Less than a month to go for the 7th edition of the Mumbai Marathon. My training is going good for a third crack at the holy distance at Mumbai. I have gone through a marathon and a 30K over the last two weekends, and my legs, particularly the calves seem to be holding up well. The plan going ahead is to continue with 30K+ runs every weekend except probably the last one where the plan is to make a flying visit to Mumbai to run a 21K training run with friends. And if I can pull out another 42K in between, even better.
Below are some updates on the Mumbai marathon as they continue to trickle in:
Start timings
The Full Marathon, like last year, will have an early start at 6:45 am. The regular start timing is 7:40 am and this is where you should start if you care about things like prize money in the OPEN category, otherwise, advisable to take the early start and avoid about an hour of sunburn.
Looking at the official website, it looks like the organizers have still not finalized the arrangements for the Half Marathon, which for the first time is supposed to start from Bandra and end at CST. The website does not have any start timings for this event, and there are no details on how baggage will be handled to take care of this unique situation of the run starting from one point and ending at another. What I have heard is that organizers will transfer the baggages by road to the finish point.
Route Map
The official route map for both the Marathon and the Half Marathon is yet to be published. I guess it is taking a bit of time since the route has changed big time this year with the inclusion of the Bandra-Worli sea link.
Energy Drinks – a First
For the first time, the Mumbai Marathon (and half) will see energy drinks being provided to runners (and I am not counting Electral water as an energy drink). Organizers have tied up with energy drinks manufacturer Lucozade, I have no experience of drinking this so I wonder how much different it is from the more widely available Gatorade.
Cutoff Times
The Marathon will see a cutoff at 12:40 pm, which is 5 hours 55 minutes from the early start at 6:45 am. Pretty decent I believe, unlike the earlier cutoffs which were generally in the 5 hours vicinity.