Marina Beach Express

After spending close to 2 weeks in Madras and doing pretentious runs in the gym, I finally managed to do my first run on the Marina Beach like I had been planning for quite some time.

Started off at 6:30 am walking down from my street to the beach! (Yesss! As a correction to what I had said earlier, my house is not about 5 mins from Marina, its about a minute and half! So that actually puts us at some risk if the tsunamis revisit us, as my mother asked when I told her about the house near the beach and I had just brushed her aside as insane!)

Took off running on sand at as reasonable a pace as can be managed while you evade maidan jalebis (!), 'Indian Style' toilets on the beach, boats, kids, dogs which are half immersed in the sand, etc.

Finally reached a section that is relatively cleaner and picked up some pace. But then, one has to mention the several happenings that dot the Marina landscape on a Sunday morning, lest you think we are insane to be running in the sun, alone. There are revellers from the previous night, complete with playing cards and mineral water bottles, there are the volleyball players, there are the early morning lovebirds with no worms, the families which are out for a walk with the younger members clutching beachballs, footballs, etc, fishermen adjusting the nets, fisherwomen cleaning the nets with any remaining collections from the previous sorties, about a hundred cricket matches - incl. some with complete pitches, the mandatory children building sandhills (I think that this particular kid might become an architect! Such propensity to construct on a Sunday morning betrays a focus at an early age) and sundry others.

Several popular buildings that I cannot recognize are on my left as I run towards a distant line of shops that have virtually blocked the beach. Actually there is little of the beach beyond them as it seems to have been developed for cultivation and hence has grass growing all over it! Anyways, I turn back here. I pause for a moment to reflect on the distance. I see that the floodlights from Chepauk are just behind me. So that must be about 4 km from Santhome and I have been running for about 30 mins. The return is a little faster as I now know which sections to run on, closer to the water and in which sections to choose a line away from the water.

Some canines suddenly decide to run after me. Some fisherman throws a stone in their general direction and they abandon plans! Some kids watching me run, wave at me and are kicked that I return their gesture. Don't know whether they were more thrilled than I was :)

By now, I am having salty sweat, an indication that most of my water is gone, thanks to the sun and humidity. But home is near, or so I think! I take a turn off the beach and have been running for an hr and after getting into a street realize that it is not mine!

Jump over a few compound walls to get into Leith Castle Street which is near mine and get back to Santhome High Road. Feel a little silly at having overshot my own starting point. But then, what fun is a good run, if you don't go beyond you expectations! I blame the previous night's revelries which started off at Minar (the rooftop restaurant in Savera) and ended at Paprika (the coffee shop) with Apple Pie Frangipani & IceCream and Hot Coffee at 1:30 am, not forgetting the beer which is giving us our proteins as one of our bondhu housemates put it long ago!