There has been a lot of press mentions lately about the BSNL Bangalore International Marathon which is going to happen tomorrow. I will not be running it because it is not intended for people who love running.

Why do I say that?

1. The Bangalore Ultra Marathon was announced eleven months ago that it will be held on December 16, 2007. The BSNL Bangalore International Marathon was announced by the Karnataka Athletic Association just about one month two weeks ago that it will also be held on Dec 16, 2007. They knew very well that the Ultra is happening on the same day! I don’t know what is the inside story, but I think it’s pure one-upmanship, they got ticked off that the preparations and publicity for the Ultra seemed to be going well.

2. The organizers of the BSNL Bangalore International Marathon do not take running seriously. If they did, they would not organize a training camp for just ten days. Do they really think they can convert a new person interested in running to eventually run 42 km in just ten days?! If you consult advice by professional runners, you will find out that it takes 18 weeks to train for a marathon according to the charts whether you’re a beginner or an advanced runner. Talk to any runner on how long they took to prepare for their first marathon and you’ll know the difference. In fact, if you want to know what kind of preparation hardcore runners do, see this marathon day checklist.

3. They are not allowing women to run the full marathon! When asked for the reason, they say that they don’t expect many women to run it so they decided not to allow it. I have many things to say about that but let me stick to facts – there are many women runners out there, it’s just that the Karnataka Athletic Association does not seem to be encouraging about it. Do they know there are women runners in India such as Priya who ran 100 miles (160 km) in the Himalayas?

As a running enthusiast, these are enough reasons for me to not take the BSNL Bangalore International Marathon seriously. Instead, I’m running the Bangalore Ultra Marathon tomorrow.

In fact, there were discussions in the open-for-all RunnersForLife mailing list regarding postponing the Ultra because of this clash, but the race director Madhu strictly said no. As an aside, if I’m not wrong, Madhu is a volunteer organizing this and is not even part of the Ultra organizers company! Compare this with how the other marathons are being organized.

Even CrossOver who organized the previous marathons held in Bangalore have postponed it at least four times this year! It’s appalling that these organizers don’t take these events seriously.

Contrast that with the participants in the Ultra marathon who met on Friday night for carb-loading and had a ball of a time meeting other fellow runners.

I attended that pasta party and met a lot of enthusiastic people. One of them was a guy called Andrew. What’s special about him? He’s a 68-year old guy, and the Ultra tomorrow is going to be his 592nd marathon! That’s right, that’s three digits. He’s been running since 1976. In fact, he’s flown down from New York just to run the Ultra. He’s also participated in the Himalayan run that I mentioned earlier. Now, that’s true passion for a sport!

As for myself, I have not at all trained properly in the last two months but I’m hoping that the old routine of running 16 km every weekend morning will kick back in tomorrow and I’ll hopefully run well.

Disclosure: I’m NOT part of the RFL club, just an avid runner. I may join the RFL runs in future, but I’m certainly not biased towards them. However, I am biased towards running and runners.

Ever since I got into running a couple of years back, I have become fascinated with sports, especially because it is so character-building. For example, one of the things I’ve learnt (the hard way) is team spirit, both in trekking as a group and in running (which, in my opinion, was one of the reasons that lead to ion).

I think every child should be compulsorily part of a sports team, whether it is cricket, badminton, track team or chess.

I never imagined that Bollywood can produce a good sports movie, but I’m happy to be proven wrong.

“Chak De! India” is a very good movie. Go watch it.

“Run and become. Become and run. Run to succeed in the outer world. Become to proceed in the inner world.”

– Sri Chinmoy A.C.

Is it just me or is running becoming popular in India?

Take a look at this marathon schedule:

The World’s First Midnight Marathon took place right here in Bangalore on Saturday midnight. It was held in the area surrounding the iGate office near ITPL.

Niara and myself had decided to run the half-marathon. We didn’t even think about the full marathon because we have had no preparation at all, and we were about to run the half marathon just like that. Just the previous week, we both were facing leg pains/injuries but that didn’t matter on the D-day.

The place had a festive atmosphere – with “dollu kunitha”, clowns on stilts and even fire-eaters. There were bands playing in the main area keeping people entertained when the run was going to start, they were playing pretty good music although I wish they had better presentation skills.

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009.

This incident happened about three weeks ago when the preparations for ion were in full swing, and Vikram and myself worked all day long to create the posters for ion as well as the website itself. At one point, we realized that we were spending most of our time in choosing just the color and placement of text, and we spent some 20+ min just to decide the font of the apostrophe in “plug ‘n play”!

At around 6 o’ clock, we were dead tired (at least I was, Vikram said he had never seen so lazy before) and decided to go get the posters printed but I didn’t want to, so he suggested instead to go for the new place that he went for cycling to recently. We went by bike through a zig-zag maze of roads and after 3-4 km, suddenly ended up in a place which seemed to be deserted! It was a new layout being formed by destroying the hill and the greenery, the signs of urbanization marked by destruction, the green being replaced by the grey (concrete).

We climbed up the rocks, just sat down there in the darkness and we had a long discussion about random things and sometimes deep things. Then, we noticed there was a huge reddish moon in the sky. Simply beautiful. I was taking photographs.

I chanced upon this wonderful song by Eliane Elias:

I’m not afraid
All is forgiven
Coz after all
What’s done is done
Move on with grace
Slippin’ to space
And when I’m ready, I’ll sing my song
Follow the silence far from the sadness
Leave all the madness behind
I’ll keep on living
I’ll keep on running
Passing through heart who I’ve become
I’ll keep on driving eternal darkness
I’m scared of falling
Turn my lights on
Coz when I’m frightened, we carry on
And keep on living
And keep on running
Running towards what I’ve been running for
I will not hide
Fatal submission
You are so wrong
Because I’m still here
Drive through the night into the light of the horizon

It reminds me of yesterday. We ran 27 km. Just for fun. I was exhausted much more than usual, and I came home and crashed (and I mean crashed) on the bed. I had the most peaceful sleep for four hours and then woke up and realized that it was 1 pm, that I still had my shoes on, and that my stomach was grumbling because I hadn’t had breakfast.

I completed the full marathon i.e. 42 km on Sunday in the Bangalore International Marathon 2006.

Well, barely completed. After running the first 21 km in 2.5 hours, I was elated at my good timing, but then the worst thing (for a runner) happened – cramps. I just couldn’t run, it hurted. The irony was that in the past 6 months of heavy training, I never faced this issue, and it had to happen on the final D-day. I tried a little running and little walking for a while and managed to reach 28 km.

At the 28 km mark, I gave up. I grunted and cursed myself. Then, a fellow marathoner came along, cheered me up and pushed me to go on. Okay, I guess it was worth another try. So, I mustered all the energy left in me to get up and walk. A few more marathoners came along and encouraged me to simply walk if I can’t run. I winced and walked, but I was pleasantly surprised at the encouragement by the people around, and specially the traffic cops.

If there was ever a test of my will power, I guess this was it. I took 4 hours to walk the rest of the way back to the Kanteerava stadium.

In the end, I was disappointed that I couldn’t run the 42 km as I wanted to, and my goal of finishing in 5.5 hours went down the drain. But at least I completed.

A huge shout of thanks to Ajay, Niara, Vikram – my running partners and closest friends, without whom I would’ve never run the marathon, let alone work towards my dream of running the full marathon.

Is it a coincidence that the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42?

Partly inspired by my gang’s craziness, and partly inspired by Shree, I bought a cycle a month ago, and I’ve been cycling to work on 2-3 days in a week ever since.

Some observations :

• People who drive in Bangalore have no respect for cyclists.
• The assumption is that the only reason you’re on a cycle is because you can’t afford a bike.
• Traffic is so dangerous for slow-movers like cyclists.
• People find it funny to see a guy riding a cycle listening to his iPod while most people are in formals on bikes.
• When most people my age are planning to buy a car, mom is wondering why I’m buying a cycle.
• It takes 45 min to travel the 8 km on cycle, just 10-15 min more than my bike (mainly because of the traffic)
• After I reach office, I feel energised and have noticed a positive effect in the concentration at work.
• No traffic cop trouble. They never bother cyclists.
• It’s dangerous to be on a cycle at night. It doesn’t have a headlight.
• Never park your cycle just about anywhere, it’ll easily get stolen.
• I save on petrol.
• I feel like I save an hour everyday because I don’t need to exercise separately now.
• Cycling is fun.
• 8 km is turning out to be easy now. Shree, when do we do a long one?

Today, I achieved 34 km.

Yeah, my stamina has improved.

Here’s some of the “running gyaan” I’ve collected over the past few months:

• Learn to listen to your body
  • Learn to distinguish between feeling tired or just feeling fatigue, feeling the need for water and the need to take rest.
  • I attribute a part of my development to doing things my way. I didn’t push myself to compete with the others, but I competed with myself.
• It takes patience to develop stamina. A year ago, I used to run one round in the track field and stop dead-tired. The track was just 400 metres long.
• Some people find company important for running. I need my iPod and the company.
• Running in the early morning is better – lesser pollution, lesser noise, lesser people, empty roads, etc.
• Breathe naturally.
• Do varying distances of running (The distances should look like a bell curve on a graph)
• Run 9 min. Walk 1 min. And the cycle continues.
• Gear is important
  • Nike Dri-Fit was very useful for me because it absorbed the sweat and helped me to stay warm.
  • I also carry the water-bottle-with-a-belt.
  • Good shoes are important
• Drink lots of water. 2 litres per day.
• Water + Electral = Yummy. And it restores the salts that your body loses.
• Nothing teaches you determination like running. Because the temptation to stop is immense and you can easily stop.
• I still have a lot to learn.

The Bangalore Marathon has been postponed from May 14 to September, 2006.

This is so disappointing.

I had not participated in last year’s marathon because I wasn’t fit for it, but I had made up my mind to participate this year. So, I’ve been training with a couple of friends. Our plan was to prepare for the half marathon.

Today morning, I ran 21 km in 2.5 hours, the second time in the past month, and it felt great. Too bad, I have to wait till September to run in the actual marathon.