Athimber and Rajendra

DSCF0497, originally uploaded by b_ananthan.

Support across the generations made this even more special. Athimber is one that has probably seen me before I walked to have him and Athai be there for the run, very special.
And Ramendra Bhaisaab was our first running coach in front of Balmandir and this is a far cry from that.

DSCF0495, originally uploaded by b_ananthan.

From l->r deepali, hubby, ramya/ravi, yourstruly, Man Ganesh

This was part 1 of 3; support all around. The friends-n-family honor roll went all around from,

1. Ohio contingent: Ravi, Ramya, Athai, Athimber, Raj
   
2. Minnesota represented by Rajendra Pandey
   
3. Iowa family from Cedar Rapids - Mihir, Rupal, Kinnari, Ashna
   
4. Local - Ketan and Gatha, Deepali from Naperville
   
5. And the wonderful TeamASHA teams from SV, Austin, NJ, Chicago..
   

Rajendra and I

My man from LakeWoeBegone !

Another very special participant at this marathon effort; and poor man had to do the 100m dash to make his flight back. My apologies. :(

Chicago Marathon-fun-run

Highlights

• Crowd support
• Participants - single goal: finish the marathon - no shorter versions available.
• 30th anniversary - huge scale of everything
• Course : flat, flat, flat
• Live music

Ganesh and I started out with the 5:15 group; at the tail of the faster race groups. The idea being to conserve for a strong finish. This was going to be a hot "feels like 95F" day and humid. The temperature was something we were used to from training runs, the start-time of 8 AM was an hour later.

Early Miles...

Conservation was the name of the game and we were doing a 11:30 at mile 2 and it felt good that I had not repeated my past follies of starting fast and feeling it later. Right after that we got our personal cheer group comprising of Ravi and Ramya seeing us off around Mile 3 :) and some other ASHA-Chicago folks.
At this point we were only seeing some water at the aid stations, and mostly empty tables. Ganesh was experiencing a sugar+salt low and was looking for gatorade; I suggested that it might not be until after 15 miles (little did I realize then that he was in need) that there would be electrolyte. He suggested a potty stop and we spotted a couple of porta-potties and decided to stop there; turned out to be a long line and 10 minutes later we started again. By this time we were seeing the tail of the walkers and the 5:45 pace groups. Decided to start navigating ahead of the walkers but that was proving to be difficult even with the roads being completely opened up because of the frenzy to the water stations [which were totally out by mile 3!]

We saw Vivek Rai that time [Mile 3] and that re-invigorated Ganesh - then spotted residents out with garden hoses to feed us water - that was a welcome sight. filled up the one bottle I had carried in my fuel belt and we were now beginning to pace well. At mile 3 I had also turned on the interval timer [11/1]. We had a few good miles in there - still no gatorade. Took a gu break along the way in the hope of making up for the lack of gatorade; that helped for a while. After that it was everyone for themselves as far as water and cooling down went; stopped at a fountain near the Zoo to wet my hat in the dipping pond; repeated the same at a pond/fountain near the apartments along the water front. At this point we were in the midst of runners and started seeing a mix of pacers who were wearing 5:00, 5:15, 5:45 ; it was clear that everyone was running way astray off their expected pace - the water stops were like a fish-market; I almost lost Ganesh at the 10K as he had sprinted ahead. We rejoined at the sign and were at a reasonable pace. As we turned a corner there was another couple of performers egging the runners on; this is a huge deal to have so many live performers and crowd support and personally I have to say it helped me get away from dwelling on the weather and lack of water and gatorade.
Did I mention the Chicago resident support, it was phenomenal in more ways than one,

Mile 7 and beyond...

We passed a few senior assisted living buildings; seniors on the streets, in their windows kids with their parents cheering the runners on.
Local business people [at least i think they were] with coolers and buckets of water with ice handing them out in styrofoam cups/bowls, residents in the neighborhood brought our bottled water - sealed packs to hand out folks running their garden hoses to spray runners with water

For a while I was just caught up in the crowds and the music - didn't really pay attention to all the mile markers along the way; was eagerly awaiting the half-way mark. And especially because at Mile 15, Ravi was going to come to the Charity Mile. Just before mile 13 we came across a fire hydrant that the Chicago FD had opened and put up a hose to create a downpour; ran through it and was happy to drenched through to my shoes. By the time we got to the next dousing station I was quite dry already though! I don't recall much by way of fatigue at the 15 mile point. Saw Ravi and Ramya and few other Chicago Asha folks; got a few pictures there with them; most importantly got a gatorade fill-up and a couple of water bottles - God Bless Ravi the savior. As we went past the charity mile aid station, the girl there said there isn't another one for the next 3 miles, so fill up; something about Grant park. Later [after the finish line] it became evident this was referring to re-routing. Somewhere along the way we saw Rahul Pandey with an ice pack on his head; I was enquiring after him and he was quite finalistic in his judgement that the race is off, so just walk it off. Not exactly sure if walking the rest of the 10miles was better than running it, we decided to continue running it. And then we ran into more and more walkers - it was evident that something was re-miss.

At some point the rerouting put us back on Congress Boulevard [at least I think that was the name of the street] and eventually back to the starting area. They routed us back from the start area to past the finish line in the wrong direction - then a U turn ad cross the finish line.

End of race: 4h 0m 31s

Fastest time ever for us - except for the minor detail that this was not the full distance.
This run dedicated to my buddy, the one and only, Mr. Ganesh Iyer.

Lessons learnt

1. carry a fully loaded fuel belt, ALWAYS on a run
2. water stops can be out and pretty dangerous in the melee at a large race [ ~36,000 runners]
3. crowd support is everything

The after...
Came back to find the TeamASHA coaches, Rajeev Char, Tony Fong - big Thank yous to them

1. Ravi, Ramya
2. Rajendra , Athai, Athimber
3. Walked Rajendra to the fountain so he could locate Raj and his bag; as it turned out he had a personal dash to make his flight.

Dash to the hotel in a slow bus - Ravi carried me [literally!] to the bus.
Talked to Jennifer - CONGRATULATIONS to a real gritty finisher - she was howling about her worst time and also reported that she had heard there were 4 fatalities ! [actually it was ONE death - sad :(]

The hotel and later...

Reached the hotel and ran into the shower - it was already 4 PM and the flight was in 2 hours ; had experienced Chicago traffic enough to realize that the 20 mile distance from the hotel might become a challenge. Thankfully Mihir offered to drop me off ; the ride with Ashna was memorable in more ways than one. The conversation with her and she has such finality to her statements was ultimately refreshing,

• No, you are not a girl - this was at my suggestion that I was 5 years old and if I had to be a girl to go with her so be it.
• No, you can't come to my school - this was in response to my wanting to meet her teacher who is a good singer
• My doll doesn't have a name and you cannot change that - this was to my suggestions to baptize her favorite dolly

Finally Rupal [bless her soul] packed me off with Theplas and that became my belated lunch at 6:30 PM for the day.


It was a great trip, an unmarathon and a bunch of great meetings; I will remember Ashna for a long time and thanks to all for coming out!


And in closing this comment I heard from Alan Alda captures it all,
Live in the moment - these 5 seconds are not going to be back anytime again.

The run with Ganesh, the meetings, the support - all made for a very memorable Chicago Marathon outing.

The SF Marathon - July 29, 2007
Here's the honor roll of runners I feel even more honored know, CONGRATULATIONS!

• Jagi and Nomita Shahani - first Half Marathon! Model of grit and will-power. I have had the privilege of knowing them for a few years and I am so happy to see them add another feather to the proverbial hat. Nomita in her own words, "... perseverance personified", truly so!
  
• Mark Lin - the man rolls out of bed, runs on sandals for 13.1 miles at a sub 9:45m pace. And a quoteable quote, "really serious, I had to chug one of them beer to pay respect for those who carry that beer keg to the park"
• Jason - the Product Czar at AdMob and his alter-ego, El Scrapeo - both legends continue to grow...
  
• Jennifer - another AdMob-ster - go Jen, go ! an hour faster in 6 months; wow! Congratulations on 2 marathons in the first year of running the distance.
• Arun - Assistant Coach and an inspiration from TeamASHA. Congratulations on another wonderful Marathon!
  
• And there was the entire TeamASHA 07 contingent!

Hats Off to all these Champions!

The running year started in right earnest with a first time run at the Bay to Breakers. The highlights of this race are many as I found out first hand, everything from the Land-Sharks, Elvis-look-alikes to the nude runners; personally the big reason to look forward to this run was a chance to run with Ganesh at an event.

It has been truly amazing to see the transformation from a workaholic to a dedicated runner. He has taken on mentoring TeamASHA runners this year which takes up the commitment 5 notches :) . Really happy to see him in this state.

Back to the race, there were MANY people there. According to the radio reports there were supposed to 100,000 runners at this event. There were a lot of people; to put it in perspective,

1. Ganesh and I got to the starting corral before 8am - crossed the start line 10 minutes ! later.
2. Walking room only until almost the 2 mile mark.

We had heard about the naked runners, to actually see a guy in nothing but a top hat standing right under the sign that declared "no nudity allowed was something else. Then when we are going past Moscone center there was a chase by 2 naked men running after a woman that was in the buff. And to top it all, at the end of the race - when we saw the breakers there was a gentleman running with just a hat on and enjoying a cell phone conversation at the same time.


It was a very lively experience, amongst other things that I passed along the way,

• the grapes men
• floats for various organizations and groups
• an innovative one for organ donors - showing a heart suspended in mid-air
• the Golden Gate Park
• and just when I was beginning to wonder, the Ocean Beach site came up
• that was truly energizing and I hit sprint speed to finish strong [1:19]

This was the 96th running of the race; we got to keep our timing chip on that account. Always on the 3rd Sunday of May. Looking forward to the 100th running now...