2nd Science and Technology Run

Due to work related travel  I could not participate in the 1st edition of the Science and Technology run(http://www.sntrun.org/)  at IISc in 2009 though I had registered for it. So I was eagerly looking forward to this year's edition on 11th April - to go back and run a 10Km in the beautiful campus of my alma mater. To relive my early days of running for it is in this campus 30 years ago that I first started jogging. This year my son Rahul also decided to run this. He was prepared to run the fun 5K in this event. However, when we reached the venue around 7am we realised that I had registered him for a 10K instead of 5K. The longest he had run before was 5.7K as part of the Majja run in Sunfeast World 10K 2009. Recently he had done 4Km as start of  his training for the Sunfeast World 10K 2010.  He decided to run/walk and do as much as possible.

I left home around 620am with Rahul and Adam. Space for four wheeler parking was provided in the gymkhana grounds. Met Athreya and Reena at the parking lot. We took the overbridge to cross the main road and enter the main campus and walked over to the main building area with the statue of JRD Tata to collect our bibs. There were quite a few familiar runners from RFL there. The bib collection process was quite smooth and all runners were also given a cap and a T-shirt. Adam and I decided to warm up by running back to the parking lot to put the T-shirts in the car.

All runners moved to the starting line around 7:35 am and after a wait of nearly 10 minutes there the race was flagged off. There were probably around 500 runners for the 10K. I decided to try and keep a steady pace and target a below 50 minutes run. Ran the first 3 Kms or so with Nari at about 4:45 minutes per Km pace. The route was wonderful with fair amount of green cover. However it was quite a warm morning and soon the pace started to drop. However, I managed to keep the pace just around an average of 5 mins per Km. There were'nt any Km markers along the way. The route seemed to take a criss-cross path and if it were'nt for volunteers at vantage points the chances of taking a wrong turn was quite high.

Most of the route was on the road ; however there was a good trail section as well. There were water points every few Kms. While my intent was not to stop at the water points in the first half of the race the ehat got to me and I had to stop at least at every alternate water station.

When my Garmin showed just about 8Kms and I was looking to sprint after about 1.5Km I suddenly realised that the finish point was a few hundred meters away. Therefore I accelerated and finished in about 43 and a half minutes with my Garmin showing a little over 8.5Km. Athreya and Adam had finished a few minutes earlier. It was quite disappointing that the route fell short by nearly 1.5Km. When I spoke to the organiser he said that the route was marked for 10Kms and I must have missed a turn somewhere. That seemed unlikely as all runners I spoke to concurred that the route was well short of 10Km. See here for a discussion on this.

After cooling off a bit I walked to the T-intersection in order to join Rahul for his finish. After a few minutes he came by and I did a run/walk with him for a little over a Km to help him finish his longest distance ever.

Considering that he was mentally prepared to run only 5Km in this event this was a great achievement. As we were leaving the 5Km run was starting. We returned home by about 10am quite satisfied with the event despite the route being shorter than 10Km.