Not exactly the standard Western diet and certainly not what is expected for world class atheletes...
snip
...
Kenya's Kalenjin tribe — you usually find "Kip" in their surname — are legendary at winning medium- and long-distance races. For the past 40 years, they are the reason Kenya has dominated road running more than any other country. There's no secret to their success: They train at high elevation (Iten is 8,000 feet above sea level), which gives them strong hearts and lungs; they start running at early ages (some preteens will run 14 miles a day to and from school); and many are poor. They see winning races as the only escape from rural poverty.
And they eat pretty healthy, as do most Kenyans who have food. As I looked at the lean, quiet, sinewy young men and women sitting down to dinner, I saw plates piled high with carbohydrates.
"It's just normal Kenyan food — vegetables, spaghetti, ugali," said Wilson Kipsang, captain of the Kenyan marathon team.
The national dish, ugali, is a corn mush made from cornmeal and water that has the consistency of mashed potatoes and almost no taste; Kenyans usually sop it into whatever else is on the plate. Githeri is a mixture of boiled corn and kidney beans.Sukuma wiki is chopped boiled kale, which desperately needs Tabasco sauce. The competitive runners seldom eat meat. Beans supply most of their protein. For a snack, the runners eat roasted corn on the cob. No salt.
There are no vitamins or mineral supplements, no special protein drinks or sports drinks pumped full or electrolytes that you might find in Olympic kiosks and every corner store in other countries.
...
Separately I've read that many of these guys only get meat once a month or so and some are vegetarians by choice and sometimes by poverty.
Comments