Coach Bernard Ouma barked orders to start stretching and the team of a dozen athletes fanned out in the morning sunshine, leaving a good two meters between them.

Among them: Kenya's 1,500-meter world champion Timothy Cheruiyot, who has been struggling to keep a consistent training schedule in a topsy-turvy year as he prepares for this summer's Olympic Games scheduled in Tokyo.

Cheruiyot was one of the top contenders for an Olympic gold in Japan after an impressive 2019, when he won the world title in Doha. Then the games were postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.