
JOHANNESBURG – Precious Mashele may not have won the ASA Half Marathon Championships at the weekend, but the third place he attained in Port Elizabeth has left him delighted.
“I killed it. Position three was good for me,” said the athlete who ran for Central Gauteng Athletics in the championship that saw Stephen Mokoka triumphant for the third year running.
Mashele was also third in 2017 but had a poor run last year to finish in eighth place having had a family bereavement building up to the 21.1km race.
“Last year I was home for my mom’s funeral and that affected me. But this year I trained well. I found that the race started a bit slow in the first five kilometres. The pace increased a bit and we got to the 10km mark in 29.19.
From the 15th, Desmond (Mokgobu, his teammate at the Hendrik Ramaala Foundation who finished sixth) pushed by doing some fartleks and Mokoka and I went with him. I was doing well but Mokoka left me at 19km. I gave the race my all and I was happy.”