealth Games champion – not to mention the gold medalist in the 4 by 1500 at the world relays!  You could add 17 individual Diamond League victories and two overall Diamond Victories and coping with a career break when her daughter was born. She has won track races at 1500, 3000, 5000, and 10,000 before moving up to the marathon.  Your correspondent was privileged to be in the stadium to see her win her nine championship medals – in Istanbul, Moscow, Sopot, Poland, Rio, London, Gold Coast Australia, Doha, Tokyo, and Eugene, USA.

Like so many Kenyans, Hellen started running at an early age – at elementary school and to and from school.    In high school, she was running but curiously, mainly at 200 and 400.   In 2011 she made the Kenyan team for the World Championships in Korea in the 1500 meters, running well until falling in the final. [10^th in final 4:22.67 after 4:07.59 PB heat and 4:08.93 SF]

She sees 2012 as her breakthrough year, winning the World Indoors 3000m when she was not confident: “I was not sure I was going to win because I was new and it was my first big race”.  

Living in a cold country, I always find it strange to see Jamaicans and Kenyans running indoors, but Hellen explained her approach: “Personally, I like running indoors, but some other Kenyan ladies do not.  We do not have an indoor track in Kenya – perhaps not in Africa.  So it is very difficult to practice.  Some people think you will just get injured if you run indoors, but I have been running indoors for years without injury.  But the problem is that you cannot prepare well without indoor tracks in Kenya

.