Ran the fabulous Kaveri Trail in Srirangapatnam for the 7th time (including the informal half in 2021) on 19th November 2023 . Enjoyed the experience comfortably completing the half in 2:12:02 without pushing too hard. After a 5m break , managed to clock an additional (albeit slow) 4K on the road going to Ranganathittu bird sancturary and back to the state highway a couple of times. The other years I have run here are :
18/11/2007 HM (1st edition - timing which was done manually must have been around 2:15)
19/10/2008 4:42:19
18/9/2010 4:32:04 (went on to run/walk 58K in 6:57 as training for 75K at Bangalore Ultra
20/9/2015 1:53:33 (finished 1st in senior category)
27/11/2016 1:56
20/11/2021 (unofficial) 2:48 (was just too slushy to run )
19/11/2023 2:12:02
Left home a little after 1 , after an early lunch, on Sat 18th November and parked the car at Medley . Rode in G's car from there. Caught the Mysore expressway at the flyover at about 2PM and reached Young Island resort by 3:35. After collecting the bibs being distributed in the lawn area checked into the room a little after 4.
After tea/cofee and oil drenched veg bajji at the restaurant we walked to the stream running through the property where we bumped into A1. Another round of tea/coffee, close up of the moon and sighting of Jupiter's moons (thanks to G's tripod mounted telescopic lense) and a half an hour break in the room - we were back in the restaurant by 730 for an early dinner with great company of veteran runners (phulka, Dal, Jeera Alu, dal kichdi, raita) .
Slept by 9:45 and woke up to the alarm at 4:45 after a fairly good sleep though I could sense onset of a throat infection . Left Young Island at 5:40 and after parking the car(1.5-2 Km) drive reached the start point around 6. There were probably 600+ HM and FM runners.
All runners started at 6:15 . I started slowly - my 1st Km at 6:34 was the slowest and except for Km 5 all others were between 5: 8 and 6:20. Ran quite a bit with Y - an ultra runner from Medley and BHUKMP runner A. Had a better rhythm than at the Bangalore HM in early Oct and the quads also did not get as stressed. as always the 2nd half was warmer and more humid compared to the 1st one. Ran the last 5Km fairly strong to finish in about 2:12 - 94th out of 536 finishers. Very few runners went back for the 2nd loop to run a FM . Given the challenging weather and the uneven albeit flat course I wondered how I ran an ultra for training here several years ago,
The 4 of us from Medley went back to Young Island and had breakfast around 10 where I interacted with a bunch of other runners.
Started driving back at around 11:15 and got home around 1 after a good weekend.
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