---
title: '▍Collection: Eliud Kipchoge'
created: 2026-04-29
modified: 2026-05-05
authors: Eliud Kipchoge
category: Essay
---
# [The Surprisingly Simple Training of the World’s Fastest Marathoner](https://run.outsideonline.com/training/training-plans/marathon/eliud-kipchoge-marathon-workout-training-principles/)
Kipchoge starts at 5:45 A.M. every day, and goes to bed by 9 P.M.. During the day, he’ll nap for an hour. Despite the many demands on his time, he’s very, very good at doing nothing.
When it comes to long runs, he doesn’t ask for a specific pace but an effort that’s controlled yet challenging, the pace naturally increasing each week as fitness builds.
> On each (long) run, the pace should get progressively faster, or at worst stay the same.
Twice a week, Kipchoge does a 60-minute strength and mobility session with just yoga mats and resistance bands. The focus is on the posterior chain — glutes, hamstrings, and core. Exercises include glute abductions, bridges, planks, and single-leg deadlifts, followed by balance and [proprioception 本體感覺](https://www.google.com/search?q=proprioception) work, then gentle stretching. He doesn’t lift weights. The goal is purely injury prevention.
Kipchoge drinks three liters of water each day. His meals are simple: homemade bread, local fruits and vegetables, lots of Kenyan tea, some meat, and a generous daily helping of favorite food—[ugali,](https://mayuris-jikoni.com/2021/06/02/ugali-recipe/) a dense maize-flour porridge. When it comes to supplements, Kipchoge told me he takes none.
Kipchoge logged every detail in a notebook. He began the practice in 2003 and now has 18 logs stored at his home to reflect on at the end of each season.
> I document the time, the kilometers, the massage, the exercises, the shoes I’m using, the feeling about those shoes, everything.
After each marathon, Kipchoge takes three to four weeks completely off before beginning a three-to-four-week preparatory phase, during which he alternates an hour of strength exercises and [step aerobics](https://www.google.com/search?q=step+aerobics) one day with an hour of easy running the next.
Kipchoge’s marathon-training blocks have been as long as seven months and as short as three months, but typically they last around **16 weeks**.
# [Eliud Kipchoge: Daily Routine](https://balancethegrind.co/daily-routines/eliud-kipchoge-daily-routine/)
Kipchoge doesn’t take any supplements. “I’m not having any problems with my body, so I don’t need to supplement,” he told [Runner’s World](https://www.runnersworld.com/). “Growing older you don’t recover as fast, but all-in-all I’m doing well.”
# [Eliud Kipchoge: The humble home life in rural Kenya behind remarkable athletic success - BBC Sport](https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/52354320)
> I don’t have extra money to actually make my mind go haywire. I am a human being and I stay as a human being. Money stays away. I’m not working with money; money is in the bank. I want to live a simple life.
“He has never missed a session. Not one,” says Sang. It’s an incredible statement given the two have worked together for nearly 20 years. That consistency is arguably Kipchoge’s most remarkable quality. Marathon running is a notoriously tough sport.
Kipchoge’s “moon-landing” moment in becoming the first person to run a marathon distance in under two hours is not a world record because, among other things, he used pacemakers who swapped in and out during the event. On the treatment table the day after running 1:59 in Vienna, Kipchoge said to the physiologist Peter Nduhiu: “Now, the next thing. Make it official.”
If it was any other guy to break the two-hour record, there would have been a carnival. But what did Eliud do? He came back to camp, had a cup of tea with the team and just started again. People were mad - they asked how can he do that? Who does that? But Eliud is quiet - that is it. You will not disrupt his schedule. He will not allow you to.
> The most important thing to me is inspiration, not fame. It is not about becoming famous but diffusing that inspiration to every human being. My happiness is meeting people and they say to me: ‘No human is limited.’ That makes me so happy.
# [Eliud Kipchoge: Inside the camp, and the mind, of the greatest marathon runner of all time](https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/othersport/arid-40732662.html)
> In Vienna, October 12, 2019. Earlier that day, Kipchoge had become the first man ever to run a sub-two-hour marathon, clocking 1:59:40, a time that didn’t count as an official world record due to the use of rotating pacemakers and Kipchoge being handed his drinks from a bike (rather than picking them off a table).
>
> The INEOS 1:59 Challenge, bankrolled by British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, gathered many of the world’s best to help pace Kipchoge to a mark many had deemed impossible. But then he did it, holding an absurd pace of 4:33 per mile or 2:50 per kilometre before sprinting, exulted, into the arms of his wife, Grace, and his coach, [Patrick Sang](https://www.google.com/search?q=Patrick+Sang), for an achievement that would echo in eternity.
>
> Later that night, organisers held a no-expense-spared party for those who’d been part of the project.
>
> Kipchoge was there, handing out trophies to the 41 men who’d paced him, and he then made a speech to thank those who’d worked so hard behind the scenes. Alcohol flowed through the room in torrents, and most athletes present ended up out on the town until late night turned to early morning.
>
> Kipchoge? He didn’t touch a drop of alcohol (he never drinks) and once his speech was made, the man responsible for the entire celebration quietly exited the room, going back to his hotel for an early night.
>
> He has a thing about celebrating, Kipchoge. Sees it as something sinister, something dangerous, a self-indulgent act that might derail his mindset, make him think, somewhere in his subconscious, that he has arrived, the inference being he has nowhere left to go.
>
> He’ll punch the air at the finish, alright, but try to get him into an open-top car or to attend a huge welcome-home party and you’ll get a polite but firm rejection.
> On Sunday, August 8, the last day of the Tokyo Olympic Games, Kipchoge once again eviscerated the world’s best marathoners to retain his Olympic title, dropping an almighty hammer 19 miles into the race and coming home a whopping 80 seconds clear of his closest rival.
>
> The race was held in Sapporo, more than 800km from Tokyo, but tradition dictates that the men’s marathon medals are handed out at the Olympic closing ceremony. Kipchoge and his fellow medallists, along with their coaches, were flown to Tokyo that afternoon, then made to wait for a few hours at the airport before being driven to the stadium.
>
> Cramped in a dull room with hours to kill, the Olympic medallists did what most would do: they opened their phones, logged into wifi, and started scrolling through the river of goodwill messages.
>
> All except one. Kipchoge placed his phone in front of him and never touched it, sitting there — for hours — in contented silence.
>
> Bashir Abdi, the bronze medallist from Belgium, recalls the story in laughing disbelief, adding a line, only half-joking, that those in the sport have said many times about Kipchoge.
>
> “He is not human.”
> He’s a straightforward guy: quiet, humble, with a monastic way of life that was likely cultivated through his family’s farming background, a childhood spent transporting milk on his bike to sell at the local market.
>
> He knows what it’s like to have nothing, or close to it, but now that he has everything, little has changed. For the vast majority of the year he lives a spartan life, his approach bringing to mind a line that Marcus O’Sullivan, Ireland’s three-time world indoor 1,500m champion, once told me: “You never put things in front of you that let you think you’ve arrived. Always have that level of deprivation, so you know there’s more to be done.”
>
> Even now, having summited the sport’s highest peaks an incomparable, unfathomable 18 years apart, Kipchoge still lives the same way.
> Today, Kipchoge will do eight 1,600m repetitions in 4:40 with two minutes recovery, which he mostly walks, followed by eight 400m repetitions in 63-64 seconds with 30-50 seconds recovery. This is only his “third or fourth” workout since returning to training, having taken almost a month completely off following his latest Olympic gold.
>
> Nonetheless, his class quickly tells.
>
> Kipchoge leads the first rep, establishing the rhythm for the others, then sits in the pack through the rest of the session. When he’s hurting, his face contorts into a half-smile, half-grimace, and only in the last few reps does it emerge.
>
> Even a half-fit Kipchoge can match the others, athletes who are already race-fit for major marathons. About 40 athletes start the session, but only four remain after 10 miles of hard running around the undulating dirt track, which is 380m long. After a few tired laps to cool down, Kipchoge returns to the camp next door, where he’ll eat, sleep, and relax in the gardens, chatting with training partners, until 4pm. His second run of the day is an easy 10k, which starts at a crawl (5:30 per kilometre) and finishes at a still sedate pace (4:20 per kilometre).
>
> The runners then sit around for tea — Kenyan chai made with milk and a hefty dose of sugar — before having dinner together at 7pm.
>
> “By 9pm, I’m in bed,” says Kipchoge, whose alarm will sound at 5:45am the next morning to start the whole process again.
Kipchoge does three hard workouts a week: 15–16km worth of track repetitions on Tuesdays, a long run of 30 or 40km on Thursdays, and a 50-minute fartlek session on Saturdays, alternating three minutes of hard running with one minute of jogging.
> What made me stay (at the top) for a long time is self-discipline. I try to say no to anything which is not beneficial.
> The humble lifestyle, the guy-next-door modesty, the everyday visibility — it’s clear Kipchoge believes this is the most powerful way to send a message to youth: that they, like him, can start with nothing, achieve everything, and remain the same person at the end of it.
>
> “Rejecting that flashy life is giving me more time to concentrate and be the person I need to be,” he says. “I want (life) to be simple and work as hard as I can rather than living at a high level, driving flashy cars or airplanes. I think that can make you come down as far as performance.”
>
> What makes him happiest of all?
>
> “It’s the inspiration,” he says. “I go around and see kids chanting and wanting to be the way I am, making their countries beautiful, respecting people in the world.”
> If you’ve been using a tiny gym for all your success, then the day you become successful and go to a huge gym, I don’t think you’ll be better. Small habits are what make me successful. I’m sticking to where I started and I’m confident I’ll end my career here.
# [Four Takeaways From The Training of Eliud Kipchoge, Marathon GOAT](https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/kipchoge-training-takeaways/)
## Most of Kipchoge’s training is very easy.
> It seems that 4 of Kipchoge’s training days are purely easy, consisting of 3 x 18 mile doubles (as 12 miles in AM and 6 miles in PM) plus 1 x 2 hours at easy effort (maybe 16-18 miles). Add onto that 2 x 6 mile easy doubles on his workout days. That puts him around 84 miles that are almost purely easy, and I am guessing firmly in Zone 1. There are probably some miles of warm-up and cool-down for workouts on top of that, also very easy. Let’s estimate 100 easy miles in a week around 130 miles.
>
> That would indicate that 77% is in Zone 1 or just a bit higher! Perhaps that approximation is wrong and some of those miles are in lower Zone 2, or maybe there is more steady running on some of those recovery runs than is reflected in the article. But still, that’s a lot of easy running.
## Kipchoge runs controlled workouts, with disciplined intensity control.
> I try not to run 100 percent. I perform 80 percent on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and then at 50 percent Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.
Those 80% days are workout days. The 50% days are the easy run days. Then he shows up on race day with 100% of his capabilities.
## Kipchoge does quality long runs most weeks.
He implements long, progressive runs that start easy and end moderately hard.
He has an alternating weekly schedule for long run. One week will be 19 miles, the next 25 miles, over hilly terrain.