Midnight Marathon -- Post Race

If there was a perfect race which I ever ran it has to be this one. It was just plain beautiful execution by me. I finished the half marathon in 1:55:02 -- which is sub 2 hour and a personal best.

My initial plan was to maintain a 5:40 pace till the half way mark and then see how I felt. In fact when I reached the half way mark I was a minute ahead. I reached the 10 mile mark within an hour and a half. I hovered around the 5:20 -- 5:30 pace for the next 4 KM and the last KM was run under 5:00.

The course was pretty good. A newly tarred well lit road. It was initially supposed to be 2.75 KM one way and back, but at the last moment the organizers had to cut it short and make it 2.1 KM. So the people running the HM had to go out-and-back 5 times. Mostly flat; a very minor decline/incline towards the U turn point.

The organizers had managed to rope in Bisleri as one of their sponsors, so there was bottled water all throughout. Which helped me because I didn't stop, not even for a bit, in the entire race. The only sad part was the lack of electrolytes. I didn't have much of a problem because of that, but spare a thought for the people running the full marathon. Kudos to RFL for setting up their own pit-stop which had electral.

Anyway, after I was done with my half marathon, I was happy with the time, but not really satisfied -- I felt I could have pushed harder. So I chatted with the guys for a bit and then decided to give company to Pankaj who was doing the full.

I did one loop with him, when I started having some cramps. So I had some salty pizza and then continued with Pankaj on Shantanu's cycle. I accompanied him on the cycle for 2 more loops, after which I gave back the cycle and I ran with him on the final loop.

So in all I would have done around 30 KM of running and around 8 KM of cycling. Best part is, at the end of it I still had energy left to do more.