At 38, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge took nearly a minute off his previous marathon world record with a time of 2h01m09s. He has won 15 of the 17 marathons he has run and two gold medals at the Rio and Tokyo Olympics. Married with children, the same coach all his life, if I had to use a few words to talk about him, I would say he is an athlete who is enough.
Kipchoge is truly one with what he does. He is the one who runs 230km a week, who washes his running uniform by hand in a basin, who lives in a spartan room in a sports center in Kenya, who eats traditional foods from his homeland, who reads Confucius rather than Paul Coelho, who is quiet and runs by following his inner clock that gives him the pace, who writes down in a notebook the sensations of running and how his body and mind work.
He is totally involved in what he does, even though he is a world star. Sponsors and success can easily distract anyone, pulling them away from continuing to do what it takes to achieve their dreams. These habits of his keep him connected to the pleasure of struggling and finding ways to be stronger than the struggle itself. They are the link to the heart of his motivation, which is to take pleasure in what he does and to accept for this end, to live a life in which fatigue is an ongoing and decisive experience.
The one who can make sense of personal growth out of this link between pleasure and fatigue wins.
