The Ethiopian Running Secret

Gojjam wipes a streak of vomit from the corner of his mouth and turns to his friend Zeleke. ‘I did your turn at the front today,’ he says, ‘and my soul almost came out.’ He squirts water from a bottle into his mouth and spits. ‘Leading is hard. It’s like carrying someone else’s burden.’ The two athletes sit on the side of the Chinese-built road that leads southwest into Oromia from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city. Beyond the tumult of cars and buses and the occasional horse-drawn cart, farmland stretches to the horizon in every direction. They have just run 25 km with 14 other athletes at a pace designed to prepare them for an upcoming marathon. Before they started, their coach, Messeret, carefully divided the responsibility of leading sections of the run between them, emphasising the importance of doing their ‘duty’ as pacemakers and invoking them to ‘share their energy’ with their teammates. As the exchange between Gojjam and Zeleke illustrates, monitoring the effort of training is understood as a collective endeavour, requiring a great deal of trust and reliance on others.