Dream Runners Half Marthon 2014

(*my spoils from the last 2 months)

After last month’s Ultra marathon in the hilly bay area, to come back to sea level, to a flat course for a half marathon in the Bay in Chennai, was not the most inviting.

But Risky provided the much needed motivation to start, when he asked me to pace him for a sub-2 hour finish. I checked with the organizers – Dream Runners, if I could be the official pacer for the 2 hour bus, but it was too late to make add a pacer I suppose.

So, I got to the starting line, with no mileage in the bag, I had had only run twice since the Ultra. On the contrary, Risky was well prepared. Risky made his debut half marathon at the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon in 2012 and has been steady with the Run less Run faster program.

We started off in right earnest, at the 5:30 pace, but the humid Chennai weather caught up. Risky was not used to the conditions and had to stop to catch his breath. Before the end of 5k, we knew that the sub-2 was out of reach. There was a ray of hope for a good timing as we got into a rhythm near the U-turn.

But we were not able to keep the tempo and the second half was mostly me dispensing a lot of gyan.

·         Eat well, sleep well, hydrate well before the race

·         Have a good breakfast before the race

·         Race shorter distances to get to used to ‘racing’

·         Have realistic goals based on time trails or more scientific goal setting

·         Blah blah blah…

I finished in 2:28 mins and 450^th in a field of about 1500 runners. When I signed up for this, I was hoping for a sub-100min to get a Personal Best, but that will have to wait some more. Personally, I am happy to have started running with this, its 16 weeks to the very promising Bengaluru International Marathon in October.

If you came here looking for a DRHM review, read on. Most of the good points were retained from the last year as well, where I finished in 1:47.

The Good:

·         The water stations were well stocked, great support, with water, energy drinks, fruit, medical aid, water sponges, water sprays, etc

·         Early start, started on time, with minimum fuss. A drone at the start taking pictures sent out wild cheers from the runners at the start line

·         Flat course, fast course

·         The medal (see the shoe medal in the pic?) is very lovely indeed

·         Breakfast was simple and functional (regular idly, vada stuff – good post race meal)

The not so good:

·         No crowd support – Chennai has never been a runner friendly city (weather, traffic starts early and is non-accommodative, lack of parks, stadiums, play grounds to run) and this doesn’t help the runners’ cause

·         Perhaps I finished late, the finish area was crowded, the was severe shortage of water in the finishing area