Many people come to Kenya to see rare, endangered species. Few people, to my knowledge at least, come to see the weirdest of all species: the desperate average standard runner who prefers to go for a run after a night on a plane without sleep than go to bed.

Hello.

I had last been in Kenya in 2009, at a time when the idea of running more than a lap of the park wasn’t even on my radar. Which is a shame, as I might have had more time back then to go “properly” running in the high altitude plateaus in central Kenya than this time around, when I was on a 3-countries in 5 days work trip (and not exactly neighbouring countries: Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria). I did, however, #humblebrag, get to meet the Kenyan President on this trip, so that was cool.

Anyway, with barely a day and a bit in Kenya and a full day of that taken up by a pretty relentless schedule and the rest of the day taken up by what I consider to be “far too hot to run” temperatures, the only realistic slot to get out for a run was … right after I got to my hotel, around 6am with three hours of very broken sleep.

After a quick bit of searching on Strava for routes which seemed to be frequently use (i.e. where is there the densest amount of “blue lines” on the map), I settled on this Karura Forest nearby which, for a lack of alternatives, seemed like a decent choice. (As it happens, the next day, speaking to our hosts, they mentioned two nice places to go: the National Park and Karura Forest so I stumbled upon a nice place by luck!)

I considered running there from the hotel but was advised not to as unsafe. To be honest, I’m pretty sure it was safe enough but it was a good, unnecessary, 7km away so Uber it was!

And what a find! No wonder everyone runs here!

The forest is, well, a forest … you’re welcome. But it’s a properly thick forest which keeps it cooler than the surrounding area (pleasantly so!).

As it turned out, this was specifically important as, when you enter the park, they do a full bomb-sweep of the car and vehicles to …. remove all plastic bottles. Now, I fully get the point: they don’t want people to bin single-use plastic bottles in the park. However, in my instance, I was precisely multiple-using a bottle which I’d planned on reusing later many times to avoid the single-use issue and this multiple-use-to-be bottle had now – much to my dehydratable-self’s concern – become very much single use. Ugh. Gulp gulp gulp. One empty bottle. And we’re off.

Within about 100 meters, I had almost had two heart attacks. Thankfully, this was the steepest section the whole park (or at least of my run).

From there onwards, it was much more relaxed and actually overall pretty pleasant with the birdsong in the background (not that I could tell you what birds they were) and nice greenery. As this was a zombie-like-sleep-deprived run, I wasn’t taking it “too” seriously as I was in no rush so stopped here and there to see what was on offer, such as some Mau Mau caves (pictur ebelow). I also kept stopping to check my phone to avoid adding too many extra kilometres to the run, though the whole place was pretty well sign posted.

After half an hour or so, I noticed a person running past me with a bib. Which seemed a bit odd. Then another. Then many more. Mmm. Turns out … there was a 5km and 10km race on that very morning in the forest! Damn it! This said, I was more amused than disappointed: realistically, it would have been quasi-impossible to actually know about it + it was still too warm for me and I was also still shaking off a virus from the previous week.  

All in all, it was a lovely place to go and I feel a bit of “hidden gem” off the usual tourist trail (animals). Based on my quick scan of Strava in central Nairobi, it feels like the only “main route” to use so, in case you happen to be in Nairobi and in need of a shake-out, I’d definitely recommend it (just bring a non-disposable bottle with you!).

Scenery

Sun

Speed