At five in the morning in Bekoji, a small town in Ethiopia’s Arsi highlands, the roads are already moving. Not with cars. With runners. Young men and women in mismatched kit, moving in tight packs through cold mountain air, climbing dirt roads that disappear into eucalyptus forest. No GPS watches beeping splits. No foam rollers waiting at the finish. Just the altitude, the group and the road.
This is where Kenenisa Bekele grew up. It is also where Haile Gebrselassie grew up. The town of Bekoji, sitting at roughly 2,400 metres above sea level in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, has produced more world-class distance runners per square kilometre than anywhere else on the planet. Across the border in Kenya, the Rift Valley town of Iten tells a similar story — altitude, community and an almost routine production of world champions.
For decades, runners, coaches and sports scientists have asked the same question: why? Why do two countries in East Africa so completely dominate a sport contested by the entire world? The answer, it turns out, is not one thing. It is six things, stacked on top of each other, reinforcing each other in ways that no training programme from Europe or the US has managed to fully replicate.
The Numbers That Set Up the Question
- As of January 2021, 93 of the 100 fastest men’s marathon times ever recorded belonged to athletes born in East Africa. So did 76 of the top 100 women’s times. (PLoS ONE, Zani et al., 2022)
- The Kalenjin tribe of Kenya makes up less than 0.1% of the world’s population yet has won nearly 50 Olympic medals in middle and long-distance events. (Wilber & Pitsiladis, Int J Sports Physiol Perform, 2012)
- Kalenjin runners have won close to 73% of all Kenyan gold medals at major international running competitions. (Professor Vincent O. Onywera, exercise and sports science)
- Ethiopia’s Arsi region holds just 5% of the national population but produced 14 of Ethiopia’s 23 distance runners at the 2008 Olympics. (Wilber & Pitsiladis, 2012)
- In a 2024 analysis of more than one million race records, East African athletes led world rankings from the 5,000m through to the 50km ultra distance.
Born Into Thin Air
The single most discussed factor is altitude and for good reason. Both Iten in Kenya and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia sit at around 2,400 metres above sea level. Many of the training routes used by elite Ethiopian athletes go considerably higher, into the Entoto forest above Addis or north to Sululta and Sendafa, where the air thins further still.
Living at altitude from birth forces the body to adapt. The lungs work harder to extract oxygen from thinner air, and over time the body responds by producing more haemoglobin — the protein in red blood cells responsible for carrying oxygen to working muscles — and by raising haematocrit, the concentration of red blood cells in the blood. The result is a cardiovascular system that is permanently primed for endurance.
Western athletes spend thousands of dollars travelling to altitude training camps to trigger this same adaptation for a few weeks. Kenyan and Ethiopian runners were born into it and have never left.
The critical edge is not just living at altitude — it is the ability to train at high intensity while at altitude. Athletes without lifelong altitude exposure find this exceptionally difficult. Their bodies, accustomed to sea-level oxygen levels, fatigue rapidly when trying to run hard at 2,400 metres. Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes do not experience this ceiling in the same way. It is an adaptation built over a lifetime, not a training block. (The Conversation, citing peer-reviewed literature)
Haile Gebrselassie ran to school and back every day — more than six miles each way — through Arsi’s thin highland air. He has recalled doing it at a pace because he had to cross a river before the rainy season raised the water level. The altitude was not a performance tool he chose. It was simply his life.
A Body Built for the Distance
Look closely at elite Kenyan runners and you notice something before you know any physiology. They move differently. The legs are long and lean in a way that seems slightly out of proportion to the rest of the body.
A 2012 study by Wilber and Pitsiladis found that professional Kenyan runners had legs that were on average five percent longer and twelve percent thinner than Scandinavian runners of comparable height. This matters enormously in running economy — the measure of how efficiently a runner uses oxygen at a given speed. Thinner legs carry less mass at the furthest point from the body’s centre of gravity. Each stride costs less energy. Over 42.195 kilometres, that saving compounds into a significant advantage.
East African runners also display greater tendon stiffness and lower overall joint flexibility compared to European peers. This sounds counterintuitive but it is not. A stiffer Achilles tendon functions more like a spring, storing elastic energy during foot contact and releasing it on toe-off. Less energy is lost to the ground. More is returned as forward momentum.
These physical characteristics are not a coincidence. The 2022 PLoS ONE genomic study by Zani et al. found statistically significant enrichment of genes related to anthropometry — height, limb length, waist-to-hip ratio and lean body mass — in both the Kalenjin and Oromo ethnic populations. The body type that produces exceptional running economy appears, in part, to be written into the population genetics of these communities.
The Genetics Question (Handled Honestly)
No serious discussion of East African running can avoid genetics. And no serious piece on the topic should either overstate the case or dodge it to appear cautious.
The most thorough peer-reviewed work to date on this question is the 2022 PLoS ONE study by Zani and colleagues, published through the National Institutes of Health. The team used genomic data from the African Genome Variation Project to compare the Kalenjin (Kenya) and Oromo (Ethiopia) ethnic groups against non-dominant East African populations. They were looking for regions of genetic differentiation that overlapped with traits known to matter in endurance running.
They found it. Both the Kalenjin and Oromo showed statistically significant enrichment of endurance-relevant gene sets, linked to anthropometry, lung function, the circulatory system, calcium homeostasis and glucose metabolism. The Oromo result was particularly strong (P = 1.6 x 10-5). The Kalenjin result was also significant (P = 0.048).
The same paper explicitly states: “A deterministic relationship between genetics and sports must be avoided, as it is both scientifically incorrect and prone to reinforcing population (racial) stereotyping.” A separate PLoS ONE study (Rankinen et al., 2016) tested 45 candidate genetic markers across elite endurance athletes from multiple populations including Kenya and Ethiopia and found no evidence of a common DNA variant profile specific to world-class endurance runners. The genetics are real but they are complex, polygenic and not destiny.
The most credible scientific position sits between the two popular extremes. These populations likely carry a higher frequency of many individually small but collectively meaningful genetic advantages. When that genetic background meets altitude, training culture and economic motivation, elite runners emerge at a rate no other region matches. It is a population effect, not a genetic blueprint. Most Kalenjin and Oromo people are not elite runners. Individuals from entirely different backgrounds have become elite runners. The genes are one input, not the answer.
How They Actually Train
Spend time reading about Kenyan and Ethiopian training and one thing becomes clear quickly. It is not complicated. It is just very, very consistent and done in conditions that amplify every session.
The structural foundation is what sports scientists call a polarised approach: roughly 80% of all running at genuinely easy, conversational pace, with the remaining 20% concentrated into hard fartlek sessions, hill progressions and controlled tempo runs. This is not unique to East Africa but the execution is.
Sessions happen in packs. Always. This is not incidental — it is philosophically central. Kipchoge said it plainly when he was forced to train alone during COVID lockdowns:
“You cannot run really in a strong way because you are alone. When you have the whole team then you can train to make sure that you are in the best shape.”
— Eliud Kipchoge, Athletics Weekly
He has been even more direct elsewhere: “Running is a team sport. It is no longer an individual event as people think.”
The terrain matters too. Entoto forest above Addis, the soft trails around Sululta and Sendafa, the dirt roads around Kaptagat in Kenya — these routes are not flat or groomed. They are rolling, uneven and run at altitude. A 35km long run on these trails builds muscular resilience, aerobic capacity and economic running form simultaneously.
Kipchoge’s Daily Schedule (His Own Words)
“I wake up at 5am, by 6am I’m on the way to training. I come back and relax, have lunch, take a little nap, then train again at 4pm for an evening run. Then relax, dinner and bed at 9pm until the next day.” At peak training, elite Kenyan runners cover 150-200km per week, sometimes across three sessions a day. The principle behind it is not complexity. It is what Kipchoge calls the only secret: “Work hard. If you work hard, follow what’s required and set your priorities right, then you can really perform without taking shortcuts.”
Bekoji’s contribution to Ethiopian running came largely through grassroots coaching — most famously through coach Sentayehu Eshetu, who trained Bekele, Tirunesh Dibaba and numerous others from the same small highland town. No technology. No performance labs. Coaches, trails and volume, year after year.
What They Eat
This is one area where the myth and the data diverge more than people expect.
A clinical study published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition assessed the dietary intake of ten elite Ethiopian distance runners during a seven-day period of intense training at altitude (approximately 2,400 metres). The findings were straightforward:
- Carbohydrate: 64.3% of total daily energy — averaging 9.7g per kg of body weight
- Protein: 12.4%
- Fat: 23.3%
- Staple foods: injera (fermented teff flatbread), shiro wat (chickpea stew), vegetables, lentils
- Fluid intake: primarily water, including water from injera itself — total ~3.2 litres daily
- No supplement use documented at the training camps studied
Teff deserves specific mention. The ancient grain behind injera is exceptionally iron-dense — one cooked cup provides roughly 5.17mg of iron — and rich in calcium and magnesium. For endurance athletes covering enormous training volumes at altitude, iron availability is critical to red blood cell production. Ethiopian runners are not supplementing with iron tablets. They are eating injera every day.
Kenyan runners eat similarly — high carbohydrate, mostly plant-sourced. Ugali, a dense maize porridge, provides around 23% of total daily calories. A clinical study of elite Kenyan runners found that 86% of daily calories came from vegetable sources. Meat accounted for roughly 1%. Kipchoge’s documented pre-race meal is ugali with beans and potatoes.
A 2025 study by Outside Run noted that diet patterns vary more across Ethiopian athletes than popular narrative suggests. Not every elite Ethiopian runner eats the same foods. What they do share is high carbohydrate intake, low processed food consumption and remarkable consistency. No periodised nutrition plans. No macronutrient tracking apps. Just food, in large quantities, eaten regularly.
The Hunger No Altitude Chamber Replicates
Every factor above is significant. But research papers on Kenyan and Ethiopian running consistently list one more alongside the physiological ones, and it may be the most underestimated of all: motivation to achieve economic success. (Wilber & Pitsiladis, 2012)
In Kenya and Ethiopia, a major marathon win is not a performance bonus or a sponsorship uplift. It is a generational event. Berlin Marathon prize money — currently $50,000 for first place — can transform a family’s entire economic trajectory in a country where average annual income sits well below $5,000. The stakes are not the same as they are for a runner from Germany or the United States.
This creates a motivational environment that compounds every other advantage. Young athletes in Iten or Bekoji do not need to be convinced to train twice a day. They see what running does to a family. They watch former champions return to their towns having built schools, bought land, given siblings an education. Gebrselassie, who grew up running 10 kilometres to school and back daily across Arsi’s highlands, eventually built businesses across Ethiopia with his marathon earnings. The aspirational chain is visible and real.
Champions also become role models within the same communities that produce the next generation. Bekele grew up in Bekoji watching Gebrselassie. Runners in Iten train on the same roads as Kipchoge. The barrier to believing it is possible is almost non-existent when the proof lives down the road.
There is also the Kalenjin cultural dimension worth noting honestly. Multiple researchers have documented that the Kalenjin initiation rite — a coming-of-age ceremony performed at around age 15 — involves enduring sustained physical pain without expression. Whether this builds direct athletic capacity is not proven. What is documented is that it creates a cultural relationship with discomfort that translates into a community-wide willingness to push through training pain that breaks athletes raised in more comfort-first environments.
What the Rest of Us Can Actually Take From This
Six Lessons for Every Serious Runner
1. Easy running is not junk mileage. The 80/20 split that defines Ethiopian and Kenyan training is not a compromise — it is the architecture. The easy volume builds the aerobic base that makes the hard sessions productive. Most recreational runners do the opposite: too much at moderate intensity, too little genuinely easy and too little genuinely hard.
2. Find your pack. Group training is not a motivational nicety. It is structurally embedded in every elite East African programme because it produces better sessions consistently. A training partner or a club group is not optional infrastructure — it is how the best runners in the world operate.
3. Run on soft surfaces when you can. The Entoto forest and Sululta trails are not used because they are scenic. Soft ground reduces impact, builds stabilising muscles and allows higher volume with lower injury risk. Any park, trail or grass route you have access to is worth using regularly.
4. The diet is simpler than the supplement industry wants you to believe. High carbohydrate. Plant-heavy. Consistent. The world’s best endurance runners eat real food, in large quantities, with virtually no processed products in sight. Teff and injera are excellent if you can find them. Oats, rice, sweet potato, lentils and beans get you the same macronutrient profile.
5. Altitude training works — but you do not need to live there. You cannot replicate a lifetime at 2,400 metres. But periodic altitude exposure — even a week or two at a proper altitude destination before a goal race — does produce measurable haemoglobin and VO2max benefits. The research confirms it.
6. Motivation is a training variable. The economic urgency that drives Rift Valley runners is not something you can manufacture. But the underlying principle — having a reason that is genuinely important, not just convenient — is. Race with purpose. Train with stakes. The runners who last longest are the ones who know exactly why they are doing this.
The dominance of Kenya and Ethiopia in marathon running is not a mystery. It is a very specific set of overlapping factors — altitude from birth, favourable body mechanics, complex population genetics, a training methodology built on simplicity and volume, a diet that fuels without complicating, and a cultural and economic context that turns running into something worth suffering for.
No single one of these explains it. All six together, in the same place, across generations, do.
That is why the Entoto forest is moving at five in the morning. And that is why the rest of the world is still trying to keep up.
Sources: Zani et al. (2022), PLoS ONE — PMC9119534; Wilber RL & Pitsiladis YP (2012), Int J Sports Physiol Perform; Beis et al. (2011), Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition — PMC3117768; Rankinen et al. (2016), PLoS ONE; World Athletics feature on Bekoji; The Conversation — “Can genetics explain the success of East African distance runners?”; Kipchoge quotes via Athletics Weekly and Olympics.com.