The wonderful Experience of Hyderabad Marathon

The Hyderabad marathon was a great experience - truly a runner friendly road race organised very well. Personally, I felt it was one of the best road race experience in India. The firenly and smooth distribution of Bibs at KBR Park on 14th evening, dinner at ISB, the dormitory at the games village and bus transportation to ferry us around was all very well organised - as Shyam commented we(the outstation runners) truly felt like elite runners. On 16th morning most of us who slept in the games village dormitory woke up around 3:30am and took the bus to the start point of the race by 4:15am. The run started on the dot at 5:15am - there were about 90 runners about of half of them were professionals or from the services. The course was quite challenging with a lot of ups and downs - specially the last 5Km or so which was mostly up. However, the early start helped and the weather was pretty good till about 9am or so. Every KM was well marked(something I have not always seen in Mumbai), the volunteers at the aid stations every 2Kms were very very helpful. The aid stations were manned till the last runner finished. The traffic control was excellent - one lane on the multi-lane roads was clearly marked on the road with signs of the marathon and reserved for runners throughout the race and the cops worked very hard to ensure that the runners were given priority over the traffic. Traffic control, as we all know, is very challenging in Indian road races and for a first time race theorganisers at Hyderabad did great! The course was also fairly good - the 3 Km inside the ISB campus was nice but 6.5 Km inside the University of Hyderabad was absolutely stunning!! The finish inside the stadium was followed by a nice brunch for all the runners. The one thing that was missed was electronic timing and a big digital timing clock at the finish in the stadium. And the cheering crowds of Mumbai. I finished in 4 hrs 6 minutes - beating my previous best in any race in India by 20 minutes!! I reached the 22Km point in just under 2 hours and at that time was quite hopeful of a sub 4 hour finish. Having got to 39Km in 3 hours 45 minutes I just could not sustain the pace to finish under 4 hours. I ran the last 7 Km in the company of a young services guy called Raghuramaiah who had never run beyond 10Km before - we egged and supported each other from about the 35Km mark till the finish in the stadium.

A big THANK YOU to Rajesh, Gopi, Uma and the rest of the organising team for doing such a wonderful job - I am definitely putting this event on my annual calendar. Also, special thanks to all the volunteers and the cops whose help and support made this such a great experience