One of my favorite running coaches of all time is an Italian mastermind, Renato Canova. To provide some context, he has coached Olympic and World Champions as well as major marathon winners. His focus on the minute details of training have always provided quality training insight and one of his philosophies comes from the athletes he coaches.
Renato was talking about an Olympic silver medalist's brother, Christopher Koskei, who was a dominant force in the late 90's and mentioned his brother Shaheen.
“The younger brother [Shaheen] took the example of this bad management of quality and changed completely to the opposite. He is completely professional in every moment of his life—when he has an injury, when he has to rest—everything. He has a very nice house in Eldoret, and stays in training in Iten in a camp, that—I don’t know—is not very different to where there are sheep. And he says, ‘For training I need four walls, one roof, one bed and two blankets, because it may be cold.’ And it’s [at an elevation of] 2,300 meters—nothing else. And he is very rich, and can have a very soft, comfortable life in his house that is just 30 kilometers away! Thirty kilometers away, and he goes there one time a week, on Sunday. The other days he stays always in Iten, in this type of camp. Because this is the complete—the real type of motivation." -Renato
Shaheen focused on living a more uncomfortable life that was more conducive to mental toughness.
By this alone, I always made sure to put a major caveat on living a simple life as the greats.
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