Even the best who ever was has to deal with janky WiFi. He holds that quizzical look for a long time, and then I realize that he isn’t blinking or breathing, and then I realize he’s been staring at me in furrowed-brow silence because his screen is frozen. To be the best, the very best who ever was, you need to be all the way where you are now, and where you want to go. Let the merely great waste their mental energy on thoughts like where else they might have been. Every thought has to be locked in on the here, and the now, and the good. This life is a good life, and it is the result of singular focus, and positive thinking, and singular focus on positive thinking. It’s why the thoughts have to be positive, the stomach has to be full, the wife and kids have to be just far enough away. “I will embark on mentoring the next generation, educating young people on many issues: on investment, on general life, on discipline, on what’s required as a human being.” But right now, Kipchoge is not unaffable or impolite, he’s just…still.

His answers rarely stray far from the subjects of a positive mindset and dedication to peak performance, and when they do, like a patient coach, he leads them gently back. If not for the wife and kids, we’d call him monastic. He eats well, runs hard, reads those inspirational books you see in airport bookstores (his all-time favorite: the motivational fable Who Moved My Cheese?). He’s had the same coach-1992 Olympic steeplechase silver medalist Patrick Sang-for more than 20 years. In conversation, as on the course, he presents himself as the epitome of clean living, clean training, and clean thinking. So far in our talk, Kipchoge has been affable and polite.

The work of Monday is done (a long-ish run in the morning and an easy hour in the afternoon), and dinner awaits. It’s the end of a Monday at his training camp in Kaptagat, Kenya, where he arrived this morning after spending most of the weekend with his wife, Grace Sugut, and their three children at home 20 miles away, and where he’ll stay until he goes back on Saturday, as he does each week. Get the Mag Runner's World Courtesy NN Running Team This article appears in Issue 3 / 2023 of Runner’s World.

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