Thane (Varsha) Marathon

I was well rested in the week of this Marathon but woke up on race morning feeling like I would not be able to eat anything. Due to a real bad experience on running a race with the wrong food in the GI tract, I decided that an empty stomach was a better option. Well, it turned out that it was a decision which was more between 'a rock and a hard place'.

The race had all the confusion at the start and after, typical of political involvement. Meaningless speeches and announcements, runners in disarray, ridiculous requirement of "reporting" to a guy carrying a sheaf of papers and general uncertainty about the start time. Thankfully, they curtailed speeches and the race began at 8:20 instead of 8am. I had decided to run an easy long run in this race and was doing quite well upto the 15K point, when suddenly I found my pace dropping. I realised that this had to be due to low blood sugar, the result of not having eaten something solid that morning. I immediately reached into my pouch and sipped the corn syrup I had carried and which was actually meant to be ingested much later, to get me thru' the 30K mark! The glucose from the syrup had to take time to get into the blood stream and by then I had started walking with Aalok.

Somewhere on the 19K mark I felt a surge of energy which was the glucose making its way into my blood stream. I managed to run the next 2K at almost my tempo pace and crossed the 21K point. I then trudged on towards my objective of doing a 30K but had to negotiate a pot-holed 1K stretch thru' slums. The requirement of spiking my blood sugar with corn syrup again seemed inevitable and I was now walk-running after the 24K mark. When I reached the Nashik highway and the lonely stretch with no one around but pasing trucks spraying slush on me, got me to decide I'd had enough of this race at 27 K and a time of 2:52. I pulled out, walked and found an autorick to return to the start point and thence, home. I stopped at the local wine store and got myself two cold beers which I sipped even as I analysed what went right and wrong for me in this race. Until the next race then.