The Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon was conducted on 17 Jan 2010 and this was the 7th edition of the premier event. Let me tell you why running in Mumbai is special. First of all you need to register way back in July of the previous year because the competition is tough and number of participants overwhelming. Secondly the Mumbai Marathon is given Gold status by AIMS.
This was my first Mumbai Half marathon and #6 overall. I had booked my tickets in advance with Jet Airways and was all set for Mumbai 2010. I took the 7:15 flight on 16 Jan 2010 from Chennai and reached Mumbai at around 9:00 hrs. There were two surprises instore for me. First I met my colleague from Strategic Sourcing on the same flight. He was going to Mumbai for an official trip. Secondly I met a girl ( Archana ) from computer science dept from my college,my batch. I was 100% sure it was her but I didn't have the guts to talk to her because even though I was staring at her for quite some time, waiting for some reaction she didn't seem to recognize me.
I had a quick breakfast with my colleague at the airport premises and left for my uncle's house in Matunga. Now Matunga comes under greater Bombay and autos are banned inside Greater Bombay. My colleague dropped me till Kurla Gardens, from there I took an auto till Scion and hired a cab from there to Matunga Central. My aunt and uncle gave me a warm welcome and made me quite comfortable, making me feel at home. They after making sure that I was comfortable went off to office and I spent the rest of the time till lunch with their younger 8 year old daughter Aayushi.
We had excellent lunch, rotis and undiyo, dal and a sweetdish whose name I do not remember. I really liked the undiyo as it was very very tasty and makes for an excellent side-dish with rotis. After lunch my uncle took me to Cuffe Parade, where I collected my BIB no. 11182 and the goodie bag. My uncle wanted to make sure that I had the best time in Bombay and went of the way in ensuring that. He took me to Leopold's cafe. Does this cafe sound familiar? This was one of the places where the terrorists open fired on 26 Nov 2008, killing many innocent lives. I saw the bullet marks on the granite wall as well as on the glass windows. After having a drink at Leopold's cafe we went for '3 idiots' the most successful film in the history of Bollywood cinema so far. We returned home by 22:30 hrs, had dinner and went off to sleep.
It was the D day. I woke up at 5:00 and geared myself for the run. I had set a target of 2:11 hrs to crack the 21.09Km distance. My uncle made sure that Raju stayed overnight just for my sake and drop me in the morning till the starting point. I warmed up,doing my usual stretching exercises and waited patiently for the flag off. The route was amazing; part of it was on the newly built Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link. The sad part was there was no water points on the sea link and many of the runners were struggling because of that.
I did a nonstop run till 8km after which I coupled walking and running till the finish. I was motivated by the enthusiasm and excitement of the Mumbai crowd. The toughest part of the route was the Peddar Road stretch where the road is narrow and quite steep. But the cheering crowd kept the runners going. People went the extra step of providing refreshments for runners and this is something unique you can find only in Mumbai. Cheers to Mumbai on this aspect.
I completed my run in 2:24:39, this was my official timing. I was quite pleased with my performance and thanked God for giving me both the mental as well as the physical strength to complete the run.
After the run I took a train from Marine Lines uptil Matunga Road and from there a taxi till Matunga Central. As I didn't carry my cellphone with me my aunt and uncle were worried when I took a long time to return home. It was my mistake; I should have called them from some other mobile. But anyways I was treated by my aunt's garam parathas with an extra dash of butter. I enjoyed my meal and went off to sleep. After that I went on see my friends at SP Jain. I met Anoop, my high school classmate and spent about one and half hours with him before departing for Chennai. On the whole I had a great run.
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