She Runs, Boxes, Plays tennis to keep fit

Fifteen years ago, Sally Oimbo was overweight. Her body mass index was embarrassing. She was sluggish. She ate and drank anything and everything that “wasn’t poisonous.” Health was not something she lost sleep over.

One day she said, “this has to stop” and started jogging because she was always feeling tired and she didn’t like the woman in the mirror. Then she started losing weight and the more weight she lost, the further she ran.

“It’s almost like I was running away from my former self. But it was also a fix,” she says.

The credit analyst at StanChart Bank has started encouraging her colleagues to join her for Saturday morning runs.

“We run up and down Ngong Hills, we run to Syokimau and anywhere we would run. I always lead these runs, encouraging them to wake up and come out. Now they call me Chepkoimbo,” she says laughing.

On top of running, she started climbing mountains. She has climbed Mt Kenya, Mt Kilimanjaro, Longonot Hills (a frequent affair) and Ngong Hills.

She has also run all the major marathons in Nairobi for the past 15 years.

“I’m one of those faces you will see in every marathon,” she says. “If I’m not sick, I will be there and I will run.”

Now she is 40 years old and she has not stopped running. She has outrun her weight but she also realised that she is addicted to physical exercise.

“I joined a gym which I go to from 5am to 6am everyday come rain or high waters. I started gym on top of running because running stopped giving me a fix that I needed.”

She then bought a pair of boxing gloves and joined a boxing class.

“Running stopped being challenging even though I love it,” she admits. “I wanted to find out how further I can push my body; what more can my muscles do? What more can my lungs do?”

Apart from boxing, she also bought tennis rackets and joined a tennis class. So now she runs, boxes and swings rackets. She says she knows there is a lot about her body that she is yet to learn, things that she can do that she doesn’t know of.

“Apart from the body, the mind is a powerful thing. It can make your body do anything it tells. I realised that running, as with any activity, is about the mind. If your mind is right, your body will follow,” she says.

“When I did my first full marathon three years ago, I felt, at some point during the race, that my legs would fall off my body. I was so exhausted and beaten but I willed my mind and I crossed the finish line with my whole body shaking.”

Cost of gear

Being fit is about discipline and commitment, she stresses. It is about waking up each morning to run or box or play tennis regardless of how you feel or how the weather is. But fitness, she says, comes with costs.

“Fitness gear is not cheap. It doesn’t help that I like expensive things. But also I can’t offend my running community by mixing my brands,” she laughs heartily.

“So if it’s Adidas, it’s Adidas from head to toe. If it’s Nike, it’s Nike from head to toe. But I don’t drink, and what most people would spend on drinks in a weekend is enough to get me a good kit.”

Eating right is also expensive but she doesn’t feel it because she eats everything.

For the StanChart marathon that happened a few weeks ago, Sally had to stop running of two weeks ago to conserve her energy. She loaded on carbohydrates, drank copious amounts of water and slept more than her usual five hours. She bruised the full marathon, the 42 kilometres and this is fourth time in a row.

“I have come to love physical fitness so much that it’s something that I would do full time in an ideal world,” she says. “If it could pay my bills I would do it without a moment’s thought. I would be following my heart, unfortunately the heart doesn’t pay bills,” she says.