South Africa-based Malawian athlete, Jimmy Bonjesi, has set his sights on next year\u2019s Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon to be held in the Rainbow Nation.<\/p>\n
Bonjesi is aiming higher after impressing in races, including winning two-kilometre Total Whale Half-Marathon in South Africa after clocking 1:13:44 on September 30.<\/p>\n
It was the first time that an athlete from South Africa\u2019s Whalers Athletics Club won the race in 20 years.<\/p>\n
Bonjesi also impressed in the 42.2-kilometre Sanlam Cape Town Marathon when he clocked 2:42:05.<\/p>\n
Out of 8,005 runners, Bonjesi was on position 77 and he beat his club\u2019s record.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my first time that I had competed in a marathon. I did not prepare well because I was not sure of my participation. However, I was glad that I set a new record for my club. I learnt a lot and I will definitely improve my performance and time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The athlete said he had stepped up training for the Old Mutual Two Oceans\u2019 Marathon, which runs under the rules of International Association of Athletics\u2019 Federation (Iaaf), Athletics South Africa (ASA) and Western Province Athletics (WPA).<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that if I work hard, I can make it and help raise Malawi\u2019s flag,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bonjesi hailed his club for helping him launch a career in athletics after a nagging injury ended his football career in Malawi.<\/p>\n
Bonjesi played football with the likes of Nyasa Big Bullets\u2019 Team Manager, Rahim Ishmael, and former University of Malawi FC and Bullets\u2019 midfielder, Madalitso Musa.<\/p>\n
Recently, Athletics\u2019 Association of Malawi (AAM) General Secretary, Frank Chitembeya, promised to monitor Bonjesi\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, his performance in half-marathons is almost three, three minutes short of [that] our top two athletes. We want to monitor him because we feel that he has the capacity to easily reduce time, a thing which most local athletes fail,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa-based Malawian athlete, Jimmy Bonjesi, has set his sights on next year\u2019s Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon to be held in the Rainbow Nation. Bonjesi is aiming higher after impressing in races, including winning two-kilometre Total Whale Half-Marathon in South Africa after clocking 1:13:44 on September 30. It was the first time that an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33568,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33565\/revisions\/33568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}