Finally, I'm back to running regularly. After 3 years of doing the odd 5K and 4 mile races, I signed up for the NYC Half-marathon as part of my training with Team Asha. Running has been fun so far, with a few aches and pains but no serious issues so far.
There was much planning for race weekend. The race coincided with Kray's much awaited trip to the US and so Saturday was devoted to walking around with Sup and Kray seeing the sights of NYC. The good thing was that I was tired enough to fall straight to sleep (post midnight) without too many pre-race day butterflies. There was plenty of advice from many quarters running though my head including, 'Please wake up in time for the race!'
Sunday, 4:00 am - Woke up to a blaring alarm on a beast of a Nokia 3315 phone (haven't seen one of those in ages) followed by two more alarms 15 min later on Sup's phone. (I am immensely grateful to you guys for those alarms, my phone alarm never rang!) Had my morning chai, lots of water and a couple of bananas and headed to the park. Got to the park by 5:40 am and spotted some orange Asha shirts by the baggage truck which turned out to be Poorva and some other fellow Asha runners. Checked in my bag with the UPS truck and meandered down to our corral. Caught up with some more Asha runners and we all hung around, took some pics and made our bathroom stops.
Sometime during all this the sun came up and race day dawned bright and beautiful...No, make that, 'Race day dawned hot and humid'. There had been heat advisories issued on the NYRR website for the race a few days in advance but I was not prepared for it to be hot at 7 am. There were the announcements and the singing and the gun went off! Of course as far back as we were in the corral, all we could do was inch a little further to the start line. I , however had to make a break for the bathroom again thanks to all the hydrating I had done an hour before. After a visit to the porta-pottie from hell (the first 5 I tried to use were out of toilet paper) I finally crossed the start line at 7:15 by myself, keeping an eye peeled for any familiar orange shirts either along the course or on the sidelines. Turns out there are quite a few organisations that picked orange for their team shirts because it's a distinctive colour and the first orange shirt I waved to on the side stared at me completely blankly. Caught up with Sheila and some others who were running together and stayed with them till the first water station. Surprisingly, we were feeling the heat and humidity even at 7 am and we were ready for some hydration as soon as possible.
Mile 2 (Water Station): With the heat, everyone was crowding the water/gatorade tables all thirsty and sweaty. The only problem was that there seemed to be no water in sight! All I could see was one hapless volunteer balancing 3 jugs of water desperately trying to hand out water to hordes of runners. Rumour has it that a lot of volunteers failed to show up at 7 am :( I decided not to get any water and hope for some further along the course. Sheila was starting a headache and wanted to walk for a bit. I decided to keep going at my pace. Caught up with and went past Manish along the way. I passed the 5K point at about 35 minutes on the clock. I felt comfortable with the pace, I was sweating buckets but the water stations along the way were better equipped than the first one. Caught up with Nilesh and Veera along the way. I spent my time looking out for friendly orange shirts and waving at anyone who made eye contact.
Mile 7: After one circuit of the park and some, we were finally out and in Times Square. This turned out to be my favourite part of the run. The road widened so there was more space to run and there was a lot of energy with all the crowd support and the bands playing all kinds of music. (I think the fact the I took a Gu-gel before I exited the park also helped with the energy levels). People were friendly and waving, there were Asha volunteers to high-five along the way and Nilesh had caught up with me so I also had a running buddy. The 10K point went by super quick. I made sure I waved at whichever brightroom camera I could spot along the way, since Kray and his giant camera were nowhere to be seen :) We seemed to be going strong and we knew that there would be a cheering squad at the 10 mile point so that was definitely something to look forward to. I was starting to feel the heat and went straight for the misting station as soon as I spotted it.
15K : As we turned on to the West Side Highway, I spotted the 15K sign and a cheering squad led by Jess. She high-fived us with a cheering, "Take it home, guys!" From there on, I figured it was another 5K, I would finish eventually. The last 5K turned out to be harder than I had thought. It was getting hotter, and there was no tree cover. We were on the West Side Highway and I should have seen the river on my right, but I have no recollection of it. My thighs were starting to complain and I was just focussing on getting from one water station to the next. I was drinking Gatorade for some energy but after two Gatorade stops I was feeling full so I had to stop. Nilesh went ahead, I could still see him but I had no real desire to try and catch up. From Mile 11 to Mile 12 seemed like a while. After a seemingly long time, I finally hit the finish line. The gun time was - 2:26:13, better than the gun time on my previous Half-Marathons in Mumbai. Gratefully took a cup of Gatorade from Abhishek at the finish line and slowly meandered through grabbing a cold towel and some pretzels. Eventually found other people, including Coach Uli. From there on, it was all over but the posing for pictures and grinning inanely at having finished another Half-marathon!
I'm mostly recovered from the race, navigating stairs was a little difficult for a few days. But, the real challenge starts now. As my mentor put it, 'Film abhi baaki hai! ' I've run this long before, from now on as my runs get longer, I'll be running distances I've never run before. I'm a little nervous, let's see how things go from here!
