Sudha gung-ho about qualifying for Olympic marathon on Sunday

By Navneet Singh New Delhi, March 6 : From sleeping in an ‘altitude tent’ and running a weekly mileage of 270 kms, Sudha Singh is set to crack the qualification time of the Olympic Games women’s marathon at the National Marathon on Sunday.
The 34-year-old distance runner from Uttar Pradesh said it might be an ambitious goal but she is both mentally and physically prepared to run a hard and fast race.
“I have done good speed sessions. Sometimes I did 30 to 40 repetitions of 400 m in one training session, that too with an average pace of 80 seconds for each 400 m,” Sudha, an Asian Games medallist in the 3,000-metre steeplechase, told IANS on Saturday.
The Olympic qualification time for marathon is 2 hours 29:30 seconds while Sudha’s personal best is 2 hours 34:56 seconds.
For the last six weeks, Sudha has been living in an altitude tent at Bengaluru’s Sports Authority of India (SAI) training centre. An altitude tent contains reduced oxygen and simulates conditions similar to training at altitude without actually living at that level. For the first two weeks she had adjusted the altitude to 1,700 metres.
“Every two weeks we increased the height. It was increased to 2,200 metres for 14 days. In the last two weeks before coming to Delhi it was raised to 2,500 metres. Sometimes I had food inside the artificial tent,” she revealed.