Marathon

Aug 2012 , It was a month when I had come back from Amsterdam, where I met a friend who casually told me why don’t you run a marathon. My mind straightaway went to year back when my American mommy Raine introduced me to a friend who used to run marathon. I also recollected the childhood memory when we used to run at police headquarters , race arranged by school. It’s our mind when it catches a word it tries to collect all information it had about it from past, just like the search button in windows.

So I clearly made my mind, this is something I am going to try this year. So here I was in Bangalore, to catch up with all South Africa buddies and to run my 1^st TCS 10k marathon. Okay, to be able to run that long we need to start practice 3 months before. I have to admit that it was quick decision so I didn't have enough time. I started to practice 15 days before to my run, but I wasn't able to run more than 10 min continuously, but I guess it was okay. I convinced myself that I will complete it with some walking and some running. but I have to experience this. So my practice was going on and off.

It was beautiful drizzling morning, I was heading my way to Kanteerava stadium at 5:00 AM in cab. I never woke this early after my college, exception is if I had to catch early morning flight. My mind was calculating 10k means from my house to my office that’s it I ll be able to finish it. Was just trying to stir myself up and motivate me. I managed to reach their at 5:30 AM when I entered the stadium, thousands of runners were almost pounded the road leading to stadium. I could see all kinds of people, some people where busy doing warm up who were real runners who knew how important it is do warm up, some group of friends were busy clicking selfies to post on social network sites, some people were who did not have badge on their tee so they were their just to support their family or friends, some beautiful girls with their bff wearing similar tees, some housewives, some old people, some group of corporate chaps, college groups, kids etc etc . Let it be any class of people, one thing I could clearly see all were excited about the run, so was i. Whatever motivated all of them to be there, it could be the celebrities coming for the kicking off the event, for girls selfie pics for their Facebook/twitter/Whatsapp or for boys motivation to run see so many eye candies, but for the runners, it was another medal in their shelf, another race with themselves, to win against last finish time. And then the international runners race started with gunshot, we started with warm up for our race. The moment we finished our warm up it was not even 27 mins, I could hear loud cheer that international runner who banged the medal finished the run. Entire stadium was cheering for him. Then there was announcement to gather for all open 10k runners, I could see display where they were counting the number of runners, it recorded more than 10000 runners :O. Then the race started, with my fav track of Coldplay “ Paradise”, I could see so many people had come out of their houses on the road, cheering runners to encourage them finish the race.  No runner was looking back to check how many are behind them, they were just focusing on themselves trying to finish the race. Km by Km , 8 km passed, it was little tough for me to run anymore, I was almost going to sit and ask help from someone to drop me, I could hear dhol sound, cheer from the stadium, I motivated myself to run further and pushed my body to the limit. And there it came, finish line as entered so many strangers were tapping for finishing the run, as if the entire stadium which was full of people is cheering for me. It was an awesome feeling. A feeling for achieving a lifetime goal, to finish the marathon. Then I leant new thing in life that it’s an achievement to finish the race, as we grew up listening that races are to be won, and to  come first. Finish was a word newly added in my dictionary. 

Then the medal , an apple and parley G biscuit,   it was a proud moment. I called mom and told her I finished the race, she was so happyJ.

That was the day, I decided to run all marathons, and then came, Pune run beyond myself (15k), Pune international (21k), Standard charter (10k), DNAICan 10k, Pinkathon 10k, again TCS10k and the circle of marathon went on and on. I still need to run full marathon, which I am targeting for Jan 2015( Standard charter). Hopefully I will qualify for this, this year. Keeping fingers crossed. 

So I want to take moment to all of you, if you get chance be a part of marathon, run it once and I am sure you will not miss the next one. :)