Eliud Kipchoge’s quarantine life

Back at the start of the global quarantines and lockdowns, we got a brief look into Eliud Kipchoge‘s life through a video series produced by the BBC called “Kipchoge’s training-from-home diary.” The first video was on the loneliness of training solo during COVID-19, which is a feeling runners across the world can relate to. There have been four more entries in this video diary since then, and Kipchoge gives viewers quick snippets of his life in isolation with his family, what books he’s reading (he was in the middle of a Malcolm Gladwell book when he filmed that entry) and more.

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Family time

Like many people these days, Kipchoge is getting a lot of family time. In his second isolation diary entry, he’s at lunch with his wife and three kids. It’s nice to see Kipchoge enjoying a sunny Kenyan afternoon with his family, and it’s a change from the clips we’re used to seeing, of him hammering through workouts or marathons (although those are fun to watch, too). In this video, he tells viewers to “observe the precautions and all will be well.”

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Chilling at the farm

In the third segment of Kipchoge’s video diary, he takes viewers to his farm. He says he often visits there after his morning runs and that it’s the perfect place to hang out without having to worry about social distancing. We also get to see Kipchoge in his farming duds, which are a little  different than what he donned in his GQ spread.

Training in Kenya with the man who broke the 2-hour marathon barrier https://t.co/vStEb0CwTT pic.twitter.com/qul5URtQsj

— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) March 30, 2020

Marathon champion and Malcolm Gladwell fan?

The fourth instalment of the Kipchoge diary focuses on relaxing. He welcomes viewers into his home and shows how he kills time when he can’t be out and about. His main source of relaxation, he says, is reading, and the book he was into during filming was Gladwell‘s newest read, Talking to Strangers. Gladwell is, of course, a huge fan of running, so we have to assume that he would be thrilled to find out that the greatest marathon runner of all time is also a fan of his. If he does know, he played it cool and didn’t post about it on Twitter. (Smart move not to fanboy too hard.)

@Gladwell is this your equivalent of @DavidEpstein seeing the photo of President Obama picking up a copy of The Sports Gene? pic.twitter.com/5nnYcmoUgC

— Chris Chavez (@ChrisChavez) April 17, 2020

Olympic postponement

In the final diary entry, Kipchoge talks about the IOC’s decision to postpone the Tokyo Olympics until 2021. He was looking forward to this summer with the hope of defending his gold medal from the marathon in Rio, but he says the new date isn’t that bad.

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“[Postponement] is not the end of life.” he says. “Next year, we will rise up and compete again and we will live an Olympic dream.” For now, he says he’s continuing to train for his next marathon, whenever that may be, and he encourages the rest of the world to continue to train for when things get back to normal.