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Mumbai Marathon 2014

Like previous year, I participated in the half marathon (approx. 21kms) competition in Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2014. I completed the race in 3 hours and 25 minutes. My friend Amit Prajapati from SEBI also accompanied me for most of the race and completed the race along side with me. From SEBI, total 59 officers completed half marathon whereas 4 even completed full marathon. Fortunately this time I didn't have much of problem with my legs post-race. I even didn't have much pain 2 days after the race day. So it was a normal race.




Amit and Anuj

Wait, this much summary is enough for my parents to know. Of course, my life has unexpected adventures even though I try to avoid them. So here goes the detailed story -

As you might already know, I gave up my practice in last December. Even though I had recovered at the start of year, I was too lazy to restart my practice. It was obvious that I was going to face issues during the race. But I was confident about completing the race.

So when Amit told me that he was also going to come for the race, I told him that I knew all the information about the race like race timing, starting point, etc. My father repeatedly asked me when was the race going to start, but I kept avoiding the question. I kept telling him that there was no point in knowing that so early before the race. Finally, I checked the web site a day before the race and somewhere saw that the race was going to start at 7AM. I took a train to Bandra and was really surprised when I could not see any participants in the compartment. Last year when I went with Nikhil Sawant, there were so many runners at the station. Even when we started walking towards the Bandra-Worli sea link, I could not find anyone. When we reached the start point, I was not sure what was happening, the whole place had a deserted look. Someone then told us that the race had already started! We immediately started with the race and asked a policeman near the start line when the race had actually started.

Well, it had started at 6 AM!!! (It just reminds me the incident where Viraj, Aditya and I were going to Rishikesh's brother's wedding at Virar. We reached the wedding 1 hour late, whereas we thought we had reached half an hour early. No guessing who the culprit was.) It was 6.35 AM by that time and I was so much frustrated. First thoughts were to give up the race. There must have been hardly 2-3 guys in next 2 kms. The road was empty. I remember Amit kept talking on and on, and I kept telling him to shut up and focus on the race instead (I did apologize afterwards for my rudeness). Initially we thought we would at least clear the Sea link and then Amit would go to his home at Worli. By the time we reached 4 kms, I realized I had issues with my right hamstring tendons. I wasn't going to run for too long. After I cleared the sea link I decided not to run anymore and simply walk. To think of it now, one can say that I "ran" the race is a gross overstatement.  I completed most of the race walking. There were number of times I felt like quitting, especially when I came in the area near my house i.e. Haji Ali, Pedar Road fly over, Girgav Chaupaty. And every time that happened I reminded myself about Naruto and his "never give up" attitude.

Slowly we moved towards the “next” km mark. I was of course not foolish enough to make the mistake like last time when I made sprint towards the finish line after seeing the 100 m mark. I coolly walked to the finish line this time. No wonder the photos this time weren't as enthusiastic as last time. 

Post race we got some good refreshments from SEBI and rested at home for rest of the day.

All in all, it was fun sprinkled with lot of pain :)
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