Viola Kibiwot enters a third decade in her career as a professional runner but still she sees plenty left to learn, her pursuit an example of the varied and endless challenges the sport of running can give you.

We sit down and speak in the garden of the Global Sports Communication (GSC) camp she has called home, on and off since 2006. Then one small building with little around, now three clean blocks sit within manicured gardens, surrounded by trees planted by the numerous dignitaries who have come to grab their own glimpse of where the best in the world train.

Kibiwot’s own career has mirrored that change, moulding, developing and now flourishing as a marathon star, most recently runner-up in Rotterdam in 2:20:57 in April 2024.

Like many in the Kaptagat camp, cross-country was Kibiwot's first calling. Four world U20 champions in the discipline currently call the GSC compound their home but none of Eliud Kipchoge (2003), Augustine Choge (2005) or Geoffrey Kamworor (2011) can claim quite the success that Kibiwot enjoyed as a junior.

Kibiwot hails from Kaptarakwa, 20km from the GSC camp and by the turn of the century she was already establishing herself as one of the most promising juniors in Kenyan athletics.

In March 2000, Kibiwot had recently turned 16, running strongly and earnt the call up for a first trip to Europe, for the Vilamoura edition of the World Cross-Country Championships.

A dry course perched above the Atlantic Ocean; the Kenyan team came to Portugal with one of the youngest quartet’s around. Competing against U20s, the squad's oldest member had barely turned 17, yet there was a fearless confidence to the four, built on by intense competition just to get on the plane.

That battle didn't stop on touchdown as the Kenyan athletes immediately hit the front. Setting the tempo, slowly they squeezed the energy from the Ethiopian challenge before, as the final kilometres approached, the now trio looked inward.

Vivian Cheruiyot took gold, followed home by Alice Timbilili, but 16-year-old Kibiwot had just begun a record-breaking sequence by taking the bronze.

Over the next two years Kibiwot took back-to-back junior titles, the first and only to ever take three consecutive medals in the junior races.

In Ostende in 2001 she won a five-woman bunch sprint, leading home Cheruiyot and Tirunesh Dibaba, amongst others, before repeating the feat against the same all-star cast one year later in Dublin.

It's fair to say Kibiwot was entering her senior career as one of the most exciting prospects in global athletics. Now she just had to decide on her event.

Kibiwot's problem, if you want to call it that, is she had displayed glimpses of potential across a number of disciplines.

Fast in the final metres, she could seemingly outlast her competitors too. She'd raced everything from 800m to 5,000m and performed well throughout.

Her path was set however, with a visit to Jamaica for the World Junior Championships on the track.

Usain Bolt may have occupied the attention of the fervent home crowd but it was Kibiwot who was even more dominant. After qualifying from her heat with ease, she won by a clear second to take the 1500m title, a third world junior crown aged barely 18.

The opportunity proved clear, Kibiwot committed to the 1500m.

Having already linked up with GSC and worked with Patrick Sang, Kibiwot arrived to Kaptagat as one of the camp's early members. Teammates Laban Korir and Kipchoge, were present but much of the compound and its athletes would be unrecognisable from what we see today.

Yet Kibiwot, despite not knowing it, was planting the seeds for what was to come. Sometimes in a literal sense, many of the maturing trees you see today were saplings back in the mid-2000s, but more pertinently, learning the discipline and small habits that have a funny way of paying off years down the line.

While Kibiwot improved in her first few years as a professional, she endured difficult times too, failing to improve her personal best in both 2005 and 2006.

She was, however, in many ways writing the playbook for what is reiterated in the camp nowadays. Learning to be humble in victory but also not let defeat weigh too heavy. The power of consistency over the long run.

In 2007 that discipline would reap its rewards. Kibiwot won the World Championship trials after lowering her personal best to 4:03.84 in the early season.

A month later in Osaka she stepped up once more against the world's best, easing through the heats and semi before holding her own as the front five gapped the rest of the field significantly in the final.

Kibiwot was rewarded with a 4:02.10 clocking and a maiden major championship fifth-place. A step forward and a lesson both to her and her teammates of the power of sticking with the process.

2008 saw Kibiwot head to a first Olympics Games but both there and at the Berlin World Championships the following year she didn't quite achieve what she was hoping, exiting in the heats and semifinal respectively,

By the early 2010s both Sang and Kibiwot we're noticing something interesting in her performances.

Despite not fully focusing on the longer distances, Kibiwot did occasionally race over 5000m. In 2010 in Shanghai she ran 14:48 over the distance, lowering that by 14 seconds one year later at the same event. Sang started to convince her that her aerobic engine meant she could excel the further they went.

By 2012, Kibiwot had decided on the 5000m, seeming to improve race by race. Here she began to compete more and more with her junior rival Cheruiyot, the pair translating much of that success now to the senior level.

And she was getting quicker over the 1500m too, breaking four minutes for the first time in the Paris Diamond League to take second in 3:59.25, a personal best by almost three seconds.

Kibiwot arrived in London high on that confidence and made light work of her 5000m heat. Then, five years after her first significant championship breakthrough, she backed it up with sixth place in the Olympic final.

Consistency in results arrived too, with successive fourth places at the next two global championships. In Beijing in 2015 she came just two seconds from 5000m bronze, having established herself as the best Kenyan over the distance at that year’s trials.

She was getting better and better. 2016 looked like the year she would take that final step, finishing top three in all the Diamond League 5000m's she attended, Kibiwot even lowered her best to 14:29.50 to take second in Rabat.

But misfortune struck at the Olympic trials, held that year at altitude in Eldoret. Kibiwot could only watch on as she endured a difficult day on the last day she wanted it to happen, finishing seventh in one of the event’s major shocks.

As one door closes, however, another seemingly opens. Kibiwot had already proven her strength over the longer distances and Sang believed now was the time to test it. After some convincing, Kibiwot would become a marathon runner.

She debuted at Hamburg in 2017, finishing third but it was her performance a few months later that made her believe she could excel over the distance. Not believing herself to be in shape she ran 2:25:32 in Amsterdam, despite in her own words struggling over the final 10km.

That race had planted a seed in Kibiwot and, despite deciding in 2018 to take a break for maternity, she knew she wanted to return to the distance, the next time even stronger.

Campmate Faith Kipyegon had proven athletes could even improve after time away.

Kibiwot had to wait five years for that return. Aiming initially to come back in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic settled her decision to have another child, one more coming in addition as twins were born in 2021. 

She's been making up for lost time since. After a podium in Prague she lowered her personal best to 2:22 in Frankfurt in late 2023. With her 2:20:57 in Rotterdam, she seems to be hitting her stride.

Fully aware of the power of persistence and its ability to pay you back many years down the line, Kibiwot knows from experience that victory tastes sweet, but even sweeter when you’ve endured some hardship on the way.

Knowing her story, she has every right to believe the best is yet to come.