The month of May always gives me enough reasons to be happy about. One such reason being the yearly Bangalore marathon. It has become a customary for me to participate in the Bangalore 10K marathon every year and this time it happened on May 27th. I was eagerly waiting for it since past few weeks and preparing like never before. My target was to finish it in sub-60 mins which is 8 mins faster than my previous best. I knew that achieving this target wouldn't be a piece of cake. So I decided to start my practice runs 6-7 weeks well in advance. I had nice practice runs along with few of my colleagues and was quite satisfied with it as I was able to complete couple of 10k runs in 63 mins. With that, I considered myself with a good chance of completing within 60 mins on the final day.
On the final day, I woke up quite early and headed towards the venue. Noticing the early morning drizzle, I anticipated a pleasant run. On arrival, I joined many others at the stadium in the mass warm-up session, claimed to be the first of its kind in India. Few minutes later, I witnessed the World Elite runners finishing the marathon, as the Elite category marathon begins before the Open category marathon. Its a great view to witness these great runners finishing the 10k races at the jaws-dropping timings of around 27-28 minutes. Commendable!!
The open 10k marathon in which I participated started a few minutes later. In such races, the first Km is always the difficult part as one has to wade through the crowd. This time it was a bigger crowd as well. Once I found my pace and room, I was able maintain it throughout, interestingly even with some steeps in between. I had to focus a lot as I had this "sub-60 mins" target in mind so was checking the time after every Km completion. When I completed 8 Kms my confidence grew stronger as I was in a convenient position to achieve it. Sadly, at the 9th Km mark, I felt the first sign of stress. I started feeling dizzy and I thought its just temporary thing but it continued and because of which I had to slow down. In fact, the scene of me falling and getting attended by the medics crossed my mind. And I never wanted that to happen. I slowed down considerably keeping a check on time. I lost few minutes in the process and when I crossed the finish line, I was disappointed.
Few moments later found solace in the fact that I actually didn't faint. I finished the race in almost 62 mins odd timing. In the state of disappointment, it took quite some time for me to realize that this timing is better than my previous best by more than 6 mins. Quite an effort to be happy with :)
The "sub-60 mins" mark eludes but gives one more reason for me to continue my running...
