Ex-marathon star coaches Kenya's First Lady

Kenya's former long-distance runner Douglas Wakiihuri won the marathon gold medal at the 1987 IAAF World Athletics Championships in Rome and the whole world watched in awe and amazement in a performance that took a little more than two hours.

And when his name was flashed on the leader board, not even his compatriots thought he was one of their own.

However, one Kenyan who was most impressed was then President Daniel Moi, who was at the VIP stand when Wakiihuri burst into the stadium for the podium finish, in a performance that earned the athlete a national honor of the Silver Star of Kenya.

From a world class athlete, Wakiihuri is currently the coach of First Lady, Margaret Kenyatta, who is in her second year of running the marathon to raise money for the Beyond Zero Campaign, a charity event that seeks to reduce child mortality at birth in the country.

The retired athlete was reached out by Margaret's aides with the job proposal in October 2013.

Never afraid to sail uncharted waters, Wakiihuri took up the job of coaching the 50-year-old First Lady, who has no prior athletics experience, and turned her into a finisher of the toughest race on earth in less than six months.

"After weighing the enormity of the proposal, the urge to make history drove me to accept because I reasoned that with so many coaches in the country, there must have been a good reason why they settled on me," Wakiihuri told Xinhua on Thursday.

After months of painstaking training, the First Lady crossed the 2014 London Marathon in 7:05.38, where Wakiihuri ran his slowest marathon in the process.

He restricts much further discussion about his latest assignment that has earned him the title of Kenya's "First Coach" because of the sensitivity of the position his client holds.

Wakiihuri can still be found training at the Nautilus Health and Fitness Centre in Nairobi: hard at work on the machines, exerting mind and body with great intensity.

"Working out is important in the present world which brings with it lot of stress. Though starting is hard, once it gets into your system, it acquires an additive nature," Wakiihuri said.

He started running in 1975 and 12 years later at the World Athletics Championships in Rome, Wakiihuri demolished a field of world class athletes enroute to his bagging the gold.

With the victory in the 1989 London Marathon to his name and a silver medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, Wakiihuri announced to the world that he intended to be taken seriously.

In 1990, he established his preeminence in the marathon with a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in New Zealand and a seemingly effortless triumph in the New York Marathon the same year.

"Professional athletics is a technical and mental event, and while practice and technique are perhaps not as important as feeling the urgent compulsion to win, the training involved is analogous," Wakiihuri said.

His philanthropic work involves mentoring the less privileged kids in the slums of Nairobi as he tries to hone their running skills as well as making them believe in themselves. Endi