Sunday, February 4, 2018

Weird Running in India

Prelude:
Averaged 15.5 miles per week for the past 2 months (seems to be a theme as of late)
Friday: Beer drinking late
Saturday: 5am wake up. 7 hours in the car. Packet pick up.  Play with and ride elephants. Feed and play with monkeys. More car. Struggle with room service to get any kind of meal.  Sleep next to a kicking 8 year old, Indian music blaring over the speakers.
Sunday: Wake at 2:30am.  Eat and hydrate. Poop. Proceed to race start.

    
With nothing left to do before the gun, I wandered into a public toilet vestibule (women on the right, men on the left) and fought the chill air. A person unknown lay on a mat covered in a blanket while another guy sat on a metal bucket, playing with his phone. I am not sure his job, be it to man the restrooms or security, but he got up and shut the door every time someone went in and out. They never shut it themselves, so after a while I was giggling hysterically as this guy would slide this door shut 4000 times in 20 min. Finally, enough was enough and I went to the race start.

Chaos resumes.  A woman is trying to give information (in Hindi) and pump up the crowd. The drum core (full costume) has wandered into the start area, hooting and hammering their instruments. Security tries to quiet them. They settle, and soon it is their turn. As soon as they start their performance, the DJ blasts music over everyone. Bewildered, I look around, certain that everyone else was accepting this spectacle as sane behavior.

And so begins a run of some very odd encounters:
  • I see a guy running (in about the top 10) with his shoes, on his hands, ON them, like gloves, and just his socks on his feet (I later passed him at about 14 miles)
  • I see a man running in bare feet (actually I see several, and this isn't Africa, where I expect it), but this guy is not only in bare feet, but pushing a baby stroller - STROLLER, not jogger, an actual stroller, the whole way (I vow never to be beaten by that guy)
  • Some courses have bands on the course.  This is India, so we have DJs.  But for about 1 mile they are next to each other; 100m apart, 50m apart, sometimes two right next to each other, all BLARING obnoxious club music.  I could hear it miles away yet when up close, they all just blurred together in a tunnel of sound. Hearing damage ensues. 
  • The course is not set up when I start. Signs are all over the place. Stages being constructed. By lap two, they are done, but not in use as the half marathon runners have already gone by. 
  • The 4-hour pacer was the fastest pacer group. He led them through 10k at about 3:29 pace.  Good work, pal. Hope they didn't pay you for that. 
  • This is a closed course - sort of. There is still the occasional car and three-person motorcycle coming down the road at me in the wrong direction. You would think logically in India, if you ever see a road with no cars on it, something is wrong, or maybe you think, "Sweet. Real life Mario Kart. Let's-a-go!"
  • I have not run a lot of races (any) where I finish at sunrise. Start, yes. Finish, no.  A 4am gun will do that for you. 
  • The street lights went out about an hour before sunrise.  Running blind on India streets is not the preference.  And to think I made fun of the guy wearing a headlamp at the start. Karma. 
So I start easy.  There are 30 people ahead of me early on. Then these two guys - maybe they missed the start - come roaring past.  They look like runners so maybe they will keep the pace, but then I look closer. One has on jeans and a belt. Both have the race tote bag on as a backpack. I will see them again.

I catch them a mile later when the non-jean clad one starts stopping every 1 minute to apply what appears like Icy Hot to the front and back on his legs (at the 2 mile mark).  He does this, sprints ahead, and does it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then, as I am chatting to a Frenchman, he starts running backwards (still less than 5k into this one).  Now I am alongside the two of these clowns and they start to go with me.  I figure they will try for about 2 minutes then give up. They don't.  I lose the guy in jeans about 2 miles later but the other stays with me for quite a while.  We round the 8k mark and look up and see nothing. Not a person in sight. I estimate we are in 21st place.  Every once in a while he turns and yells at me (yelling because he is wearing headphones blaring music) and I don't understand his language. We run on.  Eventually we come on the first victim of the early fast pace and go by.  Now, non-jeans has been yo-yoing off me and sprinting up since mile 2 and we are nearing 10, so I can only imagine his pain.  I turn the corner and a stiff headwind greets me like an angry ex-lover.  Then next thing I know, this guy is gone, like ridiculously far behind me. It was as if he suddenly realized he had a whole marathon, not a half and thought better of running at all.

Other than the headwind, the rest of the run went well. I kept rolling up on people and passing.  It was still dark out and I felt strong and fast.  When I ran the 23rd mile in 7:10, I could not recall feeling this smooth in the final 5K of a marathon. I figured I might as well do some running since I was so near the end. 7:10 for mile 25 and despite the headwind, 6:37 for the last mile. I cannot recall a marathon ever where I have closed in this pace. The result was 13th overall, 10th male, 2nd in 35-55 age group. I negative split by more than 3 minutes and averaged 7:36 per mile.  I could not have been happier with marathon place and place on so little running, and #73 is now in the bag.


#73 done and dusted

Right into the car, 5 hour drive in traffic, and back in time to play a softball game (I hit terribly, thank you very much).  Nothing a few post-run, post-game Lagunitas couldn't cure ;)

Bib Number1053
NameJustin Walker
GenderMale
Category35 PLUS TO 55 MEN
Rank13 / 471 Finishers
Category Rank2 / 173 Finishers
Gender Rank10 / 419 Finishers
Split@5 Km00:23:19 Avg. Pace 04:40, Avg. Speed 12.87 Kmph
Gender Rank : 21 / 419 Finishers, Category Rank : 2 / 173 Finishers
Split@7.7 Km00:34:34 Avg. Pace 04:29, Avg. Speed 13.37 Kmph
Gender Rank : 19 / 419 Finishers, Category Rank : 2 / 173 Finishers
Split@17.2 Km01:18:46 Avg. Pace 04:35, Avg. Speed 13.1 Kmph
Gender Rank : 17 / 419 Finishers, Category Rank : 2 / 173 Finishers
Split@ 21.1 Km01:42:32 Avg. Pace 04:52, Avg. Speed 12.35 Kmph
Gender Rank : 15 / 419 Finishers, Category Rank : 2 / 173 Finishers
Split@ 26.6 Km02:05:40 Avg. Pace 04:43, Avg. Speed 12.7 Kmph
Gender Rank : 12 / 419 Finishers, Category Rank : 2 / 173 Finishers
Split@28.8 Km02:16:43 Avg. Pace 04:45, Avg. Speed 12.64 Kmph
Gender Rank : 11 / 419 Finishers, Category Rank : 2 / 173 Finishers
Split@38.3 Km02:57:45 Avg. Pace 04:38, Avg. Speed 12.93 Kmph
Gender Rank : 11 / 419 Finishers, Category Rank : 2 / 173 Finishers
Net Time03:18:56 Average Pace 04:43, Average Speed 12.73 kmph
Gross Time03:19:07 Average Pace 04:43, Average Speed 12.72 kmph

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