At Delhi half marathon, Army trio target Indian mark

Somewhere around the 35 kilometre mark in the marathon at the World Military Games held in South Korea in October this year, Nitendra Singh Rawat felt he had a shot at a podium finish.

A medal, which would have been the first for an Indian at the event in the tournament, would however remain elusive. Having run with the leader’s pack till that point, Nitendra wasn’t able to match the pace of his his competitors, especially the Kenyan and Polish athletes and eventually finished eighth with a time of 2:18:06.

The result didn’t disappoint him . The fact that he was able to match his rivals for as long as he did gives Rawat confidence to repeat the feat, and better it.

Currently in the capital for the 2015 Delhi Half Marathon, Rawat is ready to chase the Kenyan athletes all over again.

“I’ll do the same as I did in Korea – run as close to them as possible. I am not competing with any Indian runner, I am competing with the international ones on Sunday,” he says.

The Uttarakhand native isn’t worried about running out of steam. “Result ke baare mein nahi sochna ab. All I want to do is match the best athletes and make my country proud. I could have paced my race better during the Military Games but I didn’t because I wanted to know how far I can match them.”

In the past month after the Korea marathon, Rawat has been training in Ooty at the national camp with two other long distance runners — Mohammad Yunus and Gopi T. All three are focussed on performing at the half marathon and breaking into the top-10 mark at the Sunday event.

Yunus, the fastest half marathon runner among the three, gives you a clearer picture of what to expect from the Indian athletes this time around.

“One of us will break the national record for half marathon. We have been training for some time now and we are here with only one aim and that is to break the record,” he says.

He also echoes Rawat’s view on giving the African athletes a hard time during the race. “Now we are competing directly with them. We will put in the effort required to match them,” says Yunus, who has a personal best of 1:05:12 in half marathons.

The trio represent Indian Army and have been training together for a long time now.

“There is no mutual competition. We know that one of us will break the record. We all hear about the African athletes but this time we will run hard and in all possibility the record will be broken,” Gopi adds.