I have registered to run the HM at the Bengaluru Midnight marathon on 12th December 2009. This is the third edition of this event. I ran the FM in the first event in May 2007 , finishing in 4:44 - my third slowest FM finish. It was a tough run and got very lonely towards the end. Last year I did the 5K with my son as the event was postponed from Dec 2008 to January 2009 due to the Mumbai terrorist attacks and was held exactly one week before Mumbai marathon. I am hoping to run a fast HM this year and try and beat my best ever time of 1:49 that I did in Hyderabad HM in November 2006. If I get into a good rhythm I might even attempt a sub 1:45. While the weather should be nice for running it will still be a challenge for the body as it is not used to running in the night.
There are a couple of other events leading up to the main event on 12th December. A power mile for CXOs mainly to create some publicity about the event amongst senior professionals in Bangalore was held on 22nd November. I ran this and managed to complete the 'power mile' in just under 6 minutes finishing second amongst about 100 runners. The second pre-event is the 'pet-a-thon' on 6th December wherein onwers are supposed to run with their pets!
Due to the experiences of the last two years ,serious runners in Bangalore have a very poor opinion of this event. In the past there have been issues like lack of traffic control, aid stations running out of water/electral, chaos with timings/certificates etc. Feedback has been given to the organisers, namely, Crossover and I sincerely hope these issues are taken care of this year. I would like this event to improve and attract more and more serious runners - after all this is the only long distance(>10Km) road race that Bangalore has. Being a midnight run it is quite unique. Also, this is a good race for those runners who are not able to or do not want to run the ultra distance in November or travel to Mumbai in January. Nevertheless, unless its reputation improves I suspect that a majority of serious runners will do the HM and the FM will have much fewer takers!
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