CEBUANA Olympian Mary Joy Tabal will leave for Tuscany, Italy to start her long and grueling training for her stint in the Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this August.
She and her trainer John Philip Dueñas will be in Italy for a month. Her training is made possible with the help of corporate backer Motorace Philippines.
“It’s going to benefit both athlete and trainer because the Tuscany Training Camp teaches the trainers some scientific ways in training their athletes,” said Tabal.
“I am very excited to go there and experience an Olympic-class training camp, which I hope would work out for me so that I can improve my skills.”
Tabal and Dueñas chose to train in Italy as per recommended by the former’s Japanese trainer Akio Usami.
Usami trained Tabal for a couple of months last year before her stint in the Rio Olympics, where she became the first Filipina to compete in the women’s full marathon.
“This training is long term, our main goal is to prepare for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this is just the beginning part of a long and grueling preparation.
This was already planned not just by me and Philip but also my Japanese trainers. I will return to Japan on 2019 to train there before the Olympics,” said Tabal.
Tabal will be back in Cebu on May 20 then will head straight to Canada for the Scotia Bank Ottawa Marathon.
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