Shamba System Internal Memo

Please find below a note on the origins of the Shamba System study and resulting newspaper output.

The aim of the study was to explore, visually and through scientific artifacts, the juxtaposition and common ground between agricultural life, running life and applied science.

classification: internal study note subject: sabastian sawe location: kapsabet / london

method: embedded observation related output: printed newspaper / archive interface status: observation continues

01 Origin

The concept was born out of a single moment and a single phrase.

While out running one of his key, final 30km long run sessions before the London Marathon 2026, Sabastian Sawe tilted his head left and took his eyes off the road.

The tilt would have been imperceptible to most people. A moment. A glance.

But for coach Claudio it defined Sawe. The pace was hard enough that everyone around him was beginning to suffer, but Sabastian seemed calm. He was not fixated only on the effort. He had time to look left, and to dream. Not about world records or making history, but about life on his farm. His happy place.

Sawe’s moment with the shamba, and the contradiction between his giant athlete targets and his humble home yearnings, planted a creative seed.

02 Reason for study

Thereafter the study was initiated because, for VRD, that moment felt like more than a side note. As it had to coach Claudio, it revealed something about the subject that a split time could not.

Farming is integral to Sabastian in the way he sees his environment. The shamba is not decorative. It is part of the system he carries with him.

This matters because elite performance is often explained through refinement, control and optimisation. Around Sabastian, those systems are tangible, refined and measurable. Coaching, nutrition, testing. But the subject himself remains grounded in a way of life that is older and slower. Poetic rather than scientific.

The study therefore sits between two conditions: a man who runs at the edge of human performance, and a man who still takes the time to think, and look, at crops when the road passes close to the soil.

03 Science arriving afterwards

Parallel to the shamba, the scientific system was up and running. Maurten scientist Josh was carrying out 13C testing. Breath samples, fuel use, oxidation rates, and carbon moving through the body during effort.

This science illuminated the juxtapositions of the newspaper project. Carbon was being traced in one system while another system was already visible in front of us: soil, crops, labour, food, fuel, running. The overlap became the framework of the study.

Soil to system. Same carbon, measured twice.

04 Why newspaper?

To ensure the study felt like a field object rather than a finished campaign. In the age of disposable online content, this physical offering is a small act of quiet resistance.

It could be held, folded, passed on, marked and left behind.

Using a mix of quotes, photos and scientific objects allowed images, fragments, quotes, science and repetition to show themselves. Concrete findings were neither wanted, nor demanded.

Co-existence, not conclusion. The newspaper is not an explanation of Sabastian. It is a record of a returning theme in his story.

05 Current status

Shamba System remains part of the wider observation of Sabastian Sawe, Claudio Berardelli and the conditions forming around elite marathon performance.

The study does not conclude with the newspaper.

The newspaper merely documents one phase of thinking in physical form.

Observation continues.

archive note: this document should be read as an initiation note, not a conclusion. it records why the study began and why the newspaper exists. further interpretation may be revised as observation continues.