Total personal effort in 3days: ~10k run in Chennai on 14th, 2pints, 10x200m sprints with the baton, 50k bike ride on OMR & ECR, 15k noon run to Pondy, 4pints, 8k Heritage run at Pondy, more pints.
Key Highlights:
Red Dress Run: 14th Aug, 5pm
* Late start, fading light, bloody long for a run without a water stop
* Run on streets, along crowded beaches was not pretty
* With the light dropping the trail was barely visible. Jugy, Zach and I ran back on our own having lost the trail
* Yours truly iced for representing BH3 filling in for the absent BH3 GM
* The party at Green Meadows was high on decibel levels & low on IQ levels, as teams tried to figure out what the team captains were strategizing
Chennai – Pondy Relay Run ver3.0: 15th Aug, 6am
* Horror start – First, Horror Zubin actually started the race at sharp 6, the hard, long baton in hand. Second, the Hyderabad runners van with Obelix and some 10 other runners ended up in the ECR toll booth and not the OMR toll booth!!
* Arun, Sunil, Jugy & I ran our guts out in short bursts; Arun ran out of turn a few times too.
* The Obelix van joined us about 5k later and we finally got some more time between turns to catch some breath.
* Our team finished our 10.4k in some 43mins or so.
* Amidst a lot of attention from team mates, Jugy & I put our bikes together, changed to spandex, changed shoes and were off on our bikes
* The bike ride was excellent. OMR has some flat stretches, it was an overcast day & the breeze was light.
* We made good progress, stopping only once during the entire 50k stretch. Except for a stray incident of a tractor trying to mow us off the road, ECR was friendly too.
* Reached Radha’s farm at Kalpakkam in about 2hours for some fab breakfast of omelet, idly, pongal, watermelon juice
* Packed the bikes back in and sprinted the second leg when our turn came. This time more organized, less frequent, but nevertheless as lung bursting as the first one.
* Then we hopped on to the car, with Vinod at the helm and headed to the last toll bridge on ECR as we entered Pondy, with an estimated 12-15k left to the finish.
* Jugy, Sunil & I started running (at 12:30, it was blazing heat) the last leg, Jugy dropped out & hopped on to Abnash’s car after 5k or so, Sunil dropped pace after about 7-8k or so. I finished the agonizing run at Nalla beach.
* Met some very snobbish hashers who were very reluctant to offer a lift in their car (to the adj St. James Court) for the fear that my sweat would stink worse than their beers. I farted in the car for good measure – phat phatia
* The baton reached to the awaiting hashers in 8:20hrs – jerking at an average of 4:11mins per km for all of the 120km!!!
* BBQ, dinner, party, football on tele, dance floor, KF pint at Nalla beach resort and back to Ginger well after midnight
Pondy Heritage Run: 16th Aug, 9:30am
* This was where the hashers were given treatment they are not used to
* Run started near the Gandhi statue. It was to be flagged off by the CM of Pondy himself!!
* The police made great efforts to clear the roads for us. The trail was very well marked with chalk, but the FRBs just couldn’t get the police van out of the way
* And yet again, Zac, Jugy & I lost the trail and ended up running the last few kms off the trail
* It sure was a hot day and a long trail for the recovery run
* The circle was at a beach resort, the cherry on the top was the Ballad by Mike(?) – the One of Each reproduced at the end of this post
* Lunch was served with the amber fluids at the Mahindra Zest Big Beach Resort. What a lovely place that was!
* The drive back from Pondy was a blinding one – first by the heavy downpour, then by the headlamps and finally as we neared Sarjapur by the lack of street lights
Reported in the press on the 18th. Linked via the MH3 site here
More pics here
Sing the Ballad Chorus before signing off… (full Ballad here)
Zac started filming – “Which way do we go?”
Leather Coater said “It’s this way.”
Red Stud answered “Where”
Arul said “That’s a long one, the longest one I know”
On On…
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