A muggy May morning in Athens and the world marathon record holder, Paul Tergat, and I are answering a call of nature. Outside is the 250-metre track where I and some other hacks from around the world are about to run with Tergat. We are hoping not to embarrass ourselves too much as we follow the 34-year-old from the Rift Valley in Kenya as he runs the pace he maintains whenever he undertakes the full 26 miles 385 yards of a marathon - the event he hopes to win in Athens later this month to become Olympic champion.
Someone asks if I am nervous. 'I don't want to embarrass Paul,' I say, a little foolishly, before the man who ran a staggering two hours four minutes 55 seconds last September in Berlin to set that world mark, pats me on the back and offers me one of his shining smiles, all bright eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones. Then we head for the track.
Tergat is almost impossibly sylph-like. In addition to his bony face, he has long, stick-thin legs and broad, yet slim shoulders. It is a build that adds up to a lean running machine that made Tergat the first athlete in history to break 2hr 5min when he set that world mark. It also propelled him in one of athletics' most riveting races when he duelled with his great rival, Haile Gebrselassie, for the 10,000m gold at the last Olympics.
The great Ethiopian had beaten Tergat at the Atlanta Olympics and the previous two world championships over the same distance, but, as they sprinted for the line in Sydney, Tergat at last looked as though he would win. But Gebrselassie, ever the great champion, dipped at the line and beat him by a smaller margin than Maurice Greene's triumph in the 100m final.
Ask how he recovered from such disappointment, yet again, and Tergat's response is typical of his sunny, uncynical nature. 'One thing, my friend, you must understand is that I lost when I did the best I could. I didn't have anything, force or energy, left. So I didn't feel bad. I took it as a challenge. It was encouraging for the next competition.
'We have to agree that since I'm a sportsman, there will always be a winner and a loser. And so we have to accept that for me I don't feel that I lost. That day was his day, so I don't have anything to complain about.'
Tergat, who had a poor upbringing in the isolated Kenyan countryside as one of 17 children in a polygamous family, has an inner calm. He speaks as if it is me who is in need of reassurance about some deep disappointment, rather than him. He speaks, too, as someone who is deeply interested in his country, one of a broad arc of topics that concern him.
'Kenya is cosmopolitan. We have so many cultures and different ethnic groups, and it is very interesting for me how we are living. We have around 42 languages. We live in a country with people who are from different countries but we do not speak the same language. This fascinates me. And that's why when I look at the history of my country and where we have come from, it gives me a positive attitude. To understand the fight for independence [Kenya was granted independence from Britain in December 1963] and to know why we were fighting.
'My country has developed so much since I was young. If we are talking about televisions, for example, then 12 years ago they were countable. Now nearly every household has one, which is good because it is a way of teaching information to the public in so many areas: health, education, politics, economics. And now we have tremendous new universities when before it was only two. Now, if I cannot send my children out of the country for higher learning they can learn at home.
'For me the sport is not all my life. I have so many things that make my life interesting and not boring. It's only that the passion that I have for the sport, you'll never take that from me. I love it, I love it!'
His passion is, indeed, evident, yet until he was 18 Tergat did not like to run, and would try to avoid it at school. 'It hurt. And I come from an area where there had never been an international runner, and so I had no idol. When I joined the military at 18 this changed. I met people that I admired a lot and that was an exciting moment for me.'
Tergat, who is testing his new Nike Air Kantana II racing shoe, breaks momentarily away to limber up for the run before rejoining our group. Then, we begin. I run three times a week for half an hour. This, though, feels like sprinting. As Tergat, dressed in sleek black top and tight leggings - to protect the calf injury that kept him out of this year's London marathon and cost him valuable weeks of Athens preparation time - purrs around the track, I attempt not to look very obviously out of breath.
Will Sammy Korir, the fellow countryman who nearly beat him in Berlin, be his main rival on 29 August? 'It is difficult to exactly say. These are championships, it is not like a normal marathon with pacemakers. Depending on how you feel on the day, it may be more of a tactical race than most people are expecting. But the most important thing is not the other runners, but my own fitness. Then, everything takes cares of itself.'
As we complete the first lap, I am on Tergat's shoulder, and struggling to believe this is the pace he will maintain in the smog and heat of Athens.
How does he see the race going? 'It will be very hard, because of the climate and the course.' The runners will follow the same route that was run in 1896 at the first modern Olympics. It begins in Marathon and finishes inside the Panathenaic stadium, which was built by the ancient Greeks into an Athens hillside. It is open at one end, and 35,000 spectators are expected to gather at dusk as the first racers appear.
Tergat hopes to be the very first, but when asked about the route, he hesitates for the first time. 'When I saw the course, it was not how I expected. Three-quarters of it is very hilly so it will be very tough. We are running at three in the afternoon, which will be so hot, and the Tarmac road will be like a frying pan. And of course there is the humidity.'
Will he prepare specifically for the climate? 'The key thing for me is that I know exactly how it is - mentally that's enough. But I'm not going to change how I train too much.'
Tergat is married and has three children. He is a goodwill ambassador for the World Food Programme, a Unicef spokesman and funds education for Nairobi street children. He also owns a PR company and publishes an athletics magazine, The Athlete . 'I do this because of my love of athletics. I created it with Moses Kip Kiptanui [triple world steeplechase champion] and now I run it alone. It is something I would love to continue for many years.'
In addition to the disappointment in the finals of those major 10,000m championships, Tergat - sung to sleep by his mother as a child to ease his intense hunger pangs and who was only eventually guaranteed food through a UN-funded scheme at his school - also looked to be lacking the extra yard needed to win marathons. Before that world record performance in Germany, sceptics said the man who had failed to win any of his previous five marathons did not have the heart to triumph.
On Berlin's plane, flat course, he proved he did. First, he flirted with disaster when he nearly followed a lead car the wrong way, and then he was involved in a sprint finish with Korir, who had begun as a pacemaker, but who Tergat ultimately beat by less than a second. Will the world record ever go below two hours? 'Never. Forget it. It is very difficult to run 61 minutes for half a marathon, so 60 minutes or just below will never happen.'
Halfway around the second lap and Tergat appears to move up a gear slightly and, struggling to speak, I wonder about Paul Radcliffe's chances of winning the women's event. 'I feel she is the athlete to watch when it comes to the Olympics. She has what it takes to be gold medallist: the experience, confidence, and the mental strength, which is very important. Paula has everything.'
Then he eases away a little, rounds the home bend and extends to the line and completes the second, and thankfully, final lap. He finishes in 72 seconds for 500 metres. That makes it roughly 14.4sec per 100m, which seems impossible for a whole marathon. I finish, knowing another lap at anything near that pace and I would have had difficulty finishing, never mind keeping close.
'Maybe that was slightly faster than I would run in a race,' he says, but he is probably just being kind. Tergat grins. 'I do my running through love. When you do it for money and you lose, well this means the finish of you.'
The Olympics will be his last appearance in a Kenya vest. One of sports greats is hoping to go out with the gold medal that has so far just eluded him. He surely deserves it.
Marathon record since the war
2.25.39 Yun Bok Suh (Kor) Boston 19 Apr 1947 2.17.39 J Peters (GB) Cheswick 26 Jun 1954 2.15.17 S Popov (Rus) Stockholm 24 Aug 1958 2.15.15 T Terasawa (Jap) Beppu 17 Feb 1963 2.14.28 L Edelen (USA) Cheswick 15 Jun 1963 2.13.55 B Heatley (GB) Cheswick 13 Jun 1964 2.12.11 A Bikila (Eth) Tokyo 21 Oct 1964 2.12.00 M Shigematsu (Jap) Cheswick 12 Jun 1965 2.08.34 D Clayton (Aus) Antwerp 30 May 1969 2.08.18 R de Castella (Aus) Fukuoka 6 Dec 1981 2.08.05 S Jones (GB) Chicago 21 Oct 1984 2.07.12 C Lopes (Por) Rotterdam 20 Apr 1985 2.06.50 B Dinsamo (Eth) Rotterdam 17 Apr 1988 2.06.05 R de Costa (Bra) Berlin 20 Sep 1998 2.05.38 K Khannouchi (USA) London 14 Apr 2002 2.04.55 P Tergat (Ken) Berlin 28 Sep 2003
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