P

“P - Passion, Perseverance, and Persistence” is the caption for Chennai marathon. With just 2 ½ weeks to go, tension started creeping to my head. When I haven’t yet touched the 30kms mark, how am I going to complete 42Kms? Every week it’s becoming a big struggle to keep increasing the distance beyond 25kms. Even though my mind says “keep going” my tired legs badly screams saying “stop punishing me now”.

Last Sunday (Jan 15th) I watched Mumbai marathon and was quite disappointed to see not even a single Indian runner in top 20 finishers, but was quite amazed to see 12 Kenyans in top 20. There was a huge 15 mins gap between the Indian runner (finished 28th) and the winner of the race. International runners would definitely improve the standards of competition to a great extent and this would happen only if the prize money of such an international event is increased. There were around 18000 people (which is quite huge in numbers for Mumbai roads to accomodate) participated in the dream run. But the figure is very small when compared to 45000 to 50000 people participating in New York full marathon every year.

Getting back to my limping long runs, I am concerned about completing the full marathon without stopping. I don’t want to break anywhere in the middle, walk for sometime and continue the run later. I desperately wanted to run the complete 42 Kms and it would only be possible if I could do couple of 30+Kms run in another week and a half. I want to keep my hopes alive and give it a shot during the race day.