Joshua Cheptegei says:
–I'm alive and well, right?
And then he starts laughing.
In reality, his laughter is forced, because he is not one for joking: 24 hours before, he has been feeling how his mind was leaving his body, and his vision was blurring, and his stomach was turning, and his muscles were breaking, everything cramped, general collapse.
The marathon wall, they call it, and it has to be experienced to be believed.
Joshua Cheptegei (27) had run into the wall at kilometer 25 of the Valencia marathon the other Sunday.
But until that moment, the moment of general collapse, the man would never have imagined that one day he would end up seeing himself like this, as he was seeing himself.
Neither him, nor anyone.
Well, until the time of running into his wall, Cheptegei had been an invincible distance runner, the best of his time: the world record holder in the 5,000 and 10,000, the Olympic champion in the 5,000 (Tokyo 2020) and the three-time world champion in the 10,000 ( 2019, 2022 and 2023), and also the world cross country champion (2019), and also a nobody in the marathon, a discipline that he had never experienced.
–On Sunday I learned many things. These are important things to improve – he now says through a video call arranged with his team, the NN Running Team.
The Ugandan speaks to us from his hotel room in Valencia, minutes before getting on a train to Madrid, where another promotional event awaits him.
-What did he learn?
–When I arrived in Valencia, I had done so with the idea of aiming for 2h04m on my debut. I was thinking about leaving relaxed, about reaching the half marathon in 61m45s, even in 62m00s. But I joined the group and felt good, and decided to continue with them (they passed in 60m35s). It was going well until km 24, and at km 25 I already noticed something different. The muscles began to overheat. Problems came. I have rarely seen myself like this. There I understood that the marathon is different, and I thought: 'Okay, but you have to finish no matter what.'
The video reviews the scene.
Lemma, Mutiso, Geay, Wolde and Kandie are leaving, the hares are also leaving. And Cheptegei is cut.
He cuts off and stays, and the motorcycle-camera follows him for a few meters, maybe 500, and then leaves him and goes with the leading group, and we don't see Cheptegei again until three quarters of an hour later, when reaches the goal.
The outcome is painful, a living image of the marathon and its wall. Cheptegei arrives zigzagging, his back rigid, he barely lifts his feet off the ground, his face has been disfigured.
He crosses the finish line in 2h08m59s, a superb record for a mortal, not much for a legend, he is 37th, and then it seems that he collapses and faints, and Marc Roig appears, holding him up.
(In the Rift Valley, Marc Roig is the man-orchestra: physiotherapist, and athlete, and director of recruiting international athletes, even chauffeur and counselor.)
–And what went wrong?
–My preparation was good, but this is new territory, a territory in which I had zero experience, and perhaps I fell short by weeks. Eight weeks of specific preparation are not enough for a marathon. Going forward, I must lengthen that.
–And what was going through your mind when your body collapsed?
–When I reached km 35, I told myself that I was not going to experience this again. But he also told me: 'This is where champions grow, those capable of running when they don't feel well.'
–Did you think about retiring?
-Of course. I thought I had enough. But a part inside me insisted that he should be a good student and finish his degree. That's my big lesson.
He also says that he will return to the marathon, but that he will do so after the Paris 2024 Games
–First, I want to be 10,000 Olympic gold, my pending debt.
