The celebration run at the marathon on Sunday morning turned out to be the greatest fun! I reached the stadium around 8.30 am when the crowds were beginning to come in. Some of the full and half marathon folks were just crossing the exit line. The full marathon was won by an Indian so that’s something to cheer about! Considering it took us 1 hour to complete the celebration run and this guy ran 40 something kms in 2 hours something minutes. Hmm…

The celebration run @ the Bangalore marathon

The crowds are the largest for the 7 km run and you land up walking more than running. But it was nice to see people of all shapes, sizes, ages and costumes get ready for the run. I joined the Bangalorewalks.com gang, some of whom had come dressed in some really interesting costumes. Two of them were featured in the TOI yesterday, right on the front page – members of our very creatively dressed gang!

As the celebration run kicked off there was a lot of noise, band bajaa and mayhem and loud drums beating and balloons everywhere. One lady had a placard saying “Youngest gramdma” and with her was grand child. Another had one saying “Why run when you can walk?” (for which we got quite a few laughs, especially when we were running!) We ran, jogged, walked, gasped… all along the way. I met a few familiar faces : Mrinal, Bipin and Kirti from the office, bloggers Antara and Souvik, photographers Rajeev and then Cyberscorpion some time later who also took all the pictures of our gang.

After the run, with the glamourous Ms Ree and lovely Ms Shibs

A girl called Madhavi from IBM gave me company for most of the way and Tina in her cool pink turban and sign (which she faithfully carried all along!) She too was on the TOI, on one of the inside pages : you can’t miss her : she’s the one wearing the cool pink turban! And then I lost Madhavi towards the end.

The sore muscles after were proof enough of the fact that I’m terribly unfit, and it was a good thing that I was at a conference yesterday, so I didn’t have to do much than sit around the whole day getting some much needed rest 🙂

The whole gang pose for a picture after the run

But Reena and I are aiming to do the half marathon next year (okay, I’m serious, so stop laughing). Anything is possible, I say.

(All pics taken by friend and fellow photographer Cyberscorpion)