Give Life Chennai Marathon 2009 on Sep 27

Update: Event date changed to Sept 27 from Aug 22. Why? Read the reasons from the organizers below.

” … Givelife Chennai Marathon, scheduled for August 22, has been postponed to September 27. This is to ensure the participation of national-level participants and to avoid date clash with the World Athletic Championship to be held in Berlin between August 15 and 23. Another reason for post- poning the marathon is that many slow runners wanted the race to be held at a season when the temperature is relatively low …”

Wow… the saga continues, actually whenever things of these sort happen, it reminds me of same fantastically lame excuses I have seen over the years, from organizers of the Delhi International Marathon (SMGI), Bangalore Marathon (Crossover), and now this. I must admire the thinking power of the person who has come up with these brilliant excuses. I might ask, can even one athletes name be mentioned who has a conflict between Chennai and Berlin marathons. I dare further, can even one athlete stand up and say he or she wants to run the Chennai marathon who has the credentials of making it to Berlin. As for the weather excuse, I am no expert on the Chennai weather, but that cannot still fool me into believing that the weather in September will cool of so fast so as to delight the “slow runners”. Who are these slow runners by the way, I wonder 🙂 Some of the organizers perhaps who get tired running a few hundred meters?

Original post on the event below:

Just heard about this event today, which is being held on Aug 22, which is also the Chennai Day. This is the 2nd edition of the Chennai half marathon, and is expected to see a record participation of over 2 lakh people (how can anyone manage that many people I wonder, or well, do they actually need to here).

Event website: www.givelife-chennaimarathon.com
Online registrations start: July 18th

As typically goes here, a half marathon event is labeled as a marathon event, since most people don’t even know or care what a real marathon distance is, right? The event is being organised by non profit organisation Tamil Maiyam and Goodwill Communications Ltd, and since it is labeled as an ‘international’ marathon, is expected to see some international runners take part.

* Half marathon (21.09 km)
* City run (7km)
* Wheelchair run

Route Map: here
(from the War Memorial to the Rajaji Bhavan Complex)

The prize for the half marathon will be Rs. 500,000 for the winner, Rs. 300,000 for the runners-up and Rs. 200,000 for the third place. Total prize money for the event is a huge 27 lakhs.

The event is being timed by Timing Technologies India Pvt Ltd using the Championchip. They also time Mumbai and Delhi as well as Hyderabad marathons (or are intending to do this going ahead).

For the first time for Indian marathons, I noticed online payment using Paypal! Good! To be fair, the entire website is very elegantly designed, unlike the Mumbai and Delhi half marathon websites of past years. Another thing to note – water points promised at every kilometer. Looks like someone is doing the thinking this year.

More details from Chennai 365