‘Was a lifetime experience competing with Mo’
It's not everyday that an Indian gets a chance to compete with Mo Farah and Govindan Lakshmanan said that running the 5000m heat alongside the reigning King of middle distance was an "experience of a lifetime".
"It was a dream come true to be running with Mo Farah. He is an inspiration for me. I feel very good. It is a lifetime experience to run with him. This is his last competition and he will not run again," Lakshmanan told PTI.
"I was concentrating on my race, so I don't know how he was running but I feel good to have run with him," Lakshmanan added.
His coach wants Lakshmanan to target Bahadur Prasad's 25-year-old national record timing of 13 min 29.70 seconds in Gold Coast.
"You can improve your timing only in this kind of situations, when competition is strong. He missed out (here) but he will do it. I think he can break the national record next year in Australia (In CWG). The conditions will also be very good there in Australia," Surendra, the current national record holder in 10,000m, said.
Lakshmanan on his part was happy to compete in conducive weather conditions which was sub-15, something he never gets while competing in the Asian regions.
"The conditions were very good. The low temperature and my competitors including Mo Farah. You don't get these kind of top class competitors to run with. The rain was the only issue, the track was wet. But I came into the race with the target of breaking the national record," Lakshmanan said.
"I did a lot of practice here in the past 10 days to break the national record. I tried but missed it by five seconds and I am disappointed. I will do next time. The last lap was a bit tight. I could not qualify for the final round but I would have been happy if I had broken the national record," said Lakshmanan, who won gold in both 5,000m and 10,000m races in the Asian Championships in Bhubaneswar, last month.
Lakshmanan has been the only Indian athlete so far to have performed better than his personal best in the ongoing World Championships.