"The bicycle supplies a new pleasure - the pleasure of going where one wills, because one wills. Riding the wheel, our own powers are revealed to us. You have conquered a new world, and exultingly you take possession of it."
- Marie E. Ward, 1896
My Story: Globetrotting from Running into Cycling...

Page 1 2 3 4       Lilli The (Ex-)Runner    Lilli The Traveler

Learning from the Kenyans

Shortly after the completion of my exchange semester in Toulouse with an MBA diploma in my pocket I packed up my belongings and moved for the 5th time in 7 months... this time from France to yet another and new destination: Great Britain. I spent the summer 2004 doing an internship at PACE Sports Management (formerly knowns as KIM) in the Western outskirts of metropolitan London, the modern melting pot on European soil. PACE is one of the leading athlete management agencies in the sport of Track & Field. It represents world class athletes from around the world, negotiating contracts, managing athletes' lives, training, and racing during the European season with base in London. The majority of PACE athletes are distance runners from East Africa, mostly Kenya. World Champions are as common to find on the PACE roster as Olympic Champions.

During my internship I was living together with the athletes managed by PACE. My roommates' names, countries of origin, and specialty T&F events were changing every other week or day; athletes coming and going from and to T&F meetings, coming and going from and to their native countries. Most of the time I was living with Kenyans. If you live and work so closely with those world-class athletes from countries the small and myopic cycling world could only dream of getting to know, you get a very good inside view not only on the lives of those - to us Westerners - exotic athletes, but the lives of them as humans, as Kenyans, as Jamaicans, as Rwandans, Tanzanians, Grenadans, etc.... I had many very interesting conversations with my diverse roommates, the Kenyans in particular. I had the chance to be part of their lives and Europe-imported Kenyan customs such as Ugali and brown sugar with tea.

This 2-month-long experience with PACE left a deep impression on me. I learned a lot from my dear Kenyan friends, from their attitude towards athletics and life. The more perspectives you get to know, the more they change yours and open up and expand your personal horizon. You always learn the most from people that are different from you, that come from different ethnical backgrounds, and lead different lives. One very special Kenyan I learned from was Sally Barsosio. The both of us have been friends since 1993 where we met before the World T&F Championships in Stuttgart. Back then we were little 15-year-old girls speaking only limited English. Language differences, however, were no boundary for us to communicate and begin a new cross-cultural friendship. Sally and I met four times since 1993: at the World Cross Country Championships in 1997 and 2000 where we both represented our countries of origin...very different countries of origin; 2004 I came watch the World XC Championship and cheer on my former runner peers but still-friends from all over the world, Sally included.

Later on in the same year I did my internship at Sally's management agency in London. So one day in 2004 those two shy little and so different looking girls with broken English from 1993 got reunited. Sally and I shared an apartment with two other Kenyan runners (two-time World Champion Richard Limo was one of them). For the first time in 11 years Sally and I got to talk, REALLY talk... in fluent English and without shyness as grown-up (at least physically ;-)) women. It was so good to talk to Sally about everything. From her I learned a lot as well about her attitude towards running, towards life, and how to keep confident and relaxed despite passing through rough times with less success. Before Sally and I parted again for we don't know how many years, we made a deal. In a few years we will see whether the two of us could keep our promises! :-)

"The Ditch" Story

Richmond Park, London/GBR, July 2004: There I was lying as horizontally in the ditch as my bike next to me. Frustration. Pure frustration and exhaustion. Something had to change, I had to change something. Things don't always just happen, you need to make them happen! Proaction was the call of the day for me...

"You will feel it when you are ready!". These were the words Marion (Clignet) had written to me some day in the summer of 2004. At that time, I was training a bit on the bike, had gotten a first taste of cycling in the spring in France participating in a few regional-level women's races. I was hesitant, very hesitant to decide what I should do. Should I try out cycling? I knew one thing: Either I would do it all, or nothing at all. No half things, that's not Lilli-Hammer style.

In all of 2004 I was a "burnt child", very burnt from my life-long experiences as a runner. I got so much out of running, so many doors had been opened up to me through my capacities as a T&F athlete, and I do not want to miss any of those experiences for nothing in the world. However, I was also quite traumatized in a way. I was very burned out when I quit the sport in 2002. I had zero intentions whatsoever to ever return to competitive athletics. I had a party in Arkansas the day after I retired from running. I was so relieved it was over. I managed to close the chapter forever that day. I never looked back in regret. Track&Field is a wonderful, fascinating sport, but it was not meant to be my sport as an athlete as I realized after 20 years of competing in it.

During my initial steps into the sport of cycling in early 2004, I found myself very timid, very hesitant, very fearful. On the one hand cycling attracted me a lot. I had this certain gut feeling that this may be it... this may be the sport I should pursue. I really enjoyed cycling along the French roads around Toulouse...alone...discovering a new world - both the world of cycling and the world of the South of France. However, at the same time I was so extremely afraid I would start hating cycling like I hated running in the end of my career. I did not want to hate cycling. I was afraid I would start hating cycling when I started competing in that sport... so I wasn't very keen on the idea to compete. Once OK to see. Maybe once or twice more to further see but no, that's enough for now. I wanted to prevent myself from hating this new, so fascinating-looking sport. So I only competed in a few cycling races in 2004. I was too afraid the same thing would happen in cycling as in running: Hatred of interval training, hatred of competition. No, I did not want to go through the same in cycling as in running... no, I was not ready to go for it and jump into the sport of cycling in early 2004.

Marion knew what was going on inside me during all that time. "You will feel it when you are ready (for cycling)!" were her words that have been sticking to my head ever since. I will never forget those words she wrote to me when I was in London working full-time as an athlete manager intern cycling a bit along the way. Then came that day in Richmond Park lying horizontally in the ditch next to the road on the park's steepest incline... lying there full of frustration and exhaustion, looking into the blue London summer sky. And I felt it! I felt I was ready for cycling! So I started to make it happen...

All summer long I had been juggling full-time work with trying to train on the bike. It didn't work. It was too much. Waiting for hours on the cold morning ground in front of the Russian Embassy in Central London to pick up visas for our PACE athletes gave my stressed body the edge and damaged my immune system enough for me to not be able to train any more. That day in Richmond Park I tried to do a workout...5 minute intervals...no way...then I tried one-minute intervals... no way, either... in the middle of the second interval I had to step off the bike, threw it in the ditch and made myself follow it on the ground as well... there I was lying on the grass next to both my bike and fresh-smelling deer shit looking into the sky thinking...thinking hard... no, this couldn't go on! I had to change something. If I really wanted to do this, I had to change something. DO I want to do this? DO I want to ride a bike????

YES, I DO!

So I made it happen and asked my employers at PACE to let me leave a few days earlier to go to Switzerland for altitude training before I had my first race planned in Germany in the end of August. For the fall of 2004 I had already set up another internship at Shimano in Stuttgart. I was going to do a project in market research for Shimano Cycling Wear that would last until December. But what would I do after December 2004? I knew it now lying in the ditch in London's Richmond Park: I would go for it all the way, take the risk, and concentrate 100% on cycling for 2 years. If I could prove myself, finance my life as a cyclist, and - most importantly - love what I was doing, then I would continue my journey as a professional cyclist... but how far this journey would last, only the stars know. On that day I knew: I will do this for 2 years. Whatever happens after, I did not know. So in December of 2004 I packed up my belonging once again... to move to Limoux, a small townn in the Pays Cathare in the French foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, and start my journey as a cyclist.

Life is short, too short, and you better get the most fulfilling out of it! I do not want to look back later on and think "If only I....!". I do not want to wait to have regrets. And I do not want to be an ordinary person leading an ordinary life. The ordinary depresses me. I was not ready to begin the ordinary life of an MBA-trained businesswoman. No, that would mean death sentence to me. I wasn't ready for death sentence at the young age of 26. I wanted to experience as much as possible, as many exotic and out-of-the-ordinary things as possible. I wanted to test myself and challenge myself, I wanted to find what I was destined to do as a human. I felt like I left something behind undone in sports. I knew I had athletic talent. I knew I had more talent than what I showed in Track & Field. You can only reach your full potential in something you love. Maybe this love was what I stumbled into in the South of France through a certain special person named Marion Clignet??? I do not know. I had to go and try to find out, I thought to myself... so I was bound to try out from December 2004 on! And my cycling story still continued...