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Michael Kamau of Nyahururu was a bit shocked when his manager Marc Corstjens told him that he had booked a track race for him.

Shocked because the last time he ran on track was in 2016 and more so because that was the last time he put on spiked shoes.

 Kamau was further surprised that the track race he had been booked in was an unfamiliar one – a ‘one-hour race’.

The one-hour race which was one of the competitions staged at the Allianz Memorial Van Damme stadium in Brussels (Belgium) Diamond League competition was held on September 2nd, 2022.

 “For about six years I had not raced on the track or put on spikes and that was a challenge when I stepped on the starting line,” Kamau said yesterday.

 He said he did not run as he expected since his back ‘locked’ because he was not used to running in spikes.

 “For a long time I have been using racing shoes in competition or training shoes when practising,” he said.

He added that he will be better prepared for such an assignment in future. He has started doing more speed work at the Nyahururu stadium where he trains.

In the one-hour race runners try to cover as much distance within one hour.

Though taken to be an unorthodox event, it has been there since 1904.

 The event has its legends including Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia.

The current men’s one-hour race world record is 21,330 metres set by Britain’s Mo Farah on September 4 2020, while that of women is 18,930m set the same day by Dutch athlete Sifan Hassan