Ran my 15th half marathon race on Sunday, 8th October at Bangalore - my 3rd time at the Bangalore event after 2014 and 2015. Overall it was a great experience - good weather, well oraganised , start and finish in the stadium, with about 10 Kms inside Cubbon park and a fairly flat course. The icing was spending time with my brothers , C and M, before and after the race in addition to meeting lots of other running friends.
C and I checked into Woodlands hotel around 4:45 and M(and D) joined around 5:30. After tea/coffee snacks we walked across to the race entry gates in Kanteerva stadium to get a feel for the distance. Came back, had early dinner at the hotel and got back to the room by 8:45 and slept by 9:15.
Woke up at 4:15 and got ready by 5:10 - ate a banana, some raisins and almonds. Left the hotel at 5:15 and at the tracks inside the stadium via zone B by 5:25.
Bumped into Amrita and T Ashok and many many other runners in the start area. Got bumped to Zone A and started running less than a minute after start of the race.
Despite there being close to 5000 runners it was not that congested in the 1st Km stretch from inside the stadium into cubbon park via Kasturba road towards corp circle. Averaged under 5:45 /Km the first 5K. 10K was done in just under an hour. Realised very early that I had not not hydrated sufficiently before the race and needed to stop at an aid station in the first half itself. Upto about 16K I was on track for around 2:05. However, the pace dropped fair bit in the last 5K specially with another aid station stop at 18K . I did not realise that one had to make a U turn before entering back into Kanteerva and though I pushed hard the last few hundred metres the event clock showed 8:08 when I crossed the finish line.
The chip time was 2:07:21 ranking me 13th in the age group and overall 830 out of 48xx finishers.
As always it was great mingling with fellow runners after the finish . Did a bit of stretching while waiting for M and C to finish. We had breakfast together and walked back to the hotel for a shower and lunch. Got home around 2:30 post lunch.
