Thursday, October 01, 2009

Urban Stampede - Jungle mein Mangal

Date: Aug 22nd '09
Venue: Olde Bangalore (same as last year)

Registration fee for the Urban Stampede, incl. run support, buffet breakfast, tee shirt, goody bag & an opportunity to run with your colleagues – Rs. 5000
Fresh fruit juice, Pasta and salads for breakfast & an entire spread of South Indian tindis – Rs. 300
Driving to the venue, the Olde Bangalore some 20k from the city – Rs. 150

A chance to run with your Fiancée, with the hope of beginning a very long run with her – Priceless. There are some things money can buy, for everything else you need to be blessed…

The Good:
· For the first time, I was sponsored. The closest I have come to being sponsored before this, was a beer or two after the runs on a couple of occasions. Thanks Wipro!
· There were 147 teams that participated, that’s a whopping 600 people running the 5kms.
· The starting area was actually inside the resort (last year it was in the parking lot).
· The tees were excellent (esp. the ones that came in the delayed lot). All participants (Note: deliberately avoiding use of the word ‘finishers’) were given shining Gold Medals.
· There were stronger runners, the entire Toyota team put up an excellent show, an average of 20.5mins for the 5k each.
· Good opportunity to interact with colleagues – Neetesh, Aman & Bryant from my team & Subba, Jai, Santosh & Naresh from the second Wipro team.

The Bad:
· Food was good, but you would have to think twice to offer your non-running family member breakfast. It was a whopping Rs.300 per person for the buffet breakfast. Quite a pinch if you were thinking of a stay-cation for the weekend in the countryside with your family of 4!
· The course was unchanged from last year. It’s a 2.5k and back, I’m sure we can have more variety for such a short distance.
· The bibs were clumsy, with the company name needing to be sprawled across on a second bib pinned on top of the first one.

The Bestest:
· Being the first runner in my group, I grunted my way through the pack and passed the baton in 4th position (our team finished a respectable 27th out of 95 teams in the Open category)
· With a timing of 22:20mins for the 5k, I came in 18th overall, out of the near 600 runners – top 3 percentile!!· Accompanied my fiancée, Shreya who was running the second leg for Ujjivan. The 40mins were special. Reena & Athreya perched themselves strategically along the course to make sure we don’t get ‘lost’ in the bushes.
You know I did some goal setting at the Sunfeast 10k last year. This year it is the Mission Accomplished, bwuhahhaha...hahahaha

4 comments:

Prakruthi said...

duuuuuuuude!

Vidya S said...

Haha, good one! I lost an opportunity to run with Mr Hubby this year coz of my sudden travel plans.

Anonymous said...

Looking good, the running couple!

Suri said...

Awesome maga.. so awesome that if I come to your place you could give me some Awesome instead of Coffee.. and u'd still hvae plenty of Awesome left ..
:)
Regards to Shreya.. don't torture her too much with the running