Haile Gebreselassie the greatest

Skinfit UK Brand Ambassador Asker Jeukendrup recently spent some time in Ethiopia with the great distance runner, Haile Gebreselaisse. Here is Asker's account of his visit to Addis Ababa.

As an exercise physiologist / sports and exercise nutritionist I had opportunity to work with Haile Gebreselassie, the greatest distance runner of all times. Over the years I have provided nutrition advice to a number of elite athletes, in various sports, who achieved incredible things, but Haile has always been one of my favourite athletes. With 27 world records, and numerous Gold medals in Olympic Games and World Championships it is no surprise that they call him "the Greatest", "the Emperor".

I flew into Addis Ababa in Ethiopia for a week to do a number of tests with Haile, the goal of which was to help him to break his own world record for the marathon and to get him ready for the London 2012 games (when he will be 38 years old). I had met Haile several times in the past, in Portugal when he was trying to break the half marathon world record, in Beijing at the Olympic Games and at his house in Addis Ababa and he is without doubt one of the most impressive athletes I have ever come across. Haile is not only an amazing athlete, he is also an amazing businessman and person. Always on the phone, employing over 500 people and running a successful business in between two training sessions a day. Clearly he is hardly an average athlete. Although he is extremely busy, he still has time to say hi to everyone on the streets of Addis and is always smiling. He is the nation's big hero and he makes so many people happy by just saying hi or shaking their hands. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world and many live in the streets hoping to find a way to make a bit of money to buy the food for that day. When Haile drives past in his silver Mercedes, which he won when he became world champion in Stuttgart in 1993, the lively Addis Ababa comes to a standstill, everyone looks up in admiration.

Haile owns a large office building in Bole near the airport in Addis where he runs a gym on the ground floor. You will find a coffee shop / restaurant on the first floor and Haile's office on the 8th. In the afternoon when he goes for his second training session of the day you can often find him in that gym. I carried the equipment to measure oxygen uptake and carbohydrate and fat utilization with me in the plane and I set up a lab in Haile's gym. I converted part of the gym into a laboratory to perform the fanciest exercise physiology studies ever performed on Ethiopian soil.

The testing was most impressive, not because of the fancy equipment I brought (although that attracted a lot of attention too) because of the speed and ease that Haile ran on the treadmill. Like a metronome, hardly touching the treadmill, he ran 24 km in 90 min, whilst I was doing all of these measurements. In fact he finished the test at 22 kph after having done a 2 hour hard run session that morning! For obvious reasons I can't share his results but believe me they were impressive. Haile's next goal will be the marathon of Berlin on September 20.