What do you prefer to do

What do you prefer to do in training: long endurance runs or tempo training on the track? I like speed runs. But I also put in 120 kilometres of training some weeks. And I have also gone on a 32-kilometre run - it was in the woods around Portland and I was just enjoying the nature. The strange thing about me is that for such long runs, the first 40, 50 minutes are always a bit hard for me. After that it becomes easy and I don’t get tired. I feel like I can just keep on running forever. How did your running career start? Did you already run when you lived in Ethiopia or did you start the sport after your arrival in the Netherlands? I have been running as long as I can remember. In Ethiopia, this is just part of play for children. You have so much space, you spend the whole day outside, playing catch and hide and seek, and you are on the move all day long. That continues at school. In Ethiopia, there is a daily sports lesson for all students. Everyone has to join in, and it was a lot of fun for me. I also played volleyball, but I was not so good at it. I stuck with running. And how did you come to competitive sports after you fled Ethiopia to the Netherlands? I wanted to do sports, to be outside moving around. At the time everyone said that it would be too expensive, that I could not afford it. So, I started running. I could do that anywhere, it was free, and people realized that I was pretty fast and talented. That‘s how it got started. In the meantime, you mainly train in the USA with Alberto Salazar in the Oregon Project. How much time do you spend with him in Portland? Three or four months a year. Of course, I‘m also often in train- 48

ning camps. At home in Holland I train at the national training centre in Arnhem. Many top athletes from different sports gather there. Most recently, however, I spent four weeks in an altitude training camp - for the first time in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa. That was something special for me. Since autumn, the great German hopeful Konstanze Klosterhalfen has been training in Portland, Oregon. Have you trained there together? No, we have not been there at the same time. But I know her well. She is a great person and has a lot of talent. She is a little bit similar to you, with her versatility and success on the 800-5000 metre courses ... … I think she might be able to be even better than me. Interview: Christian Ermert 03. AUGUST BERLIN-CITYNIGHT.DE #ARCN