Considering the fastest man in the world will be missing from the 3000m Steelechase competition at 11th IAAF World Championships in Athletics, Osaka, Japan (25 Aug to 2 Sep)., Sweden’s Mustafa Mohamed is surprisingly downbeat about his chances.

Despite now being the second fastest man in the field in Japan and in line for a medal, he would much rather be the third fastest and have his training partner, Paul Kipsiele Koech, there to pull the field around: “I’m sorry Paul’s not there, not only for his sake, but because he would have pushed the pace in the final and that would have helped me,” says Musse, as he is known in Sweden.

After that pronouncement and as if to confirm his point, Mohamed followed Koech home in Stockholm’s DN Galan IAAF Super Grand Prix 14 days ago in 8:07.83, while up front his training partner became the only man to break the 8min barrier this season.

That race confirmed Mohamed’s new status as the man who had just broken one of Swedish athletics most venerable records, Anders Gärderud’s 8:08.02, set in the 1976 Montreal Olympic final. One week before Stockholm, the man from Mogadishu had clocked 8:05.75 in Belgium and the DN Galan underlined the fact that it was no coincidence as Mohamed dipped under Gärderud’s mark for the second time. Sweden once again had a steeplechaser to be reckoned with on the world stage.

In fact, Koech helps Musse in more ways than one. Each winter, the Somalian-born Swede travels to Kenya where he trains with Koech and his colleagues from their training base at Kericho, about 25 miles from Nairobi.

Training in Kenya, ‘I learnt what hard training really is’

In contrast to the high-tech tartan tracks and cool forest trails of his adopted country, the facilities in Kenya are Spartan, but running is running no matter where it is done and it is the intensity that appeals to Mohamed.

“Before I went I thought I trained hard, but I learnt what hard training really is there,” said Mohamed. “Paul and the others taught me to push forward the boundaries.”

Mohamed also had to throw away any preconceptions he had about diet. “The Kenyans are good without paying attention to any particular diet. After the 6 a.m. session we drink tea and eat bread. Lunch is rice and beans and seldom changes. And dinner is cornmeal and a meat stew. Before I came here I had a picture of how important the right food was,” said Mohamed, implying all his contemporary preconceptions of diet have been demolished.

The day begins at sunrise and ends as the sun goes down around eight o’clock. In between times, there is training, eating and sleeping. “I have learnt to be tougher,” says Mohamed. “One of my aims this winter was to test my limits and not be afraid to hit the wall.”

No one who has seen Mohamed run over the last few seasons can doubt his ability to give his all. His time in Kenya has simply sharpened that urge as well as his performances. Fourth in last year’s European championships was useful, but with his nine-second improvement in Belgium, Musse has moved up to a new level, one that could bring him a medal in Osaka.

Following Gärderud’s recipe

Mohamed for one, though, is wary of statistics: “Ranking lists are not that simple,” he says. “There are a lot of runners I have never beaten who have been aiming for Osaka without trying to set any special times.”

Gärderud’s famous recipe for success was said to be 2x7x52x10: train twice a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year for ten years. Musse has added the ingredient of going into the enemy camp to hone his competitive edge. So far, the approach has yielded fruit. But Osaka will be the acid test of just how effective the new recipe is.

Michael Butcher for the IAAF