At the age of 37 Anuradha’s marathon running is going from strength to strength. Those who saw him cross the line in Sunday’s London Marathon have all commented on how fresh he looked and he agrees that there is more to come.
However, Anuradha had just broken his PB by more than 2 minutes; his time of 2:13:47 means that he now has the qualifying time to compete at the Rio Olympics next year and he is already planning to run at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing. His time is also a new National Sri Lankan Record which had stood for 40 years, set by SLB Rosa. Cooray said that his race on Sunday was different to his usual one; “My first half of the race was slower than the usual time, and only in the second half I was able to increase my speed, which was the other way around in previous races. By the time I passed Buckingham Palace I knew the Sri Lankan record was on offer. I ran like running the 100m from thereon to take that.”
Anuradha has just returned from his second visit to the Iten altitude training camp in Keyna, courtesy of his sponsors Greggs.