Torch sparks Olympic-themed talk in Warwick

On Sunday, July 1 – the day the torch passes through Warwick, Leamington and Kenilworth – Guardian journalist Adharanand Finn will be welcomed to the Lord Leycester Hospital by the festival committee to talk about his personal quest to discover the secrets of the world’s greatest runners in his book, Running With The Kenyans.

After years of watching Kenyan athletes win the world’s biggest long-distance races, Adharanand set out to discover what it was that made them so fast – and to see if he could keep up.

He and his family moved from Devon to the small town of Iten in Kenya, home to hundreds of the country’s best athletes, where he laced up his shoes and ventured out on to the dirt tracks, running side by side with Olympic champions, young hopefuls and barefoot schoolchildren, waking up at 5am to do hill workouts and following the same diet and lifestyle as those he was with.

And at the end of it all, there was his dream, to join the best of the Kenyan athletes in his first marathon, an epic race across the Kenyan plains.

The talk, part of a programme of Warwick Words Xtra events, starts at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £8 (£6 concessions). Call 776438.

This year’s festival takes place from September 28 to October 7. For full details, go online.

www.warwickwords.co.uk

l The festival committee has also commissioned Warwick’s Poet Laureate, Dinah Smith, to write a poem celebrating the arrival of the torch in the town.

She said: “I chose the myth of the origin of the Olympic flame because it gave me the opportunity to incorporate the idea of the torch relay.”

To read Dinah’s poem, visit www.warwickwords.co.uk