Greetings.

The good weather and the excellent organization helped me a lot in completing my 129th marathon on Sunday 20 September 2009. The marathon started in Emmersdorf and finished in Krems. The women's category winner Ingrid Eichberger, AUT, W-40, ran 2:59:34 and the men's category winner Alexander Frühwirth, AUT, M-40, ran 2:44:16. Probably the blue sky and a temperature of around 22C at the finish was too warm for the elite runners. But I enjoyed this marathon enormously and finished in a time of 4:51:41. There were two groups of Afro drummers along the course who kindly permitted me to join them for a few minutes to play with them.

The Uddina Vade (a south Indian snack) I had eaten in generous quantity on the day before the race gave me a big digestion problem and coupled with a 4-kg gain in weight from the Indian travel in August 2009 almost sabotaged my participation.

The website http://www.championchip.at/mirror/results/show_results_db.php?veranstnr=10976&racenr=3 has posted the detailed results and http://www.firstfotofactory.com/cgi-bin/cosmoshop/lshop.cgi?action=showrub&rubnum=events.wacha09&artnum=&file=&&wkid=1253636229-3435&ls=d&nocache=1253636229-3435 photographs of the runners. My bib number is 8601. All the finishers were awarded with medals.

Some of the photographs taken during this marathon has been posted on my profile page in the album: Wachau Marathon.

Best wishes.

Anil