Run, Sala, Run: The Delhi Half Marathon

Friday, Nov 7^th, 8:55 pm. Am at the office putting in some final bits of work before heading home. One of my friends from the HR team walks up and offers me a chance to run in the ‘Delhi Half Marathon’. Seems some people had registered and were now less than enthusiastic about destroying their Sunday mornings with such needless activity. I make a split second decision (those, undoubtedly, are the worst kind) and accept.

I have a body throbbing with pain and scary creaky sounds in ever joint from my throat downwards to show for it. That, however, is NOT what this blog post is about. It also made for an extraordinary experience, which is the more at the heart of this considerably lengthy blog.

For a guy whose only exercise over the last 6 months has been little more than stretching to scratch different parts of his body, attempting to run a marathon was always going to be a tall order. To try it on an empty stomach, therefore, was not, in retrospect, one of the smarter things I have done in recent times.

For starters, the milkman did not turn up. (Today is when I realized we even have a milkman). To make matters worse, I was running a little late. Which will not come as any surprise to the people who know me well (Or even not so well, for that matter).

I kicked my bike to life and realized I needed to refuel it to have any realistic chance of getting there. And since I was in no mood to run to the starting point as opposed to running from it, I duly made my way to the petrol bunk.

After a 45 minute journey carried out at more than optimal speeds, I managed to reach near the venue. Note the use of the word near. Because, as I was to unhappily discover, reaching near the venue and reaching the venue is worlds apart, literally. All roads do NOT lead to the race track, because all the roads are blocked for (hold your breath) the DELHI HALF MARATHON runners!

If you expect people to come in and run 7 kilometers, you should try not to make them walk the better part of 4 kilometers from the parking to reach the start. By the time I reached the holding area (aptly named, as you shall discover), my left ankle had already given out and the right one was contemplating suicide.

You know the feeling when you are about to start a marathon and your legs are paining and you get this pressing need to shit. No?

I do.

Time: 9:30 a.m, the scheduled start of the race.

The holding area was this rather large ground meant for (you guessed it) holding people back. Because the actual start line and the passage leading to it were so small that it made for a 25 minute struggle to even get there. (yes, I agree that reaching a marathon perfectly in time is not a good idea as opposed to class or office)

At 9:55 I finally start.

And proceed to promptly give up. Running, I mean. About 1 k.m down the line, when I felt sufficiently close to death (I’ll call it ‘touch and go’), I finally settled down to a rhythmic walk. Brisk, but if I had to, I would put it closer to ‘stroll’ than I would to ‘jog’.

I continued fluctuating between running and walking for the remainder of the race (I would put it at 50:50), punctuating it with reasonably long water breaks and ‘observing weird people/incident/situation in middle of race’ breaks.

45 arduous minutes later, I crossed the finish line. At a sprint, lest some picture appear somewhere with me dragging my sorry state across the finish line.

I vow to actually run the whole distance next year.

Or better still, sleep in.