Enjoying the break...

Its been a hectic week with some traveling thrown in (but relaxed from running perspective), as I was taking my well deserved break. It took me about 2-3days to fully recover from the after effects of the run. Monday was the most difficult, as my calves were feeling extremely stiff and climbing stairs was a huge effort. My Sunday run felt like any regular day, no injuries during the run, no cramps (as I was taking good amount of fluids and endurolites), no blisters, but once I rested, things were not so easy.

By Wednesday, I was almost back to normal except for some other pre-ultra pains and am hoping to restart next week. The most important thing left now is for me to strengthen my leg muscles in a focused manner, to reduce the string of injuries which I have been facing at regular intervals.

The Bangalore Ultra marathon was truly memorable in more ways than one, each time I get a post from one of my fellow runners or receive a email from the googlegroup of ultra runners or go through the Bangalore-ultramarathon.com website, everything comes back and the feeling is quite amazing. The results have been posted on the site by organsiers, in the race details sections of the site. I stood no.7 in the 78km category(surprising immediately after my expert pacer, even though she finished one hour before me), my bib number was also no.7! Never realised there was anything special about no.7, till the time I started my run. During the run I seemed to attract a lot of attention, not for my running but for my bib number, the three digit 007 brought about the most obvious connection, and to compound it my celebrity pacer seemed to know all the 52KM+ runners (as bulk of the participants were Bangalore Hashers & Bangalore based RFL - Runners For life (the biggest running club in India, with 800+ members) & everyone seemed to notice the bib number.

Another surprising fact which I noticed while going through the different race timings on the official website was that the 39Km timings show only the 52km participants with the best time being 4hr21. I guess it only includes names of participants who were not able to complete their respective distances.

I think the organisers got almost everything right. For a first time effort, it could not have been any better (and I would rate it higher than the marathons organised by Procam - Delhi and Mumbai marathon & the Great Tibetan marathon). The aid stations were well manned and stocked all through the 12hours and the enthusiasm of the aid station support staff was simply amazing, they encouraged us all through the race (esp. towards the later half when we really needed it). They had everything - energy drink, ice, cold water, regular water, all sorts of fruits, nuts, enduralites, pain killers, sprays, creams....... the list goes on, they never cut corners and did everything that needed to make the race a memorable one. The main reason for their success was the fact that it was organised by a group of runners, who were as passionate about running as we were. I am quite sure that next year they will make it even bigger and also make some good money out of their efforts.