Who said that Malaysia has the slowest marathon runners in the world?
One Malaysian runner just proved everyone wrong.
According to a report by Bernama, long-distance runner K. Prabudass broke the national half marathon record after clocking 1:07:29s at the 41st Gold Coast Marathon in Australia on Monday (8 July).
The national half marathon record, set previously by former national runner M. Arul Thevar with a time of 1:07:59s, had stood for 15 years.
To make his record-setting performance a little bit sweeter, Prabudass reportedly outran 4,198 runners to finish 29th in the race.
That's quite an achievement.
“I’m feeling good and proud. I was expecting to run my personal best but the weather was not so good this morning. The rain was quite heavy, but I still managed to keep my pace and break the record.
“For now, I have no plans until the next event, maybe in September. After this I will be going back to track competitions to prepare for the SEA Games, focusing on the 5,000m, which is my favourite event.
“Road is different from track; we can’t compare them. But this performance has surely given me some boost to prepare for the SEA Games,” the 29-year-old told the news agency.
In May this year, the Negeri Sembilan born athlete clocked his personal best of 14:33.10s in the second series of the Nippon Sport Science University’s athletics event in Japan.
The time was good enough to place K. Prabudass second in the all-time Malaysian list at the event.
Good job, K. Prabudass! Go out and make us proud.