My blog mentioned my running number for Mumbai marathon, 552. One guy, Anand, was browsing through my blog, noticed my number, somehow recognized me by my BIB number, which was visible in one of his photographs he took at the Mumbai marathon, and was kind enough to forward to me the photo.
Amazing… and thanks, Anand.
Most of the marathons we have here, including the recently concluded Mumbai marathon, leave a lot to be desired. Here’s my list of things I would love to change.
1. Start the Full Marathon early. 6:30, even 7:00 should be okay. Not beyond that, though.
2. Publish the full results, pleeeaze! All decent international marathons do this. Even if I am not amongst the top finishers, I would like to know how others ran.
3. Allow the chip timing to be computed beyond the 5 hr limit. Okay, take away all the intermediate sensors, at least leave the one at the finishing line. I know that the traffic was opened, people can take a bus or cab to finish line, but those will not be the people who will be interested in their timings, and even if they are, does anyone else care? It’s a personal thing beyond 5 hrs.
Guys, you are free to add to this list, send me your comments, and I’ll make the list grow.
List of some interesting suggestions received from fellow runners:
Jan 15th, 2006 … 58 min 55 sec
Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia), king of middle distance running for so many years, shattered the world record in the half marathon with a time of 58 minutes, 55 seconds at P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona. He lowered the mark by 21 seconds (previous world record 59:16). Gebrselassie also broke the 20K mark, running it in 55:48, He now has a total of 20 world records set in his name.
This happened the same day we were running the Mumbai Marathon.
Gebrselassie’s most recent attempt at a World record came up short, when he won the Amsterdam Marathon on 16 October 16, 2005, in 2:06:20 for his first marathon victory. His time was the fastest in the world last year, and he is currently the IAAF World Ranked number three for road running.
Today, I came across this news article on the progress of Indian marathoners over the years. It brought out some really amazing points:
1. The Indian men’s marathon record is about 28 years old in the name of Shivnath Singh. It was set at Punjab marathon in 1978, a time of 2:12:00. It is 4th amongst the 5 oldest records records that are still standing.
2. KC Ramu seems to be the best of the current breed, 2:19 at Allahabad, 2005.
3. Women’s record is also more that 10 years old, in the name of Vally Sathyabhama, set in Chennai marathon (1995) in 2:38:10.
4. Women’s half-marathon record is in the name of Madhuri Gurnule, set in Pune marathon (2004) with a time of 1:14:45.
Indian athletics record can be found at the bcdaaa website.
We had a tennis-ball cricket tournament in our company recently. It is a much awaited 10-a-side fun-filled annual event, with lots of really crazy rules, like for every lady in the team a bonus of 10 runs, and 5 runs for every run scored of the ball. As you might imagine, lots of teams take part in this competition, this time we had 29 teams! That’s at least 290 people taking part, not including even more people who participate as replacements for specific games!
As can be deduced from the image above, we were the champions this year. In fact I one of only two people who have been part of the winning team for four of the five years! Now, don’t even think that my inclusion in this team is of such an immense value, it can’t be more removed from truth. I guess even if they included a bloke with two broken legs, 2 fingers on each hand, just one eye, and a half-wit as well, our team will still win 🙂 To be precise, that other fella I was talking bout, who has also been in the winning team four times, is the pillar of strength in this team, besides others.