{"id":36017,"date":"2020-01-29T06:52:10","date_gmt":"2020-01-29T11:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=36017"},"modified":"2020-01-29T06:52:10","modified_gmt":"2020-01-29T11:52:10","slug":"january-19-2020-the-mumbai-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=36017","title":{"rendered":"January 19, 2020 – The Mumbai Marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billed as the largest running event in Asia, the Mumbai Marathon boasts 45,000 participants across its various events \u2013 a senior citizens\/fun run, a 10K, a half marathon, and the full marathon. So while there may be bigger marathons held throughout Asia, this apparently is the largest running event\u2026 even though in the finisher slaughter chute (more on this at the end), a fellow runner said he had recently done Istanbul and I thought he said it was close to 145,000 participants across all their events. Statistics and marketing hyperbole are hard to parse for truth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Truth Is Out There… or 500 meters out there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a real blessing to start at 5:15 AM as it meant we avoided direct sun for at least 2 hours. The temperature certainly rises when the sun also rises. That sounded more clever in my head \u2013 so let\u2019s recut that sentence to be: \u201cIt certainly warmed up as the sun got higher.\u201d That still kinda sucks but whatever. When has a wonky sentence ever stopped me from posting, yeah?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even with the early start though, the humidity was potent\u2026 and even on the walk to the starting area I could taste ash in my mouth. Not sure if there were locals\u2019 fires aflame or if there\u2019s a wildfire somewhere near here or if that\u2019s just the general air quality of the area when running. But it did make me a bit worried for the day ahead.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fortunately, there was a pretty decent breeze in the opening half or so of the race which helped\u2026 and I strategically kept pouring a shot or two of water from the bottled waters volunteers would hand out at aid stations along the way. And I did consistently slurp down water; I\u2019d carry the sloshing water bottle with me, sipping here and there, before finishing it and tossing it to the recycling bin at the next station. And that seemed to work pretty well\u2026 after last week\u2019s dehydration debacle at Disney, I was nervous going into this event.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By far the highlight for me was running across the Bandra-Worli Sea Link bridge (officially known as Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link according to Google). With the sea breeze and empty travel lanes, it was a delight to travel across Mumbai this way, knowing that in a tuck-tuck or an Uber this route had taken a lot longer that past few days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With the dim lighting and herky-jerky motion of my not-exactly-gazellian running form, a lot of photos came out blurry, but I tried to salvage what I could from the live motion pics using screengrabs and picked through them for posting here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a bizarre timetable for events. The full marathon and half marathon both started at 5:15, but the elite runners didn\u2019t start until 7:15 AM. The 10K went off at 6:20 AM, almost an hour after we started and eventually we all merged in the final stages of the race\u2026 maybe \u00be of the way through? Whenever it was, it lead to some congestion and though volunteers tried to cordon off lanes for the various events within the roadways, I can only tell you that lanes aren\u2019t really hard and fast here in India. They\u2019re currently having a road safety week and so various illuminated highway signs advise drivers to \u201crespect the lanes\u201d and \u201clane driving is sane driving.\u201d But based on my experiences on the roads, the lanes seem really more of a suggestion than a rule.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ducking and weaving, Millennium Falconing through walking half and 10Kers toward the finish, I was relieved to cross at just under 3:19, meaning I had shaved off almost 80 minutes from last week\u2019s race. More importantly, I wasn\u2019t feeling overly dehydrated and hyperventilating\u2026 at least not until I got into the finisher chute exits. This being India where cows are sacred, I can\u2019t really call it a cattle chute to slaughter but it was mainly what I thought of as people exacerbated the bottle necks by shoving and jostling trying to make their way forward. Half Marathoners had their own exit lanes whilst the 10Kers and Marathons were funneled to a different turnstile-style exit to be awarded a medal and a recovery burlap sack of food and juiceboxes. It took something like 20 minutes to get through this and the marathoners I was standing with were all feeling the shakes in our legs with the dead stops. The two guys I chatted with were from South Africa and here in Mumbai respectively. We all were astonished at the folks shoving their way ahead to cut the queue. The local guy shook his head and said to me, \u201cthe Indian way of old.\u201d But those shoving line cutters got their medals faster than I did which only further annoyed me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not great in crowds or dealing with people so this crush of humanity was making me feel claustrophobic and panic-attack-y. I did my best to stay calm but, man, did I just want to get the heck out of there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I finally did clear the medal area, we were dumped into a cordoned off selfie finisher area. Various backdrops were up to get a staged photo celebrating the accomplishment \u2013 and that\u2019s great. Whatever distance tackled today, you should celebrate. I\u2019m fine with that. But I sure as hell didn\u2019t want to stand in serpentine lines that may or may not have been ballooning by line cutters at an alarming rate. I opted to just kinda frame myself with the selfie booths in the background, a pseudo-selfie booth selfie if you will.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/span><\/u><\/p>\n

But I really, really, ridiculously really wanted to get out of the masses and made my way to the exit gates\u2026 these two were chaotic messes of civilization loss. And honestly, I wanted to push and shove my way out too because, sweet pete, get me out of here, ya know? So I tried to be respectful and polite in my jostling, ducking and weaving, sidling about to exit\u2026 it still took about 10 minutes to make it from the cordoned finish area to the open streets.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

In the end, I am as is often the case glad to have run, even if I\u2019m feeling a bit sluggish and out of sorts. It was nice to bounce a bit back from the Disney clock and feelings. And to top off the day, we have a food tour at 5:30 which I think we all earned by pounding the pavement for 42.195K.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billed as the largest running event in Asia, the Mumbai Marathon boasts 45,000 participants across its various events \u2013 a senior citizens\/fun run, a 10K, a half marathon, and the full marathon. So while there may be bigger marathons held throughout Asia, this apparently is the largest running event\u2026 even though in the finisher slaughter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}