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Hofbauer hopes training in Kenya helps him win on Calgary Marathon weekend

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This wasn’t a kick-your-feet-up excursion.

More like a kick-dust-up excursion.

Trevor Hofbauer, who is among the hometown favourites in Sunday’s Canadian Half Marathon Championships on Scotiabank Calgary Marathon weekend, spent nearly six weeks this winter in Iten, Kenya, a high-altitude training base for some of the fastest folks on the planet.

“You’d wake up at 6 o’clock, get out for a run at 6:30 a.m. and that’s when the sun comes up. So instead of hearing birds in the trees, you’d hear monkeys,” said Hofbauer, describing an average day at a famed camp that was founded by several-time world champion Lornah Kiplaget and sits nearly 8,000 feet above sea level.

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“So you’d go for a run for about an hour or an hour-and-a-half in the morning, come back and have breakfast, go for a two-hour nap, have lunch, read a book in the afternoon and then go for another run in the evening, which would be about 45 minutes. Then go to the gym, have dinner and call it a day.

“It was really cool.”

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On Sunday, on home pavement, Hofbauer hopes all that training will pay dividends.

The Centaur Subaru 21.1K/Canadian Half Marathon Championships is one of the highlights of a busy schedule that also includes an ultra marathon (50 km), a marathon (42.2 km), a 10-km race and a family fun run that covers 5 km. All told, more than 8,500 participants will lace ’em up on what is expected to be a sunny morning.

Kip Kangogo, of Lethbridge, and Rachel Hannah, of Guelph, Ont., are the defending champions in the half marathon. Kangogo completed the route in 1:06:27 last May, while Hannah crossed the finish line in 1:17:16.

Hofbauer’s target time for Sunday’s showdown?

“Just one second faster than second place,” he said with a chuckle.

During his stay in Iten, the 26-year-old from Calgary learned from trying to keep pace with the fleet-footed company, although the lessons of his trip went far beyond his experiences on the hilly terrain.

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“It’s a completely different world from a cultural perspective,” said Hofbauer, a SAIT Trojans alum. “I just compared my lifestyle in North America to how people there lived, and I realized that you can get by with much less than what you currently have. That was the biggest takeaway is just focusing on your necessities to live rather than wanting all the material items and trying to show off your wealth.

“And from an athletic perspective, those athletes don’t have anything except for sport and they push each other and they thrive,” he continued. “Seeing the groups of Kenyan athletes train together and seeing how hard they work … They don’t have the crazy technology-boosting running shoes that we do. They have shoes from 10 years ago that are completely worn out, that do not even have an outsole to them to anymore. You see guys like that who are kicking your butt every day, and you experience their drive and desire to be better, and that rubs off on you because you know that people are working harder than you.

“From a competitive standpoint, if somebody else is working harder than you, they’re going to be better than you. So you have to work harder than that guy. It just adds motivation.”

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There’s certainly no lack of motivation Sunday.

Hofbauer moved back to Calgary earlier this month after being based in Guelph for about a year-and-a-half.

The Canadian Half Marathon Championships will be contested in Winnipeg starting in 2019, so this could be his last crack at winning the title on his home soil.

“Being at home, everybody wants to know how you ran immediately after the race, so I feel accountable for my performance, no matter if it’s good or bad,” Hofbauer said. “There’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders to perform for your community, and you just have to make sure that you put a smile on their faces.”

wgilbertson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/WesGilbertson

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