Sunday, October 19, 2008

Kaveri trail Marathon 2008


Completed the full marathon today in 4:42:19 - while it was a bit slower than what I would have liked I am still quite satisfied. The course, while mostly flat, turned out to be tougher than anticipated - the terrain was quite uneven with stretches of stones. While the weather was mostly OK with patches of sun and clouds it was very warm whenever the sun was out. At times it seemed almost s warm as Mumbai minus the humidity. I did the first half in 2:05 and felt I would be able to finish around 4:30. However, the 4rth leg turned out to be very very difficult. My hamstrings were hurting and I ended up walking in small stretches which I rarely do in my marathons. The finish was also not as strong as my usual marathons(and this was my 14th one including the Ultra!). I felt a a bit nauseous after the finish and recovered from it only after the lunch. I am not sure why this happened - the only thing I can think of that I did differently is eating salted peanuts. In any case I broke the cardinal principle of not doing anything new in a marathon - I have never eaten salted peanuts in a 25K+ run before . I also had a 'bad laces day' today - my laces coming out at least 3 times.

The race itself was reasonably well organised - the bus from Cubbon Park with the Full marathon runners not arriving on time was a setback. As a consequence, full marathon runners started in 2 batches at 6:45am and 7:45 am respectively. Not having RFID based chip timings was another setback . It worked well at the Mformation Urban Stampede and would have gone well with the runners. Finally, despite there be 4 water stops in the 10.5Km course I felt that the water stops should have had small water bottles for runners to carry along with them. The kind of day it was ,many runners ,including myself, would have preferred to sip water continuously.
Click here and here to see some wonderful pictures of this magnificant trail.

Thanx to Pankaj Rai of Red Dragon fame for driving to and fro to KTM today - he did a phenomenonal job specially on the return leg. It must have not been easy after completing a Full Marathon under tough conditions. I would also like to thank Vishal Talreja and Jaydeep for taking the time to leave comments wishing me recovery from my back strain. Now onto the ultra in 4 weeks!

5 comments:

Jayadeep(JDP) said...

Bhasker - couldn't recognize you immediately without your beard! Congrats on your 19th marathon! I finished the half, my first one - more on it at http://snurl.com/4irp9. Nice of you to thank us for commenting on your posts, please take it as granted:)

I Run for Fun said...

Congratulations! Quite an accomplishment!

manoj said...

Congrats Bhasker
While I cant comment on the salted peanuts, i can offer one sure shot soln to your loose laces problem. After tying the knot, i pick up the 'bows' and loosely re-tie them into a simple knot, just enuf to hold it in place.
Works very well, never had them coming loose at all.
It can be very painful to bend down to tie those after 30-35kms, my hamstrings hurt simply by the thot :)

Vishal Talreja said...

Bhasker,

Your tenacity and sheer determination is commendable. Congrats on completing your 19th run and your 3rd in this campaign :)

All the best for your next one. You have the support of Dream A Dream and all the children.

Cheers
Vishal

Bhasker Sharma said...

Thanx Jaydeep, Run for Fun, Manoj and Vishal! Thanx Manoj for the tip on laces - will try it next run onwards..

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