Meru County, Kenya – Every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, Wanjiru Kamau heads out from her home in Mikumbune village in South Imenti Constituency to run five kilometres (3.2 miles).She is 82 years old.The red-earthed roads of Meru County, in Kenya’s central highlands, roughly 314 kilometres from Nairobi, have become something close to a second home since a friend connected her to a local athletics group in 2017.“At first, people laughed at me, saying what I was doing was foolish,” Wanjiru says. “Since I began exercising and drinking water, my blood pressure is now normal, and I no longer get muscle spasms.”The group’s chairman, Stephen Michubu Linguya, welcomed her personally. She has not looked back since, though she has had to contend with the laughter that followed her out the door.Wanjiru is not alone.She is one of 80 members of the Meru chapter of Masters Athletics Kenya, a national network gathering athletes aged between 60 and 100. She trains alongside people younger than herself, without complaint and without fanfare, in a county increasingly associated with world-class athletic achievement.Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge and Faith Kipyegon, two of the greatest distan …
