After having lived in Goa for over three years, finally ran a (half) marathon today!

After having lived in Goa for over three years, finally ran a (half) marathon! It was a rather slow run. The first half marathon that I had run in my life (Hyderabad, 2008 or 09) had taken me less than two hours. And today as you can see, over two and a half hours! Sob! Sob!

Earlier, I had always looked down upon anyone who took more than two hours to run 21+ Kms. Because I, an average runner, was doing so in less than 2. But now I can’t look down upon anyone! Lack of exercise and running over past few years has definitely left me a below average runner. The last long distance race I ran was over one a half years ago in Mumbai (a 25k) and that had been a horrible run too. I was unfit and had trained for just one week. At least this time, I spent a good 5 to 6 weeks building up the running routine (from 5k to 12k). I guess it will take few more weeks to push up the average speed to less than 6 minutes for a Kilometer. I can be happy with that, for a while. Today, as you can see in the pace chart above, after the 16th Kilometer, I stopped running altogether and just walked till 17th. That really sucks  – not to be able to run throughout.

Few words on Goa Marathon as an event:

Pros:

• Started almost on time
• Limited crowd for 21k (I hate crowds – Mumbai marathon is intimidating for example – ran it only once)
• Adequate number of water stations throughout the route (by the way – it is an amazing route for a run; and I am saying this even when I live in Goa – one of the most beautiful routes for a half marathon, trust me).
• Volunteers did an amazing job offering water, juice, banana and oranges (I typically start consuming these after 10k – but once I started, I ate and drank a lot every kilometer).

Cons:

• No t-shirt in goodie bag 🙁 (not that I wear the marathon t-shirts but generally hota to hai na?)
• Road traffic (bikes, cars, trucks and buses) kept plying throughout – a car almost hit me; this is UNACCEPTABLE – what’s the use of tying up with traffic police / government officials if you cannot block traffic for few hours?
• The only thing that they had to offer for “grub-coupon” (post run) was a cup of yogurt! Should have probably saved some juice packs and fruits while running had I known this! Had to rush home to eat proper food (there were food stalls at the venue but I wasn’t carrying any money – I had assumed the grub coupon would get me enough basic post-run calories)
• Just when I was about to hit the finish line – they started the 5 Km run – hundreds of runners ran directly towards me and I had to struggle to save myself from coming down under them. And of course, that fucked up the already fucked up timing (by may be half a minute – but still!). This was stupid. It was not like I took 4 hours to finish my half. I ran slow but there must still have been around 40 to 50 odd runners behind me!