Finally, Ram, Hemant, Milan, Ashish, Apurba, Krishna, Veera and myself who had signed for the race, landed up in Bengaluru on 22^nd morning. The first thing that struck me about the city was that there were no posters from any dog, cat and sundry congratulating politicians on their birthday or on their completing their 10^th day in office. The weather was great and visions ( illusions?) of a good run was building up in the mind. I was staying with my sister in law who thinks I am a certified lunatic ( why would anyone come to Bengaluru from Mumbai to run? ). Vijay, also a RFL member from my office, who recently moved to Bengaluru, was our local guide. At noon Vijay, Milan and myself proceeded towards Kanteerava stadium to collect our bibs and got a first hand
taste of the static Bengaluru traffic. At the Expo we met Ram and Hemant ( who were probably done with cursing us for arriving late!) and Krishna. Later we were joined by Apurba and Ashish. We met the RFL guys at their stall and also the Nike guys who were doing a gait analysis (surprisingly my gait analysis showed the exact opposite of what I was experiencing).

After a bit of carbo loading, we went back to our respective resting places, when the first misfortune struck. I left my mobile in the rickshaw, and with it went all my contacts including that of my local guide Vijay, who had promised to pick me and Milan the next morning for the race. Thankfully I had my Blackberry and more thankfully, Ram had earlier emailed contacts collated for the BNP races. After a bit of effort, I retrieved the minimum contacts required for the next day. The evening was uneventful, with me attending to some official conference calls, and chatting with relatives. I crashed at around 10.30 pm.

As planned Milan and myself met up Vijay at 6.00 am who drove us to the UB offices where Vijay had already arranged for parking and from there we proceeded to the stadium. The weather was cool and the entire place was quiet with only a few traffic policemen belting out instructions. The stadium was a buzz of activity and on entering we saw the Elites warming up for their race which was scheduled at 7.10 am. The Elites, even while warming up are a sight to watch. The effortless manner in which they glide is something to be achieved in the next life. We ambled into the Kanteerava Stadium and met the others from Mumbai. A while later we were pleasantly surprised to meet Mahadev Samjiskar, our 67 year young runner from BNP.

As we settled down on the steps to watch the start of the Elites World 10k run, we were jolted to see Krishna running around the tracks with the Elites. He had apparently slept the night in the stadium and decided to run with the Elites. The Elites took off at 7.10 like bullets and were out of the stadium in a jiffy. We then decided to go out and warm up and also finish our visits to the toilet. Seeing the queue at the toilets (which were woefully short in number) we had to skip the warm ups.

As we went inside again, we were just in time to see the Elites racing in for the finish. The Elites women race started thereafter and then we were ready for our race to start. Just before the start volunteers were seen forming cordon and were about to open the small gate towards the stadium when all hell broke loose. Participants started climbing the fences and jumping on to the tracks and there was utter chaos. The race was forcibly started as the sea of participants moved ahead. I reached the start almost four minutes after the gun time, and then began the long and arduous journey of painstakingly weaving my way through the sea of participants. To add the woes, the road from the stadium was so narrow that overtaking was a forgone
impossibility. There was nothing I could do except grin and carry on.

The weather was getting hot and the sun was up and shining brightly making it a real “Sunfeast” as there was little tree cover on the route. Ram was with me upto about 2.5 km and thereafter I could manage to get a bit ahead, Ram was not so lucky. At around 4 km the road got a bit wider and I managed to break away from the crowds. I was already much behind my target pace and decided to step on the gas. However the joy of the wide roads was shortlived and to add to that, there were infinite u turns in the course which slowed down the runners. Also there were many runners who would for some inexplicable reasons decide to stop abruptly in the middle of the run and walk! At the 5 k mark, my watch was showing 31 mins, I gave up any hopes of finishing in a decent time and decided to enjoy my run.

Though I was running fluently I was still not in my stride. I just dismissed this as one of those days and continued. The water stops were adequate and they even put up a shower tent through which the runners could run. However the magic of the Mumbai marathons was missing. There were no bands, no crowds to cheer and it felt as if it was a huge group run. For some inexplicable reasons the mike at the 6.5 km was screaming “ only 2.5 kms to go!” As I was reaching the 9k mark, I made a feeble attempt to sprint, but again the narrow roads in the home stretch ensured that there were many runners in between me and the finish line. Finally the agony ended and I finished the race with my Garmin showing a time of 59:43. This was worse than my BNP runs where the course is not as flat as it was here and the weather much more of a killer. Though not happy, relieved that it was over, I went into the runners enclosure for refreshments and then met Hemant, Ram, Krishna, Milan and Apurba. Hemant had completed in just over 56 mins and Apurba in a little over 52 mins.

Finish + Crowd

Notice the crowd at the Finish line. I can be barely seen behind Bib no. 539

After some chit chat, we all left the stadium to our respective resting places and thereafter to catch the flight to Mumbai. The misery I thought was complete when all the flights to Mumbai were delayed, and we all reached back home pretty late in the night. However, the next day I learnt that the timing chip that recorded our timings was off by almost a minute. The Sunfeast misery was now truly complete. Though the race in itself was uneventful for me, we all enjoyed the company of our group. Apurba, who was running his first race ran a fantastic race, and Hemant also came in with a decent timing. Some thoughts on what races to participate and how to place oneself at the start, etc., are to be mulled for future races.

Hemant, Krishna and self