'Cubbon Park' Weekend

FOTS run on Sunday 8th March 2009

Beautiful shot from Cubbon - borrowed from Peter in the RFL website

Cubbon Park in the centre of Bangalore is quite an amazing 100+ acres area of greenery with diverse flora. It is probably one of the most popular locations for runners and walkers in the city. On any Saturday or Sunday or public holiday, one can find a number of RFL runners running here - some are members of Cubbon Park irregulars and others not. Many of them also end up at Airlines Hotel for a hearty South Indian breakfast after the run. I am an occasional runner at Cubbon Park - I generally prefer running a maximum of 20K there. At Cubbon one can do loops of between 4Km and 5Km - either completely road or completely trail or a mix of the two! The trail is very nice, though uneven in sections - its quite incredible to have such a, green, pollution free, traffic free, running track in the centre of the city!. What I don't like about Cubbon is the fact that one cannot maintain an even pace here (due to the nature of the route and also the breaks every loop) and also that the gates open to road traffic at 8am. Last weekend, however, I ended up running at Cubbon on both days and it was fun!

I decided to do a 30Km+ run at Cubbon Park last Saturday(7th March) mainly to run in the company of fellow RFL runners. This meant doing 6 loops or so.I had expected the company of some of the Cubbon Park(ir)regulars – Ashok, Pankaj, Prateek, Shantanu etc. I was pleasantly surprised that over 15 of us started the run at about 5:35 am. Since it was still dark we ran the first loop on the road- running in front of Vidhana Soudha. Second loop onwards it was mostly trail – we ran a 5Km route devised by Rishikesh. It was great fun chatting and catching up with fellow runners. In the third loop Praveen Singh and Satsang joined us. Unfortunately, in the fourth loop, at around the 22Km mark, I tripped on a stump of root or stone and fell pretty hard. I normally keep a cautious watch on the terrain that I run on but I guess being engrossed in good conversation caused a misstep and a stumble. Luckily, I escaped with just skin scrapes in both my palms and below my left knee. I decided to be safe and abandoned the run. Accompanied by Praveen and Satsang went to the Sanjivani ambulance and got the bruises in my hands washed and dressed. Returned home disappointed that for the first time in many years(after the first marathon attempt in Pune in December 2002) I was unable to complete the targeted run distance. Also, this will be the first time that I would not have done a long run of 25K or 30K+ distance between two marathons. Doing a long run between marathons has more a psychological impact for me than physical benefit given that I have been running marathons regularly . Anyway, I hope this does not impact my performance in the next marathon which is within 2 weeks.

Sunday, 8th March, was the 1st edition of Feet on The Street(FOTS) a 5Km run organized by Runners For Life with the goal of getting more Bangaloreans to run with a portion of the registration fees going to Dream A Dream - a Bangalore based children that works with children from vulnerable backround. As an active and enthusiastic supporter of both these organizations I Had to be there. A little over 200 runners took off at 7am doing 2 loops of 2.5Km. I had a nice leisurely run at 6minutes 44 seconds per Km–the event had a lot of new runners – apparently less then 10% were RFL regulars. Though personally, with all the media coverage, I had expected at least 300 runners, it was a great start to a new monthly event!. Hopefully it will grow in leaps and bounds during the course of the year and we will see a FOTS with 1000 runners!. Click here to see more pictures of the event. It was good to chat with Vishal, Bobby, Sangitha and others from Dream A Dream. I really love the employees of this organisation and I must add I had a wonderful time being part of the first day of their 3 day annual retreat at Manthan Farms of Banjara Academy on Monday 9th March.