Though I haven't been in the best of shapes recently due to skipping training sessions for playing cricket and writing, I was in a decent enough form to compete for the first time in a long distance running event. The good news was that, more than 100 people signed up from Google, which meant we got a corporate registration. This also meant I would compete only against men from other corporates.
Having completed the 10 k run in 50 mins way back in Nov 2007 coupled with my redeemed passion for running after that, I knew I had fair chance of making it to the top 5 under the 'corporate men' category. With this confidence I headed to Necklace road with Shyam in time
( in fact ahead of time per Indian standards.)
We were all instructed to get near the stage inside the ground so that the run could commence. I was pretty happy on getting there with only few hundreds in front of me and I thought it was my day with destiny to make to the winner's list. The usual cine-stars came, spoke and got thunderous ovations for whatever they spoke.
After a couple of minutes, the MC asked everyone to get ready for the race and called upon some celebrity to flag off the race. He flagged off and no one ran. I was looking around and re-confirmed that no one ran. After a minute or so, the MC instructed everyone to head via their nearest gate to start running. Apparently, when the celebrity flagged off, people started from starting point on the road. This starting point on the road was about 200 mts from the stage and given the per sq.km density at that point in time, about 2-4k people would have been there between the stage and the starting point.
How am I supposed to know this, when clearly instructed half an hour before "Please come into the ground near the stage so that we can start off the race.?" I had to literally wrestle with so many people rushing from all sides and jump over a wall to get to the starting point at the earliest. By then there were so many hundreds converging from all directions. I for a moment wondered whether it was the 10 K run or a street wrestling event.
This pissed me off to say the least. It did much more harm than just pissing me off. There were so many people ahead of me walking at the most relaxed pace they ever could and the only thing I could do was to jog few meters, walk few meters, push few people, get pushed by many more, bump into strangers and then apologize and do everything else but run.
This continued for more than a km by which I decided, there is no way I could make a top 5 finish. The crowd cleared up after some time, I gradually picked up pace and kept the rhythm going until 9 kms after which I switched gears to finish strongly at 52 mins. ( I thought I had it in me to come with a 45-46 min finish) If only there were clear instructions as to the exact point where the race started, thing would have been different.
Shit happens!
No comments:
Post a Comment