world - Berlin, Boston, New York, Chicago, Paris and London. There may be other factors contributing to this, but their high altitude training definitely has a lot to do with it. Critics of the high altitude training philosophy argue that athletes who train at these elevations lose their speed as their bodies start adapting slower performance in order to utilize the little amount of oxygen available there. On the other hand, those who support high altitude training use the same fact of the thinner air available there to explain how it helps athletes in- crease their performance in their races. I am not a scientist, but I am an athlete and I know how training in higher altitude has affected my perform- ance and that of my fellow Kenyan athletes through my experience in run- ning. The first time, when I was enrolled to Kapsait Nike Athletics Training Camp, which is situated at one of the highest points in the Rift Valley, I found it very hard to train and I was gasping for breath even while doing a simple jog in the morning. Three months later, I attended a 10km road race at


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