18 January 2006

Run Run Run

Or rather it was walk/walk/walk ;-) Phew finally i vanquished the marathon beast yet again !
Yes folks. As my friends say, i am still walking and oh yeah i am still alive after trudging through 40+kms of bombay roads and heat and traffic !
It was bombay through my running shoes.
The start was actually not that good. Come on you moronic organizers of mumbai marathon, 8 am is *not* a convenient time for amateurs like me.
Sathish, Jacob and myself started in right earnest. While Jacob was gunning for a sub 3hr timing and sathish for a 4 to 4.5hr timing, i was more intrested in just completing it ! Coz i did hear of horror stories about the heat and humidity !
By the 10km mark, sathish was raring to go and off he went. I was more sedate in my approach, coz i had practised for doing the 20km in 120 minutes and i wanted to stick to it. My gameplan was pretty simple. First 20km in 120 minutes and the remaining 20km in 180 minutes !
By the 20km mark it was around 135 minutes and i was almost there. However i knew that the remaining 20km in 180 minutes was practically not possible, with a huge electronic board gleaming "85%" humidity.
And to digress a bit here i would like to give a resounding kick to that moron from bombay who asked me as to how people live in madras which is so hot ! You duffer, both bombay and madras are on the coast and the humidity will always be the same ! If i ever catch you again, there are going to be just two things. Either i wring your neck, or you run the marathon ;-)
So by the 24km mark, i started trudging ocassionaly giving company to Mr.Vijay, a 45yr old guy who was also hell bent on completing it, and a madam from Dubai who i think dropped out !
By about 36km mark i finally caught up with sathish, who in spite of my repeated warnings not to speed up, did so and finally was derailed by the heat and injuries ;-)
And finally summoning the last bit of whatever was left inside us, we ambled across to the finishing line in 6+ hrs, and collected the medal !
One important thing here was the people support. That madame Ms.Anuradha { or Mrs.Anuradha whatever it is } deserves nothing short of a huge prize. She indulged in a selfless act of encouraging the last pack of runners, by waiting for us at every km mark with choclates and egging us on ! What spirit that was. Thank you Madame. I mean it was a sunday and instead of staying at home and relaxing, here she was waiting for we pack of 10 or so guys at every km mark, giving away choclates !
So after struggling to complete this marathon, am i giving up ? You bet not ;-). There is a small idea that has germinated inside me after reading a news clipping about a lady who has completed 75 marathons. Why can't i do 100 ? Practically speaking if there are people who run at the age of 45 and 60 why cant i do so ? So here goes. Someday i hope to do 100 marathons. If you think about it, every year there are about 5 marathons held in India itself. Assuming i run it for the next 20yrs i am done right ? So someday, someday i shall do it.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:38 AM

4 Comments

  1. Blogger NaiKutti posted at Wednesday, January 18, 2006 at 1:30:00 PM GMT+5:30  
    WOW... cool shyam and congratulations for completing one... its a great effort... i can imagine the humidity...

    the cheering, bglr marathon last year was pretty bad in that regard... by 4.5 hrs everyone (organizers, i mean) left and there weer some people who finished after 5.5 hrs with no one to cheer... if the state in the finish line was this, needless to say, it was very bad on the roads... traffic was back to normal by 4.5 hrs and some marathoners ran through the traffic... mumbai has learnt a lot over the years and i heeard that for 6 hrs the marathon route is not disturbed...

    100 marathons... good luck shyam... may the force be with u... for me, not 100, but i hope to do atleast one sometime soon...
  2. Blogger Arbit posted at Wednesday, January 18, 2006 at 4:02:00 PM GMT+5:30  
    Seeing naikutti's enthu, I do think he is going to run a marathon soon :)
    That was a great run shyam, came in here thru satish's blog. Yeah the humidity adds to the temperature.30 degrees + 85% humidity may as well be taken as 35 - 36 degrees.
    And 100 marathons - well what can I say.
    I also have a target with a 100 figure in it! - 100kms. I wanna run that distance some day.But now I have to get a marathon under my belt first.
  3. Anonymous Anonymous posted at Thursday, January 19, 2006 at 3:25:00 PM GMT+5:30  
    Shyam,
    Why don't you decide to "work" for atleast 100 days or spend atleast 100 minutes for your MSc also along with your goal of running 100 Marathons?

    PS:
    1. I don't have a blog in which you can type out the Snatch (or is it pulp fiction?) dialogues. ;-)
    2. As all the regulars know who the anonymous is, I guess I don't need to give my name.
  4. Blogger Unknown posted at Thursday, January 19, 2006 at 8:50:00 PM GMT+5:30  
    thanks naikutti & karthik
    anonymous govindMF, you will have time to create a blog and put kaushik's name in it, but still you pretend that you are busy and can't create one in your name ;-) and you are not such a big shot that you dont want to give out your name !

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