Winny Kosgey will be running a virtual Ottawa 10km road race in the North Rift on Tuesday.
The race that was postponed due to coronavirus, failed to travel to Canada just like others across the world.
However, she will still run the Ottawa 10km race, and has the possibility of bagging prize money.
Virtual running seems to be the way forward now for athletes as they wait for the virus to be contained.
Kosgey who trains in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County will be the first Kenyan to compete in the virtual race.
The virtual race requires an athlete to compete alone at his or her own pace, adhering to social distancing regulations provided by the government and Ministry of Health.
She said she has been promoting social distancing in sport, and, at the same time, competing to raise money for charity for a children’s hospital in Canada.
She will be running alone, with her husband a freelancer journalist Justin Lagat, and her daughter, Berylynn Jerotich, monitoring her progress from a trailing car.
After the race, she will be able to transfer data from her Garmin watch to her phone by paring to upload to a Garmin Connect App, before relaying the Garmin file to Sportstats, another App which compiles results.
The window for the race started on May 15 and will run until September 7 before the results are combined and final tally produced and a winner declared.
According to Kosgey, it’s a tricky affair to run alone and the high altitude will also be a challenge for the East African athletes compared to those who run in low altitude like Europe and Asia.
“I have done good training and I will be targeting to run a pace of three minutes and 30 seconds per kilometre, targeting 34 minutes in the race
“But the problem with virtual running is that the altitude varies. Those of us at the high altitude will be record slower time compared to those who are in Europe and Asia,” added Kosgei.
Over the weekend World marathon record holder Eliud Kipchoge, will join world half marathon record holder Geoffrey Kamworor, Commonwelath Games 10,000m champion Joshua Cheptegei and berl;in marathon winner will be facing off in the virtual marathon.
Source: Daily Nation