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Sub-eight is difficult but definitely possible: Sable
The Hindu
‘There is need to train any differently, it is all about setting the right targets’
It isn’t often that a top-level athlete admits to losing years to a bad mistake. Avinash Sable has no qualms doing the same but is also in a hurry on making up for the lost years.
From a then-national record-breaking 8:29.80 in 2018 to aiming for a sub-eight minute time, Sable has come a long way in the four years since he first took up the event, breaking his own record seven times now. After an impressive 8:12.48 at the Diamond League in Rabat, he is now focusing on the World Championships and the Commonwealth Games.
“It is definitely not easy but I don’t think it is impossible or there is need to train any differently for a sub-eight timing. It is all about setting the right targets,” Sable said in a virtual interaction from Colorado Springs on Friday.
“In India, we only think of winning a race, getting a medal and a job or promotion. When I started, even 8:45 sounded good and you could get a medal even with a time of nine minutes! There is also a mindset that foreign athletes are naturally or genetically gifted and we cannot compete with them but having done that here, I can say that is not true.
“ Agar 9 minute soch ke 8:12 tak aa sakte hain to yahan se sub-8 to kar hi sakte hain (if we can cut to 8:12 from nine minutes, we can definitely go sub-8 from here),” he explained.
“ I have also realized that you need to train and compete at the top level to be in that league and improve”
For someone considered among a handful of genuinely world-class Indian track & field athletes, the national 3000m Steeplechase champion, this is his first-ever foreign training stint and he rues the fact that he delayed travelling abroad for training for so long.
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