Freedom Half marathon

Its been a good week, I managed to run on Tuesday and did a comfortable 11km run. But the highlight of the week was the half marathon which I had planned some weeks back, to celebrate Independence day. I started at 9.00am in the morning instead of the planned time of 7.00am, as I was not able to sleep early the previous night. This also meant that I had to abandon my swim plans, as I would not be able to reach the pool in time (as the morning session closes around 11am or so)

Once I started my run, things started to fall in place and I completed about 21.5km in 2hr 20mins (its about 10mins off my personal best during training and about 8mins of that took place in the first 11km but after that I got into a good rhythm and things were smoother.)

Thanks to the middle drizzle which kept me company during the second half of the run, I did not need much water and managed with about 1liter of water. It was a wonderful watching people dressed in colours of the Indian tricolour (flag). I also stopped midway during my run when a flag hoisting ceremony was talking place at one of the buildings on the way (and the national anthem was playing). I would usually have not stopped if it was a training run (and that would not have been disrespectful), but since this was a run to celebrate the independence day, it seemed the best thing to do.