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Permalink Reply by Ram on March 9, 2010 at 13:44

Giles Drego, Myself, Genieve, Hari, Snehal Shah, Amit Joshi, Sundaresan, Ashwini, Ashish Goyal, Rajesh, Roshni Rai, Ganesh, Mohana, Milton Frank, Dr. Avinash Thakurdesai are the names that I know took part and are members of RFL. Have I missed anybody?

The experience was fun and chaotic - fun because we were running not for any time or places, but for sheer enjoyment of running with a superstar, for a cause and for the experience (being first time); chaotic because we were running along with the peak traffic of a weekend Mumbai, but thankfully the traffic was tolerant overall - not much hooting and overtaking.

I personally think RFL should organise this event for the next year because the runners' interests can be taken care of adequately, though i thought Milind Soman did his best for the runners and also at the end all the 100 kmers (not only MS) were hosted by the NDTV panel.

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Permalink Reply by Runners For Life on March 9, 2010 at 14:31

That's great! Congrats to all of you!

Couldn't see much on the tv but did catch one section when the runners stopped at a water station with Bappi Da singing to them. I thought i saw Amit Joshi in front in his Ultra 2009 tee. :)

Thanks Ram for providing timely info to all the runners about the event. You were faster than us to get updates from NDTV. :)

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Permalink Reply by Amit Joshi on March 9, 2010 at 16:13

I left home at around 5 pm and reached carter road around 6.30. By then few of the fellow runners had gathered and we waited for Milind to turn up. He reached the starting point at 6.50 and we introduced ourselves. He had sent us a mail the previous day confirming our participation. Now we waited for the actress of yesteryears "Raveena Tandon" who was supposed to flag off the race. As expected she turned up only at 7.30 and by then i was aleardy having second thoughts about this event. Anyway after a few rounds of Bhangra by the cheergirls and couple of misstarts for the benefit of TV we started at 7.50 from carter road, at the peak of the traffic. I was a bit worried about the smoke, pollution and passing cars...however the early enthusiasm was enough to tackle it. We waded through the cars in Bandra and Mahim with the help of our Pilot car and bikes. It felt like running in a gas chamber and i thought about quitting at the first stop. The first stop was at worli sea-face where we had refreshments which made me feel better. I decided to run further and continued till Wilson college on marine drive. At Wilson College Bhappi lahiri was waiting for the runners and he rendered a self composed song for the greenathon....that made us run away from that point in a Jiffy.. :). By then the traffic had thinned out and i decided to keep going. The next stop was at Gateway of India and we were greeted with a cool breeze. We returned to Marine Drive after a brief stop at Gateway and continued till Wilson College. That was around 30 KM point and i was a bit tired and thought about going home. However Milind urged the group to continue till High Street Pheonix, at lower parel and then take a call to stop for the night. We started running again and surprisingly the Pedder raod climb was not so daunting at 32nd KM. Probably it was the impact of extra attention we were getting by running with Milind. People were egging us on after recognising that we were part of the 100 Km greenathon. It was a smooth run from the peak of Pedder road till Lower parel with many of the passing motorists exchanging high-fives with us.

After reaching Lower parel i finally decided to call it a day as it was well past midnight and i had some commitments for Sunday Morning. Overall, My view is that it was good opportunity to do a well supported and safe long run...i ran for around 36 km and i can say that runners were taken care of in terms of water, electrolyte and food etc. My experience was better than the 3 Mumbai marathons....though the delayed start was a bit of irritant....In first half the race could have been for TV but the second half was truly fun with less traffic and cool breeze...and high fives from passing cars. It was nice to run in the company of stalwarts from RFL Mumbai. Next year i hope to do the full race.

last but not the least, kudos to the RFL runners and Milind who ran the entire next day after a break at night and finished the 100Km run. It must rank as a special effort given the level of daytime heat and humidity in Mumbai and considering that they must have been tired during the 40 Kms run the previous night.

Cheers!!

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Permalink Reply by Amit Joshi on March 9, 2010 at 16:28

My request to the greeenathon runners...do share the photos as i could not click any.

thanks,

Amit

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Arvind on March 9, 2010 at 23:40

Wow! Thanks for that account Amit. I am sure you can finish it next year. Maybe a practice 75K at the Ultra this year would help? :)

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Permalink Reply by apurba on March 10, 2010 at 14:36

Hey Ram,
you missed me I have completed 100k

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Permalink Reply by Ram on March 10, 2010 at 15:21

My apologies Apurba, I missed you. CONGRATULATIONS on your 100 km effort. It was superhuman effort. Have I missed anybody else.

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Permalink Reply by Vijaykumar A on March 10, 2010 at 16:27

Hi all,

i joined the greenathon for a small stint only....newbie to long distances :) It was great fun to run with Milind and all the runners were great out there. Wonderful atmkosphere and had a great time.

Cheers..!
Vijay

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Arvind on March 10, 2010 at 16:45

Hats off to you Apurba!

Hope this is the start of a lot of runs for you Vijay.

Amit - Vijay has uploaded some more pictures from Greenathon, here is the link to the album - http://runnersforlife.com/photo/albums/ndtv-greenathon-1

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