Tergat, once king of the long run, pauses to reflect

"I build a house, a throw a party, invite friends over, cook for them and then tear the house down!" Paul Tergat was explaining how he'd allow his mind to wander in order to stay sane when he impassively ran those marathons, trying to beat the two-hour barrier when he was the king of the unforgiving 42-km Everest between 2003 and 2007.
It was okay. Tergat could indulge in some mind-running, he had all the time in the world and nowhere to run. The connection to Sao Paulo and further on to Rio delayed in the Ethiopian capital, Tergat sat back, cracked a few jokes ("'Saxena!?' Really? What kind of name is that?") slapped a few backs and told us what madness it is really to run, and run like he did. One of the most accomplished long-distance runners of all time, the Kenyan great ambled in unnoticed into the Bole airport waiting area, one among the rising sea of African faces in the morning travelling rush. It was only when one accidentally spied his name on the airline desk attendant's computer monitor that one was able to put name to face.
It was slightly amusing that he had sat a full hour unnoticed and therefore, undisturbed, in a part of the country which is a great Kenyan rival in long-distance running. Asked whether he was being given the cold shoulder on purpose in the home of Abebe Bikila and Tergat's own great rival, Haile Gebrselassie, Tergat laughed. "Maybe it was different during our running days, maybe because of the rivalry between me and Gebrselassie. But since I have retired, each time I come here, they ask me to stay , not to leave."
Yet, even a decade since his retirement, the deep-seated Kenyan-Ethiopian rivalry doesn't really go away . As the talk veers around Kenenisa Bekele, the 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic and world record holder, and his controversial axing from the Ethiopian long-distance pack for Rio, Tergat is serious, momentarily. "Maybe they have a good younger generation that they are not afraid to try out at Rio," he says in all seriousness, before chuckling, "Whatever the reason, it can only mean a good thing for Kenya."
But, it is in explaining the mentality behind the running the marathon that Tergat is most profound. "You cannot allow yourself to go crazy," he nods, in quiet reverence to the monster that is the marathon. "If you let it get to you, it would take you over completely , and that cannot be a good thing. You are human after all."
The marathon is simply the greatest human endurance test on land, according to Tergat, who held the world record in the event over five years in the last decade, and it needed defeating in the mind as well as the body. "At the start, if you keep thinking of the 42 kilometers that lie ahead, then you are not going to make it. I always looked around when I ran, the weather, the city, the people. Then I would allow my mind to roam. God alone knows, how many houses I built, how may feasts I prepared for my friends and how many houses I later pulled down -all in my head when I am running. You'd go crazy otherwise."
Suddenly the flight delay is not a distraction anymore, since Tergat the marathoner himself has taken flight. The current council chairman of the state-run Kenyan Academy of Sports holds forth on his favourite topic. "But when you hit the 35-k mark," his eyes grow large, "You must snap back to the run at hand and then begin the plotting and planning. It's the last seven kilometers of the test that you really use all your strategies for. The rest of the time you are basically running with yourself. It's like playing solitaire on a high-stakes poker table..."