Mo Farah leaves our man for dust on run in Kenyan heat

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A group of children cheered as we set off from the British team's training camp. It would be fair to assume their appreciation was for Farah and training partner Benedict Whitby, from Surrey, and not the older guy with the bandaged knee (me) who was already puffing.

Aficionados reckoned it would be an achievement if I - a 3 hour 30 minute marathon runner - kept up with the elites for a mile and they were about right. Farah was already in the groove and not up for a chat, perhaps thinking any moment of lost focus might diminish his chances of gold in London.

On the road to Eldoret, Kenya's fifth largest town, we passed the bungalow home of last year's London marathon winner Mary Keitany and got a wave from world 5,000 metre silver medallist Silvia Kibet out with young daughter.

In Iten, you are never far from a running legend. The exotic aromas of goats grazing by the road and the waft of charcoal-fuelled cookers certainly came as a change from running in Highgate Wood.

After barely 10 minutes along the roadside trail my heart was pounding hard and my ears ached as the pressure of running at 2,600 metres told. I pulled up and watched as the two runners disappeared into the distance. The rest of the run I observed from the photographer's car.

Farah was undeterred by the clouds of dust thrown up by cattle vans and cows in the road and miraculously avoided the many potholes and rocks.
This terrain is all part of the toughening up process.

Beaten but unbowed, I rejoined the runners for the final few hundred yards. My solace came from the famous saying of the founding father of the Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin: It's not the winning but the taking part that counts.