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Of the first 40 runners of male marathon on the planet, 39 were born and lived their first years in Africa.
The other is from Bradford, lives in Leeds and abandoned his work in Foot Locker so that he could run with the Kenyans. It was in 2020.
Almost five years later, and fresh by producing the best performance of the Olympic Marathon in Great Britain in 40 years, Emile Caress hung on the track of the University of Leeds Beckett with metronomic grace and mastery.
Thirty 400 m of circuits, each at 68 seconds, to run a continuous 12 km in 34 minutes at a rate of just over 21 km / h. This is roughly the speed he will have to hold in the streets of Valencia next weekend over an additional 9 km to break the British record for the 59-minute 32-second Sir Mo Farah half-marathon. To put this in context, the treadmill of the running shop is maximum at 19 km / h and it is faster than most people could not sprint on only 100 meters.
“A difficult session,” said Cairess later, sipping a cappuccino decamped in his local cafe while explaining that an average week sees him operating 215 km. It expects it to increase over the next two years to 240 km.
Cairo, who is 26 years old, has only specialized in the distance of 26.2 miles in the marathon for 20 months, during which the sixth and third places in London, followed by a fabulous fourth at the Olympic Games Be just in view.
No Briton won the title of Olympic marathon because he was one of the founding events at the Athens Games in 1896 and the last medal was the bronze of Charlie Spedding in Los Angeles in 1984.
Phil Sesemann, training partner and Olympian colleague, describes Caress as “relentless – he makes me feel like a jogger of hobbies” adding that “everything he does, every thought he has, each action than He takes, is to be a better runner – there is nothing that Emile can do who would really surprise me ”.
Caress’s girlfriend, Georgia Yearby, says he is so relaxed that he is “horizontal” before preventing a necessary mixture of extreme dedication and a certain laziness to combine 32 km of racing most days with, well , lounging between the two.
“Discipline – and then does not do much – which suits me,” accepts Caress. “I can’t do anything. Many people say they want to be a full -time athlete and then find it difficult to fill the day.
“But the more you get back and rest, the better you can train. I have always continued. It is definitely a long -term process. »»
Caress sometimes dreams of running and, since the race for lampposts with Maman Alison as a four -year -old energetic child in Bradford, says he never fell in love with sport. “Some people want to claim that they are not obsessed-but it is good to love to run and it is almost everything in terms of hobby,” he said.
“Why do I like it?” It is difficult to describe – a completely abstract feeling. I sometimes run through the woods, I feel good, and you just think: “it’s an ace”. »»
Even in major races, CARESS generally works with only a Casio style watch from the 1980s on its wrist which has no data of heart rate, rhythm, VO2max and stride length which has become the norm. “I am going by intuition – I always know in my head the rhythm that I have flowed – and I know how far all my racing routes are,” he says.
Conversely, he accepts innovation in “super shoes” reinforced in carbon. His marathons this year were in the £ 450 Adidas Pro Evo 1 and, although they think they are the best road shoe, he also thinks that performance gains are sometimes misunderstood.
“They are fantastic, but you see people saying that it is a different sport,” he says. “Shoes do not run for you. I ran the British record out of 10 miles for less than 23 years in old shoes. Josh Kerr and Alex Yee were up there when they were younger and they are always the best of their event.
“My trainer [Renato Canova] was run for 2 hours 3 minutes or 2 hours 4min [over marathon distance] With old shoes. If you gave them the new shoes, they did not run 1 h 59 minutes. Maybe it would have given them a minute. The more effective you are anyway, there is less margin to add … but you get aggravated effects in the training. »»
By that, Cairess says that he can run about 35 km near his full marathon pace in a training race and feel only limited fatigue the next day. He therefore wonders if the greatest impact on super-mouths could be the volume of race which becomes possible as athletes have gradually increased their training over the years.
A typical day is now to wake up inside the altitude tent in his room at 8:30 am, followed by a 20 km race at 10:30 am before lunch, then a second session of about 12 km at 5:00 pm. In three days of the week, he will also go to the gymnasium during the afternoon.
For the rest, it is a combination of eating, drinking and staying away, with the help of YouTube, Netflix and video games. Fantastic game Baldur’s Gate and rehearsals of The office are the current favorites. As for food, vast physical production means that there is more freedom than you think.
“I really eat anything,” says Caress. “If you don’t eat enough, you are more sensitive to injury and illness. I try to have a good diet, to get all the nutrients, then I can have bad things on the top.
“So I could have salmon, rice and broccoli for tea, but I can then have three donuts for pudding. The other day, I had gnocchi for tea and I was always hungry, so I had a domino [pizza] And tried the new Korean barbecue. »»
His training program takes place on a weekly basis by Canova, the 79 -year -old coach over 40 world and Olympic medalists, following a road meeting in Kenya in January 2022.
Caress, with the help of British coach Alan Storey, had largely determined his own training and had made significant progress by following everything he could find online on Canova. When Caress then saw the Italian with a group of runners near Iten, he approached him and started asking questions. Canova was so struck by this enthusiastic but unknown English runner that he quickly proposed to formalize the arrangement. “It was the first time I had coach someone without knowing it,” he said, laughing.
Beating the British Half-Marathon record of Farah would be a good bonus next Sunday, but the primordial objective is another marathon next spring. While the London elite fields will be finalized closer to time, Cairo is perfectly aware of both Farah’s British marathon of 2:05:11 is within range and the last home winner of the race was Eamonn Martin in 1993. Martin is now 66 years old. .
Caress will double more than its usual time in Kenya before next spring, with training camps scheduled for next month and March.
“They have hundreds of athletes, simply entirely devoted in the way no one is barely in the United Kingdom,” he said. “If there are 500 people without plan B, you will obviously get it who really do it. Others will never run outside Kenya. They can train for 15 years and see nothing. There is no glamor.
“I think many Europeans consider that East Africans are impossible to beat. When you train with them, you don’t feel the same intimidation. You go there, they train hard and you think: “I can do it”.
“Many of them do not do it because they like to run, they do it because it is the easiest way to earn a living and to change their family situation. They must succeed because it is their only way to get out of poverty. In England, you can win good levels A, go to university and earn a living. You should feel blessed, but you must also have a similar existence for performing well. »»
After levels A in mathematics, biology and physics, caress chose to study the sports sciences at St Mary University because of their endurance center, which was also formerly the Farah base, before working In Foot Locker and find sponsorship with Adidas to help continue his passion. And, although recognition, recordings and medals have followed more and more, the root motivation remains simple. “I could have done finances in Uni, I got a good job in London,” he said. “Running is not like football where you can be fourth and make millions, but the marathon is well. It’s comfortable.
“I just like to see how good I can be. I don’t need anything else. I will do it maybe eight to 10 years [professionally] But I would continue to run.
“I think I will be in my peak at around 30 [at the time of the LA Olympics in 2028] So I wanted to learn the marathon before I was really physically ready. I don’t do it for special achievements. I do it to see what I can do. It’s fun.
