Moorosi Tsiane
MIDDLE distance runner Namakoe Nkhasi says he is hoping for a good year as he started on a high recording 62:59 to come out second at the South Korea International Gyunggi Half (21.1km) Marathon, in South Korea last month.
The 2017 Old Mutual Two Oceans Half Marathon champion told the Sunday Express recently that he was impressed with his performance in Korea and he is now hoping to build from the performance forward.
“It was a very important race to me because it was my first this year so I had to make sure that I push for better results while also trying to manage the body and avoid any injuries,” the South Africa based Nkhasi said.
“But I am happy with how everything went except that I narrowly missed my target time by 39 seconds.
“I think for now, everything is going well and I just need to stay focused and see how far I can go this year because there is too much of work that needs to be done.”
He said the biggest challenge will now be keeping his consistency and maybe see if he can retain his Two Oceans marathon title after coming second last year.
“It is also important to maintain consistency as an athlete and I hope I will get that one right. There are a lot of races that one can run and who knows, I might even go and challenge for Two Oceans once again after coming second last year.”
Nkhasi was however, reluctant to commit on his Olympics target for next year and said he will just see as time progresses.
“I don’t want to go deep now into the Olympics qualifiers because I don’t want to put myself under unnecessary pressure but what I can say now is all coming good and I can’t really complain I just need to keep on working hard and doing my level best,” said Nkhasi.
He said at the moment he hasn’t received his race calendar from his coach but he knows there will be lot of work that needs to be done this year.
“I am yet to get the calendar from my coach as he is the one who deals with the technical things. What I know is that there will just be lot of work that needs to be done this year,” Nkhasi said.