Ran the spirit of Mumbai in 2 hrs 10 min.

Now Shantanu Singh keeps Mumbai running as well! Sunday I ran one of the best organized marathons in the country the Standard Chartered Mumbai marathon. Talk about the enthu level, the participants, the route the management this race is definitely far above the rest organized in the country!

We reached the Azad Maidan (near CST) at 6:15, and we could already see thousands of enthu runners, and the janta who came there to cheer us up! Now this is the spirit of Mumbai, even the non runner took the pain of getting up at 5:00 am and coming to the venue, I havent seen this anywhere else in the country. The race started bang on time, however I wished that it started a little late so that we could have had a little pre run masti, but never mind we had a lot of Masti during the race :P. I planned to finish the race in sub 2 hrs 15 minutes, so I thought of pacing with Pratibha, she is a fellow RFLer and a great runner. For the first 8 KM the janta and the crowd would just not end! thousand of people took part in a half marathon as well, I always thought that its the dream run where majority of Janta runs but in case of Mumbai Marathon I was wrong!

The best part of the run started as soon as we hit the Marine Drive, it is definitely an experience running on the Marine drive when there is no car on the road and its filled or rather overflowing with runners, getting some awesome cheering up from the supporters who are standing at the corners and to top it all see the rising sun! The sight was Beautiful. I managed to keep decent pace, and was pacing with Pratibha as planned. I paced with her till 11 Km and then took a U turn, one of my friends who was "overtaking" me told me to have some electral as my face was nearly white with the salt losses, so I stopped at one of the aid stations for getting some electral, and this is the period that my timing suffered, Pratibha and one more fellow I was pacing with went ahead....obviously!

While coming back there was a couple of tough inclines near the Peddar Road, and to make the matters worse the pain in my shin (yes the same damn pain, which came in Ultra) started again, but this time there was no stopping I knew that I had to go for 21K only and now probably the "running aginst myself" funda starts, I again came back onto the Marine drive that was the last 5 Km and believe me with the heat and Humidity of our commercial capital ever meter seemed like a Km , then came Noel (another RFLer) and I heard hin shout "Just go for it!! Mumbai Baby!!" and then immediately after that saw the 18K mark, with only 3 more Kms to go we (me and Noel) decided to do a sprint now till the finish line, I think in the last 2 - 2.5 Kms we must have ran at an average speed to 10-10.5 km/hr. AND YES I COMPLETED IN 2 hrs 10 Minutes my personal best till date.

That was an account of the run, now the experiences. I saw the Janta who came from far off places just to cheers us up!! Take this on the peddar road people actually came out of their flats and were offering water / bananas/ glucose biscuits. You can see small kids cheering you up, whenever I stopped for a wile to relieve my pain in the shin, the janta would just start clapping and cheering up, and I again started running, the legs seemsd to move on their own seeing such a fabulous cheering up, I forgot all pain, yes it is Mumbai, the spirit of Mumbai which gave me my personal best timing!!!!

Other Blogs on Mumbai Marthon: Efactorial by Nitin


*RFL= Runners For Life

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