Monday, June 1

Run Maddi Run


On Sunday May 31st,if you were on the road at 7 a.m with your sneakers on,with a large beaming smile,chances were that you were headed towards the Kanteerava Indoor stadium.If it wasn't the sneakers, then the little rug sack with the bright sunfeast logo gave you away.In our case,it couldn't have got any more obvious.We had our pin numbers proudly pasted on our tees.The autofellow didn't need any coaxing.Nobody seemed in a hurry to get to anywhere,yet looked focused. It seemed all roads in Bangalore led to only one destination.Even if they didn't ,everybody intended to make it to the same place.For a change being just one among thousands didn't feel as bad.This wasn't a race,it was more of a carnival.
You don't get many chances of running a marathon,not winning it and still feeling like a winner in the end.



Marathon statistics

Total participants 2009 sunfeast: 23,150
Majja run participants: 13,000
distance covered : 5 kms
race war cry: RUN MAADI RUN
Total Time spent on training : 2 weeks
last time you ran a race ever : NEVER
personal race timings : how does it matter !!!
No. of smiling faces in the stadium(including the sick bay): countless
race motivation factors:Milind Soman,cameras and being captured by the media.
prize trophy:an apple,a packet of biscuits,a sweet bun that never tasted better
sweat
laughter
and loads of memories.


in the picture,in order of best timing

Anshul finished the race first in 30 mins and spent the next 30 mins looking for his mother and the next 3 hrs rubbing my(poor race timings in).Padma was extremely focussed,on tracking Milind Soman,so she came in second and Shanu and Me decided to share the third position,as we felt the podium generally accepted three positions only.

17 comments:

padma said...

Hey gazal,
True feels like a winner at the end!:-) in short it was real majjaa run coz the memories are going to be close to my heart!
well, you havent mentioned about 68's? ;-)
r u planning to dedicate a whole post on that!?

Dr Roshan Radhakrishnan said...

Man, am I impressed.. seriously... awesome.

--xh-- said...

:) nice... and missed this year too :|

will wait for next year, and may be pigs will fly...

How do we know said...

hey, i know someone else who ran that race too.. congratulations!!

aMus said...

great great going...!

i'm maha impressed but not surprised :)

Veena said...

Gazal,

I was at MG Road at around 7.30 and saw the mela you spoke about.. Felt good about the celebration in the city.. and how the people were participating in the same..

Congrats again about completing the race successfully :)

Veena.

Gazal said...

@padma
that is a secret.isn't it?and a whole post won't be enough.

@roshan
thanks rosh.

@xh
thats a deal.we are planning to convert the lal bagh walks into training sessions.Howzzat?

@How do we know
thank you.

@suma
i love the confidence !!

@veena
am sure we all would have been a sight for sleepy eyes.

Mampi said...

Hahaha,
a surgery, a road-crash and a marathon later,
I proclaim thee
a super woman.

satish said...

great.

broca's area said...

lol at the motivations!!:D...

broca's area said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
broca's area said...

unfortunately i couldnt since i was on duty!!:(

Gazal said...

@mampi
and i accomplished all of thee above in a month.
(crown resting on head)

@satish
thanks

@bro
next year.till then join us for some warm up runs at lal bagh.

Sangfroid said...

Wow! Glad to know that you ran. I missed it this time around. Did the Majja run in the inaugural edition and it was fun :-)

btw, did you say you took 3 hrs for 5 km .. Must have been the full marathon ... right ?

Gazal said...

@sangfroid
it was great fun.
no it took us 35 mins to finish a semi walk-semi run ..majja run.

lostworld said...

Hey, just came across your blog and this post.

I took part too .. in the 10km run. It was absolute fun right !! :)

cheers
http://sothisishowyoublog.blogspot.com/

JPK said...

Gazal,

I was covering the event for my news paper :)

Cheers,
Jude

PS: Perhaps ill spot you the next time you're running :D