Hyderabad Half Marathon

1 hr 42 min!

That is about as long as I can hold it in! Now I am the family record holder for the half marathon having dethroned bada bhai by 4 mins. (snigger, snigger,… btw, bada bhai doesn’t even know blog exists and that I am sniggering off. All the more reason to thumb my nose, I think …)

OK. Now that I have had my share of fun!

Saturday morning arrival at Ameerpet. Journey only partially better than lousy, since I did get to sleep after 5 am. Hyderabad is one of those cities that you see in the movies in the mornings where the camera pans across the horizon, etc to reveal a few landmarks, etc…

Friend lives in Kukkattapally. Friend and wife are like chocolate brownie with icecream (CBWI). Too good together! So I get driven across town several times as we come down to town to drink coffee, eat lunch, dinner, etc! How desperate can we get! Bhabhiji can’t stop cooking good food, making tea and generally being a gracious hostess. I also have relatives in Narayanguda and hence get to see some middle class Hyd. Saturday is spent eating at Fusion 9, which is a decent joint if you don’t mind spending a bit. Besides it is known more as a watering hole! Do pasta loading! Go to ISB, where baby is housed. Baby is struggling to beat the system. Baby beats pants off one half of CBWI at snooker and works off some of his frust in life, then shows us around. Meet relatives, who have some of the cutest kids in the universe. Take a look the famed IMAX. Go to the starting point to collect my bib for the half marathon only to receive one for the 10k race. Apparently we need to get there next morning before the race and exchange.

Don’t eat much dinner in anticipation of Sunday morning, which I can’t wait for. Sunday morning, the worse half of CBWI drops me off to venue and promptly disappears after having planned to run the 10 km race. See a few yuppies, who are eating energy bars. Thomas Friedman would have been proud to hear this, “ Freedom Tower eppudu complete aita undi? " And then there’s this saffron clad, bearded man who is trying to bring some order to the masses of techies getting off company sponsored cabs, buses, etc in company T Shirts and wandering all over, “ Hey Kids, the 10 K is over there! “ It happens only in India. There is even a medical check tent, where they check your pulse rates to see if we are ok. One smart alec, grips my wrist, asks me if I have ever had TB, jaundice, BP, Diabetes, heart attack, etc. When I answer in the negative, he writes my name, age and bib no down & says I can run! Finally someone with the mike announces that we are ready to start off the 1st ever Hyderabad half marathon. And while she is still saying that we have some official to inaugurate the race, we are off! And then the guest does fire the starting gun, just in case you didn’t already start running for fear of being trampled over.

I am with a band of women athletes, the leader amongst whom, maintains a pace which indicates she has trained well. I later discover that there were only 8 women amongst the total 200 or so runners in the half marathon. I complete my 1st km in 2 min 55 s! I am shocked by it and realize that I am going faster than necessary. But then slowing down is worse for my system. I just can’t slow down in my first few kms. My 2nd km takes me a little over 4 mins, still too fast. Then I get to my pace also because we are about to start off on the 1st of 3 flyovers, one of them fairly long, There are people in leather shoes, football shoes, one guy even in total costume for Juventus! There are several barefoot runners. The traffic has been stopped for the run and the citizen of Cyberabad do comply. The run is mostly thru the older sections of the city. I course thru areas I had done in a rickshaw the previous evening. And by then, the lead pack is already running back. It is about 26 min. I wonder how that is possible since I haven’t done more than 6 km yet. Then I realize that we all have to lap Hussain Sagar, which is itself some 7 km+. So we are not halfway thru.

And then we come to a turn, from which one can see the 4 minarets of the Charminar. At Charminar, we have wet sponges. Someone has even thought of oranges! But then don’t take kindly to sour oranges. There are several strewn all over the road. The sponge is of great help. This is the 1st half marathon I know of, in India which gave this to all runners. There were several water stops and the water did taste of a little chlorine in places, but a little chlorine never killed anyone except a few germs! The return leg sees me meet Vetcha boy, one of my constant boosters and I clip 10s of my next km. Then come the return legs. The 1st one is easy. The 2nd one is long and tiring. I latch onto the 5th woman runner in the race. She is constantly reminded of this fact by several coaches, officials, etc. I guess there was some prize for all top 10 finishers. When I am back on ABIDs, there are 3 people on a stretch of about a km, the runner in front, a solitary policeman and me! That is how lonely the run was. I somehow make it to Hussain Sagar. And boy, is the lake huge! There is this endless expanse of water covered with mist, which makes it even harder to estimate how much time it will take for me. I look at my watch and realize that it is just about an hr! The prospect of beating my target of 1 hr 46 min (bada bhai’s timing in Chicago) exists. When the 6 km left mark approaches, I realize that I am taking almost 6 mins to my km. Not a good sign. I need someone to pace. I find it in this in the form of an old man, who must have been an athlete in his day and is far more energetic than I am and pace him for about 1.5 km, within which I find my rhythm and I let him pass. He is too fast anyways. Next,S a pack of three, one of them a muscular runner from Mumbai(I met him later and we discussed our plans for Mumbai) and another who is just sticking close to him. And then, woman runner no 5. The 3rd km from the finish is miserable since it is almost empty, stinks of the garbage dumped into the stagnant lake and because you still can’t see the finish line. And then I have 12 mins for my last 2 km if I have to finish in about 1 hr 45 min. I decide to stick it to the race and when I see the 1 km mark, I go wild. I run like there’s no tomorrow (which is mostly how I run anyways!) and am sprinting past some of the people who are settling to a finishing pace since the useful positions are already taken, atleast among the men. I finish my last km in 4.5 mins! And when I cross, a few people shake my hands, pat me and say, “Well done!” And then someone says, half marathon guys need to go a little further! I scream, “Move” and begin running only to see some of the crowd laugh. Apparently all that was meant was that half marathon guys had a different gate to enter the arena thru!

Eplilogue: Need a rickshaw to get back. End up walking all the way till Somajiguda to get a rick. But I hardly noticed! Spend about 20 mins eating all that the better half of CBWI can cook and finally drop off to sleep. Dream of flyovers, Jai Chiranjeeva posters and her!

Mumbai, here I come.