{"id":1662,"date":"2012-10-12T02:45:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T08:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/?p=1662"},"modified":"2012-10-12T02:45:32","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T08:45:32","slug":"jisa-seeks-204-in-eindhoven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/news\/jisa-seeks-204-in-eindhoven\/","title":{"rendered":"Jisa seeks 2:04 in Eindhoven"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sissay<\/a>

Sissay Jisa and Tadessa Tola with Edgar De Veer<\/p><\/div>\n

Jisa out to make a good job of his Marathon Eindhoven run with 2:04 target<\/p>\n

Oddjob was the name of a famous James Bond villain but it was also the nickname of Ethiopia’s Sisay Jisa until recently and he will become a De Lage Landen Marathon Eindhoven hero if he hits his target in the Dutch race this coming Sunday (October 14).<\/p>\n

Jisa, now 29, kept alive his dream of becoming a professional athlete for almost a decade by combining his training with doing whatever came his way to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

However, he had his first race in Europe last year and then caught the attention of athletics fans when he finished third at the 2012 Paris Marathon in a hugely impressive 2:06:27 on his debut over the classic distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I want to run 2:04 in Eindhoven. I am confident I have this capability because I train with the men who were second and third in the Chicago Marathon last Sunday. I saw whet they did and now I know what I can do,\u201d Jisa confidently told a press conference in Eindhoven on Thursday,<\/p>\n

Jisa’s compatriots Feyisa Lilesa and Tilahun Regassa ran personal best times of 2:04:52 and 2:05:27 respectively on the other side of the Atlantic less than a week ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI train with them and I have no problem staying with them when we run together,\u201d said Jisa, in simple but clear English.<\/p>\n

The De Lage Landen Marathon Eindhoven course record is held by Kenya’s Jafred Kipchumba who clocked 2.05.48 on the fast two-lap circuit in 2011, but he is not returning to defend his title as he has struggled to recover his form after failing to finish the Tokyo Marathon in February.<\/p>\n

A group of five pacemakers have been instructed to go through the halfway point in 1:02:45 in order to set up the leaders for an assault on Kipchumba’s standard.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friend Tadesse Tola (the fastest man in the Marathon Eindhoven this year and fourth in 2011) told me what a good course it is and that fast times are possible,\u201d added Jisa.<\/p>\n

Jisa, as you might imagine as he only started racing internationally little more than a year ago, was a late comer to athletics.<\/p>\n

He was a budding handball player as a teenager but a coach suggested that his physical talents might be better suited to running when he was about 19.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started running in 2002 and then only competed in races in Ethiopia for many years.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo earn a living, I did any odd job; that’s what my friends called me. Helping them, often with building work, helping my father, but all the time I had a dream of running in Europe and big championships,\u201d explained Jisa, now with his days as construction worker behind him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jisa out to make a good job of his Marathon Eindhoven run with 2:04 target Oddjob was the name of a famous James Bond villain but it was also the nickname of Ethiopia’s Sisay Jisa until recently and he will become a De Lage Landen Marathon Eindhoven hero if he hits his target in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[75,15,18,1],"tags":[91,329,343,578,803],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eindhoven","category-ethiopia","category-featured","category-news","tag-91","tag-eindhoven","tag-ethiopia","tag-marathon","tag-sisay-jisa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}