Kenenisa Bekele announced this week that he will chase a PR on January 23, 2015 at the Dubai Marathon, under his new coach Renato Canova. This comes after a disappointing performance at the 2014 Chicago Marathon, from the man who owns the world records at 5,000m and 10,000m, three Olympic gold medals and 11 world cross country titles. For a moment in October, he appeared mortal and that is where Running Times found him, contemplating his future in competing at the perplexing distance.

***

It’s 2:30 p.m. on a sunny Chicago Sunday, and the greatest distance runner of this generation is asleep. This is an immediate, face-to-the-pillow, one-minute-you’re-getting-dressed-and-then-you’re-horizontal kind of sleep. It is a sleep without dreams.

Several floors below, running celebrities and amateurs alike mill around the Hilton Chicago’s concourse in various states of disrepair after that morning’s 2014 Chicago Marathon. Men’s champion Eliud Kipchoge is reclining on carpeted stairs beside his training partner, Bernard Koech. They laugh and chat in Swahili while U.S. Olympians Deena Kastor and Dathan Ritzenhein—brought in for publicity—line up for coffee across the hall. Five-hour marathoners with large medals draped around their necks enter the hotel and head straight for the elevators. Carey Pinkowski, race director, is chatting up one of the world’s most powerful agents.

Everywhere there is hustle and bustle and Mylar, except upstairs where Kenenisa Bekele sleeps in silence. He’s just run 2:05:51 for fourth place in his second marathon, 47 seconds slower than his debut at the 2014 Paris Marathon in April.

Jet-lagged. Exhausted. Inexperienced. Undertrained. The explanations for his lackluster performance—and, by extension, this nap—swirl online and downstairs among the media, coaches and runners. When push came to shove, a trio of Kenyans ran away from Bekele. His coronation as the GOAT—Greatest of All Time—is on hold.

“Hey, it’s just a few hours after the race. Let him sleep,” says his agent, Jos Hermens, in between calls to Bekele’s room that go unanswered. “But this is the moment he needs to wake up. This is a very good wake-up call for him.”

***

For those who watched his run of unmatched brilliance at the beginning of the century, Bekele needing a wake-up call sounds blasphemous. In 2002, at the age of 19, he earned his first senior world cross country title. At 22, he won Olympic gold at 10,000m. To date Bekele has amassed 19 gold medals at championship events, including double gold in the 5,000m and 10,000m at the 2008 Olympics and 2009 world championships. No one has come close to challenging his world records at 5,000m (12:37.35) and 10,000m (26:17.53) in almost a decade.

“I would say that Bekele had an aura of invincibility,” says former U.S. 10,000m record-holder Chris Solinsky, who raced him numerous times on the European track circuit. Bekele’s versatility made him especially difficult to beat. He could drop a 52-second last lap in a tactical race or a sub-4-minute mile off an honest pace. And, if neither of those tactics worked, he could combine them in a deadly fashion, as Solinsky learned in the 5,000m at the 2009 world championships.

“I believed that if I sat behind Bekele and shadowed him, I had a fast enough finish to get a medal,” he says. “What I didn’t realize was how strong he was. I covered every single surge, which turned out to be a bad idea, because he was alternating randomly between 61, 70 and 65 per lap. By doing this he was taking the kick out of everyone, especially me. Bekele was completely aerobic at the bell while everyone else was cashed out.”

For all his track accolades, Bekele was at his best on the grass. He won 11 world cross country championships: six long (12 kilometers) and five short (4 kilometers) courses, many on back-to-back days, against competition deeper than an Olympic final. “I always say when you film Kenenisa from the ankles up, you can’t tell if he’s running in the mud, [or on the] grass, road or track,” Hermens says. “Cross country was incredible. All the people are slipping, and Kenenisa is like a tank.”

Still, Bekele ran in the shadow of countryman Haile Gebrselassie. “The Emperor,” as Gebrselassie is affectionately known, won two Olympic golds and set every world record between 2,000m to 10,000m during his prime in the late 1990s. While lacking Bekele’s cross country credentials, Gebrselassie added the marathon world record in 2008. In between those achievements, Gebrselassie cultivated a business empire in Ethiopia while still connecting with the masses as a humble, hardworking humanitarian. His story resonated all the way to Hollywood, where Disney released his full-length biopic, Endurance, in 1998.

“When I met Haile, he had this natural smile,” says Hermens, who also served as his agent. “I cultivated it a little in all the interviews. Sahk is smile in Amharic, so all the time during interviews I’m saying, ‘Sahk! Sahk!’ in the background.” The smile made Gebrselassie a legend.

Victor Sailer/PhotoRun

Bekele dreamed of reaching similar heights, declaring as early as 2004 that he wanted it all, including the marathon. But before he could win more medals on the track or transition to the roads, a string of calf injuries sidelined him starting in 2010. He struggled for the next three years to stay healthy and recapture his old form. On limited training, he finished fourth in the 2012 Olympic 10,000m, one spot behind his younger brother Tariku.

“The hardest part of coming back from a traumatic injury is being able to erase the memories of how everything used to feel in workouts and races,” says Solinsky, who lost his own 2011 and 2012 seasons after tearing his left hamstring off his pelvic bone. “You need to let those expectations go when trying to get back to a high level.”

By the time Bekele returned to full training in 2013, his track days were over. But as he showed in his half marathon debut at the Great North Run in England, he was far from finished as an elite runner. Absorbing surges from reigning Olympic 10,000m champion Mo Farah and Gebrselassie for 13 miles, he unleashed his patented kick to win in the final straight. After that race, no one doubted his future.

“I told him, ‘You have four more years. If you really want to compete with Haile, you have to break the world record and win the Olympic marathon,’” Hermens says. “He’s already better than Haile with all his cross country titles. We have a goal, a mission, to break the world record and be the Olympic marathon champion. Then he’s the best athlete ever.”

***

Bekele wakes from his dreamless sleep because his family is hungry. The children have not eaten since the morning, and the sun’s descent quickens every second. Bekele throws on an inconspicuous black parka and black pants and the family rides the elevator down to the lobby. The children want comfort food—Ethiopian—so for the first time since that morning, Bekele steps back onto the streets of Chicago and hails a taxi. They begin loading into the Dodge Caravan until Hermens intercepts them. An obligation awaits.

“Can he not come back later?” Bekele asks, pointing at the reporter. “I don’t want to talk about the race.”

“He doesn’t want to talk about the race either,” Hermens says. “He wants to talk about Bekoji.”

“Just Bekoji?”

“Yes. Bekoji and some other things. Nice things.”

Bekele’s wife, movie star Danawit Gebregziabher, holds the cab while the children stand silently. Turning their backs on Hermens, they have an animated discussion in Amharic. Finally Gebregziabher sighs and the family unloads and steps back inside the lobby to keep out of the blustery winds that sweep between the skyscrapers in erratic bursts. “Five minutes,” Bekele says.

He leads the way to a quieter part of the hotel, to a place where no one will bother him. He does not limp or hobble or take the stairs backwards. In a small alcove he reclines against a wall. “So,” Bekele says. “Bekoji. What do you want to know?”

Everything. If the Great Rift Valley is the cradle of running, then Bekoji is the precocious child nestled inside, a genetic gold mine forged with humbleness and hard work. This small ranching community of 17,000 sits at 9,200 feet above sea level and has produced seven Olympians and 16 Olympic medals, 10 of them gold.

Many of those medals came in the last decade from runners like Bekele, Tariku and the Dibaba sisters, Tirunesh and Ejegayehu. (Not to be outdone, the youngest Dibaba sister, Genzebe, set indoor world records in the 1500m and 3,000m in 2014.)

But as a child, the idea that he was destined to be a runner never crossed Bekele’s mind, even after seeing the Dibabas’ cousin, Derartu Tulu, win gold in the 10,000m in the 1992 Olympic Games.

“When I was very young, playing football with my friends, my primary school sports teacher saw me and invited me to run,” Bekele says. “‘Maybe in the future, if you are prepared, if you are trained, you can become a good runner.’ At that time I couldn’t feel that I was a good runner or not. I wasn’t feeling confident or sure of it. I thought maybe he was joking with me.”

Since Kenenisa Bekele set the 10,000-meter world record of 26:17.53 in 2005, the world marathon record has been reduced by almost 2 minutes. PhotoRun

Bekele’s talent soon became apparent, and he was selected to represent his home region of Oromia in national competition. He ran well in the capital of Addis Ababa (home to the only synthetic track in the country at that time) and soon joined a club there that paid a small stipend. Bekele wasn’t ready to leave his family and hometown, he says, but acknowledges that it wasn’t his decision. “There is no club in Bekoji. In Addis there are 10, maybe 15. This is a gift of God. There are thousands of athletes, but from that, only a few athletes can really achieve.”

Training in the capital as an elite junior, Bekele watched from the front row as Gebrselassie dominated in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He considered Gebrselassie a mentor and trained with him during the camps in Addis that preceded major competitions. In 2003 he beat the Emperor for the first time on the track at the 10,000m world championships, part of an Ethiopian sweep of the medals. At the Athens Olympics the next year, Bekele slowed the pace in the closing kilometers of the 10,000m to allow an ailing Gebrselassie to stay in medal contention, but their roles had already shifted. (Gebrselassie finished fifth.)

Bekele could control the outcomes of races, but not the way he was perceived off the track. Bekele is famous in Ethiopia; Gebrselassie is beloved.

“I love them both,” Hermens says, “but you know Kenenisa is maybe more challenging. You look at his strength—his strength is being silent. So we had to use that strength and market him as the secret guy. Haile gets energy from talking with you. Kenenisa loses energy. For Haile a press conference is fun, to meet people in the street is exciting. It’s like he’s taking your energy. With Kenenisa, he gives you his energy and is like, bleh.”

With time running out for the more reclusive Bekele, firming his grip on greatest runner status comes down to the marathon. Historically, elite track athletes have struggled in their debuts. Gebrselassie ran 2:06 on his first two attempts, and his rival, Paul Tergat, finished in 2:08:15 and 2:08:56 for his first two marathons. Both went on to set world records in the event. The Emperor’s mark of 2:03:59 lasted from 2008 until 2013. In those five years, though, the sport underwent a seismic shift.

“Marathoning has changed so much from 2008,” says Ritzenhein, who struggled to run 2:14 in his debut before eventually running 2:07. “Athletes are young and hungry, and they are willing to risk so much. They can train so hard, and if they hold up and hit it out of the park then it is worth it for them.”

Ritzenhein is speaking specifically of young Kenyans and Ethiopians who are following the money off the track and onto the roads at increasingly younger ages. This has markedly increased the depth of competition. Only six men broke 2:06 in 2008. By 2012, that number jumped to 22.

From the outside, Bekele seemed to recognize the magnitude of this shift when prepping for his April 2014 debut in Paris. Reports circulated of weekly 3-hour runs and fantastic repeats on the track he built in the Addis suburb of Sululta. In Paris he did not disappoint, running 2:05:04 for an unchallenged win on a hilly course. Common sense held that if you gave Bekele six more months to prepare for a fast course, records would fall. Right?

***

Befitting his quiet, secretive nature, Bekele spent his buildup to Chicago training with just his brother and his coach, Mersha Ashrat, in Sululta. With no American contenders in the men’s field, all attention focused on Bekele and Kipchoge. Going into the race, both expressed interest in chasing world-record holder Dennis Kimetto’s course record of 2:03:45. Stacking things in Bekele’s favor, Tariku planned to pace his brother to 18 miles.

Except the race never played out that way. The pace started a touch slow. A headwind blew off Lake Michigan. When the lead pack passed halfway in 1:02:11, Tariku dropped out.

In the end Bekele would fade in Chicago’s ethnic neighborhoods on the southwest side. The multilingual chants in Little Italy (Corra, Bekele!), Pilsen (¡Vamos, Bekele! ¡Vamos!), and Chinatown (Hé tāmen dāi zài yīqǐ) created excitement, but not results. With every stride—every beautiful, pitch-perfect stride—Bekele lost a little ground to Kipchoge, Sammy Kitwara and Dickson Chumba. There was no decisive move, just atrophy. He finished 1:40 behind Kipchoge.

“It’s not easy,” Bekele says, still leaning against the wall. “More than the race, training is very important. Maybe I made a mistake during training, or sometimes the training I did is maybe not enough for competition. I need to train better and [need] more scientific training with a good coach.”

In his defense, Bekele crisscrossed the globe with his family only three days before competing, leaving him heavily jet-lagged (Addis is nine hours ahead of Chicago). That may have played a role, but Hermens points to several more fundamental errors that hampered Bekele’s performance in his second marathon:

Insufficient volume. After the Paris Marathon, Bekele said running 120 miles per week zapped his legs of their native speed. Accordingly, he dropped his mileage by 15 percent leading up to Chicago. “I only learned that at the press conference,” says Hermens, who sees Bekele about six times a year. “If he has trained less here than for Paris, then now I understand why he’s running 50 seconds slower on a better course.”

Too few long runs, many done at an improper pace. “I think in his training he is still a 10,000m runner,” Hermens says. Despite claims of 3-hour runs before Paris, Bekele ran only one 24-miler between April and October and struggled to regularly run even two hours at a time. Hermens believes those runs were also too fast. “Instead of going easy and getting into the fat burning, it’s all, ‘Jos, this is too boring. At two hours, I hate it.’” The lack of muscular endurance and the carbohydrate depletion doomed Bekele’s shot at a fast time in Chicago.

Underestimating the event. After a great debut, Bekele believed racing on a faster course like Chicago would naturally make him faster. “Paris was too easy for him,” Hermans says. “He can run 2:02, no doubt, but he’s got to be serious, and he’s not getting any younger. He doesn’t like to lose, so this is good.”

***

Kenenisa Bekele hopes to be number 1 in his second marathon. PhotoRun

In the busier part of the lobby, Hermens and renowned marathon coach Renato Canova discuss collaborating on Bekele’s training in the future. Former Boston Marathon champion Wesley Korir talks about the movie “Transcend” with one of his many acquaintances. Six-hour runners are now entering through the main doors with medals around their necks and ride the elevator up to warm showers and plush beds and all the expected amenities of the developed world. Bekele’s children squirm with hunger and impatience as the sun sinks farther.

Only the alcove remains quiet. There are no clocks or windows here, no sense of time. Bekele stands erectly now, using his hands to fill in the gaps when his English takes longer to call up. He is talking about never being nervous when racing his fiercest rivals like Gebrselassie, Farah and Kipchoge. “Why am I afraid?” he asks, rhetorically. “If I’m afraid, how can I win? If I lose, well, it’s a challenge. You can lose. Sports, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I don’t care what people think, anything can happen. I just have to be ready and keep training.”

He grows reflective, animated. “It’s not easy, you know, staying out from the results for three years because of injuries and coming back and running 2:05,” he says. “For me it was incredible. How many athletes can run 2:05? Of course [not winning Chicago] means I can’t say that I did enough. Of course I need to improve. I need to run better than this time. If you’re comparing with my performances at 5,000, 10,000, I’m expected to run faster.”

Bekele’s Paris time of 2:05:04 places him 47th on the all-time list and is 2 minutes and 7 seconds slower than the world record. Only for a runner like Bekele, who holds the world’s best at 5,000m and 10,000m, would 2:05 be considered a disappointment.

Gebrselassie was expected to run faster, too, and he ultimately delivered a world record—in his seventh marathon. The shadow of the Emperor remains inescapable, but Bekele welcomes it. “I have confidence that I can do this. If I work hard, if I train hard, nothing is impossible. The only thing is I need to learn and check out is training. I’m not worried about it. Every course, every race is different.”

White-haired Hermens approaches and taps Bekele on the shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Hermens says, pointing to his watch. “It’s been 14 minutes. Your wife says it’s time to go.”

The greatest runner of his generation gives a half smile and starts the short walk back to the lobby, to the hustle and bustle and Mylar. Bekele slips through it all out to Michigan Avenue, where a taxi waits to take his hungry family out to eat. The driver never even asks his name.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io