Derek Rae ambled from the peace and tranquillity of what passes for a palace in the mountains of Kenya and right into the dust and din of a weekday evening crowd. Iten is renowned as a hub for athletes wishing to train at altitude without undue distractions, the camp run by former athlete Lorna Kiplagat regularly serving as a winter wonderland for British endurance hopefuls.
The town itself, in the heart of the Rift Valley, is not normally on the route map when there are miles to be put in. “You spend most of your downtime in your bed or chilling out,” says Rae, who succumbed to the heat in Rio last year when tidily placed in the Paralympic marathon. Yet on his first trip, curiosity begat an exploration.
“It’s like a constant market – lots of different stalls, food, clothes, all sorts. It was always busy and always buzzing. We also went over to St Patricks’ High School which is run by Brother Colm O’Connell, the Irishman who has coached a lot of the Kenyans. We got to see the complex where they all stay which is very basic. But the one thing I learned to appreciate is that the people there don’t worry about what they don’t have. They’re just happy with what they have got. It makes you appreciate what we have and how much we take for granted.”
The 31-year-old has long counted his blessings. He will race today’s London Marathon with a dual purpose in mind with the race also serving as this year’s IPC world championships, a challenge he could scarcely have foreseen seven
years ago when he was travelling home from St Andrews on his motorcycle. A collision with a truck left him in intensive care. Survival was paramount but despite intensive rehab, his right arm has only a fraction of the strength it once had.
Now he runs with a sling, and that attracted tentative enquiries, then sympathy, from the staff in Iten.
“They’d go ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ But I’d say ‘don’t be sorry because look at the life I’m now living.’ I’m absolutely living the dream here. I had such a horrific time and it was so much to go through when the accident happened. But now I appreciate the help Scottish and British Athletics have given me and that makes you appreciate what you’ve got. I don’t look back at what I had. I look at what I can still get.”
Life now is a mix of pounding the roads and selling cars in Kirkcaldy. Last April, he was 12th in London in 2:37.28, a mark many with full use of all limbs would treat as an accomplishment.
Outside of the main para gatherings, taking on all-comers is a necessity with Rae regularly to be found on the podium at domestic events where his stimulus is maximised.
“The advantage of that is you’re racing against the top athletes in Scotland if it’s a Scottish Championships,” he says. “It also gives you a better idea of where you are from race to race. I don’t see myself as a disabled athlete, regardless of what race I’m running. I have the drive to finish as high as I can in any race and when you’re competitive in an able-bodied race, it tells you what kind of athlete you are.”
While his Olympic-focused contemporaries will use this morning’s 26-mile tour of London as a means to qualify for August’s IAAF world championships, also in the capital, this will be as good as it gets for the para grouping with the marathon set apart from the remainder of July’s IPC jamboree. Rae, ever upbeat, can look past the downside.
“The good thing is that you get to run on the London marathon route with all the people out there – and you’re running for your
nation with all that home support.”
Oban’s Susan Partridge is among a strong women’s domestic field for the London Marathon while Eritrean-born Scot Tsegai Tewelde – who failed to finish the Olympic marathon – heads the Britons in the men’s race.
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