Among other things..

This 20th I reached one of my long time dreams of crossing the finish line at the Mumbai Marathon. Crossing the finish line meant so much to me for many reasons. One of them being scary.  This race has a deadline of six hours. What it means is you need to complete the run by 11:40AM. All support is taken off and traffic starts on these roads. I was scared that I would have to run between the vehicles and also not knowing the roads in Mumbai did not help ease the fear.

Luckily for me, this did not happen. I finished with an healthy hour to spare. I started off the run at 5:40 AM. I had aimed to finish in 5:30Hrs considering I took 6:15Hrs at KTM. My plan was to run 8 Kms every one hour. I clocked about 9.8 Km in the first hour. Every extra kilometer I cover now would come in handy at the end when I would not be able to walk. So I did not slow down and continued at the same pace. By the end of 2 hours I had 18.3km. I did the half marathon in 2:17. a bit slower than my last half marathon, but i was not dis heartened as I knew that I run the last KM faster. At the end of 3Hrs I had 27.1km and 34.6 at the end on 4Hrs. This is when I secretly started hoping to finish in 5Hrs.

Still at a pace of 8.75 to 9 KM per hour I had the luxury to watch around south Bombay where we were running. More than any thing else it was the spirit of the supporters who poured onto the streets of Mumbai which was heart warming. Kids had taken over the water booths from the appointed volunteers. Some residents had bought 5-stars and Cadbury bars for the runners. I was well nourished all through the runs. I distinctly remember a lady handing out almonds, cashew nuts among other things. An old lady was offering bananas. Some people were also handing out GU Gels. These gels are very expensive in India and very scarcely available. All these things reminded me what makes a great city. Having run some city marathons earlier, Mumbai marathon easily tops the list.

Every thing was well organised. Water and energy drink booths at regular intervals, well stocked aid stations, young girls and boys enthusiastically applying ice bags to bruised muscles of runners, those huge fans and air coolers in those 'cool zones' made the run enjoyable. Every thing was in place and I cannot think of any thing that was amiss. Crowd control was at its best. Kudos to the Mumbai Police and Traffic police. There was security to runners as well.

Coming to the show offs. I was awestruck by a lot of things all along the way. The show rooms of Rolls-Royce, BMW, Audi, Porsche, Ducati among others stood out. Houses along Peddar road, the elder Ambani's house, a couple of houses of bussiness families, the sealink, running along Nariman point, race course and Worli sea-face were also high points.

Having said all this, I could not have finished the race on 5:00:41 if not for the people cheering above their voices, volunteers and organizers. All in all a run  you should do atleast once.

Stats pasted below: Photos coming up shortly.

Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2013 - Marathon 5:40 Start            Back
Bib Number	2518
Name	MANJUNATH BHAT
Gender	MALE
Category	OPEN
Overall Rank	1091
Category Rank	773
Gender Rank	1013
Split@3 Km	00:18:24 at an Avg Speed of 9.78 Kmph
Split@15 Km	01:36:35 at an Avg Speed of 9.32 Kmph
Split@20 Km	02:13:39 at an Avg Speed of 8.98 Kmph
Split@27 Km	03:01:56 at an Avg Speed of 8.9 Kmph
Split@28 Km	03:10:45 at an Avg Speed of 8.81 Kmph
Split@29.25 Km	03:20:10 at an Avg Speed of 8.77 Kmph
Net Time	05:00:41 at an Avg Speed of 8.42 Kmph
Gross Time	05:06:33

Average performance of the race
10 8 5 3 @3 @15 @20 @27 @28 @29.25 @21K  Speed   9.78     9.32     8.98     8.9     8.81     8.77     8.42

Overall Runners Statistics
1,000 750 500 250 3 3 - 4 4 - 5 5 - 6 >6 Total  Runners   6     216     858     928     108     2,116

Overall MALE Runners Statistics
1,000 750 500 250 <3 3 - 4 4 - 5 5 - 6 >6 Total  Runners   6     207     791     857     99     1,960

Overall OPEN Runners Statistics
800 600 400 200 <3 3 - 4 4 - 5 5 - 6 >6 Total  Runners   5     164     648     699     86     1,602

Online since...

I went to Mumbai for the first time in Dec-2006 for the new year's. I was amazed by the city and decided to blog about it. So on January 5, 2007 this blog was born. I used to post at a different address but later on moved to this link.
My first post was ' Local trains faster than Planes, vada paav better than 5 star hotel buffet'
,inspired by a friend's post about Delhi when he was there for his training.

Why the name?
I decided to blog and at that time was deciding on a name. I saw a book (diary sorta) my wife used to maintain. It was named 'Rich-Tales' and got that idea for this blog.

Why the blog?
I wanted to maintain a diary no one at my home snooped into. An actual diary never worked. So went online. I knew they would never find out ;)

On a serious note, wanted to write a travelogue and started this as a trial. No travels happened after this Mumbai trip. Correction: I did not get a chance to travel after this Mumbai trip for about 6 months.  So moved on to maintain this as a journal for my jibber-jabber.

What else?
I got into photography by this same time. Once I thought I was ready for an SLR, after 2 years with my point and shoot, bought one and started publishing my pictures here  since Mar 9, 2009.
This was my first flickr post

Wanted to check out twitter and tried out this. Not very active there. Very Active these days.

Why this post?
Read a couple of blogs talking about their humble beginnings. So wanted to check out how long have I been blogging. It's been 4 and a half years. There it is, my humble beginning and the humble present ;)

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Mine below.

Coming back to Republic of Moldova, love you guys. Thanks for visiting my blog, though its true I hadn't heard about you guys before. I know you guys have blazing fast net. This probably means you guys are done with browsing everything under the sun and had nothing better to do. So, you decided to pay me a visit. Thanks again guys. Keep visiting more often and get your country green in the map above so that I get to know where your country is.