My second marathon..

There are several things that your 2nd marathon teaches you. Point is, after the first one, you are too busy feeling arrogant, conceited and full of bullshit like "I felt like giving up, but kept saying to myself, just 21km left", "It's all about mind over body" to really sit and think about the whole thing.

Even otherwise, the pain is so..... how shall I put it, painful, yup, painful is the apt word that one begins to hear one's body parts swearing aloud. The soles scream and thighs weep, your feet will be kicking at you, your calves and arms will be writhing in pain and the poor knees will be hollering like a teenage girl who has just lost her phone, or a teenage guy whose girlfriend has just lost her phone. And in all this chaos, you forget that it's the poor ankles that have done most of the work, and nobody seems to have the time to give them a pat on the back.

So anyways, here's my 2 cents, or 3 or 4, whatever makes you feel good. You know what; a penny sounds better, yes, here's my penny or rather 2 of.... ahem, the plural of penny :P

1. Age does not matter, I mean, there were guys clearly in their 50 and 60s, doing 100km runs while I was feeling like teenage Bill Gates landing his IBM deal doing 50.

2. The importance of self start in your bike (:) ) I always considered it lowly and non-masculine not to kick start your bike. After the run, the joy that I felt starting my bike with my thumb was like ahhhhh......

3. It is easiest to converse with strangers when both parties involved are getting their guts spilt on the ground for the same reason. You tend to relate very easily. Other examples of this would be prisoners, fresh MBA grads joining a big bank, your wingies in college, married men etc.

4. Winning doesn't matter, as long as you feel god and enjoy it(that's for my young, hopeful and full of enthusiastic readers, the rest know how it feels when an old man beats you all colours of the rainbow and actually encourages you at the end... the patronizing senile sexagenerian!)

5. There is no dearth of lunatics in this world, if you though 50k is stupid, there were about half a dozen or more doing 100 and one lost soul who ran for 24 hours straight! Crazy right?

6. Men will be men & like wise for women. The female runners were made-up and the men were still doing what they do in malls.

7. You can just not forgive yourself if you give up midway. Though I didn't exactly experience this, the sheer anticipation of this feeling of loserness, kept me going.

8. Some dangerous things can be tried at home :)

9. Beer tastes awesome! especially after a long run on an empty stomach.

10. Never eat aloo-chat, or chowmein or dosas on chat street the night before you plan to run the longest distance in your life.

11. Contrary to what everyone might say, it is REALLY difficult to run long distances! Trust me on this. But you will enjoy the pain during the run and the great feeling after the run. Its the pain after the run that inconveniences you. But by then you really can't really do anything can you.

12. Never listen to bloggers, they tend to exaggerate and self-glorify, but then who doesn't :)

13. People who've run one marathon are good, those who've run more than one are awesome but those who blog about it, are legen- wait for it, till you realise that this post is getting a wee bit patronizing/condescending and don't want to read this anymore, but can't really help as you've come to the end-dary!

NOTE: BITSAA is organising a world 5/10k run in the first week of December, open to all alumni. Guess who's volunteered in Bangalore :) So if you're interested, do join bits2marathon yahoo group, and if you're not, go get a dip in Koramangala ki nalli!

OASIS, an after thought

"It's either now or 25 years later" I kept telling everyone."C'mon people, it's Pilani and OASIS. I can't believe I am having to convince you of this. OASIS man!" I kept repeating. I few got bored and stopped receiving my calls. Others changed their numbers, and a few let their dogs smell my laundry. But a few, who shared my awesomeness, namely Rushi, Ganju and BD gave me hope. However I must point out biggest morons, those that agree first, with all the enthusiasm of a 6 year-old American boy on Christmas eve, but later claim to have other engagements. To all of them, I dedicate my lovely middle finger, 'coz thats all they deserve.

So how was OASIS? I won't use words like awesome, delirious, out-of-the world, ammmmmazing et al. Because that wouldn't describe how I felt. IT FELT LIKE HOME. How long has it been, like 10 months, and it felt like I would just enter Bhag, get into my room and log onto DC++ :) Seriously, people it was a great feeling. I wasn't even nostalgic, it just felt right. All of it.

That it was OASIS, didn't matter one bit. That there was greenery around in the desert town didn't matter, though I had a bit of it around me too :). That there was the clock tower, to tell me the time, although the 4 faces disagreed, that there were profs who smiled at me without any hesitation, that there were juniors and batchmates that hugged me like we still stayed a mere 10 feet away, yes all that mattered.

KK, Lucky Ali, Shankar/Ehsaan/Loy, come and go, OASIS, APOGEE come and go, Goa campus, Hyd campus come and go. But the clock tower though doesn't have any bells, will forever ring in this heart!

Nike Human Race- awesum!

I don't use the word awesome, very often. Though I often lie in my first sentence in any blog post. However, truth is, I don't use awesome for things where I haven't been involved in the awesoming(the things done before an event, with a goal of making the event awesome). However I will make an exception here.

If my some technological development, google maps would give you a video feed from high above; on the 24th of october 2009 you would see masses of red dots collecting in 27 cities of the world, moving together but fading away. For the uninformed, it might look like Marsians have done a War of the Worlds, but actually it was the largest race in the world.

Bangalore was lucky enough to be a venue of this huge event, and I was lucky enough to be in Bangalore during this time. The event was organised by Nike for the second year running and first time in Bangalore. NIKE almost threw away money to try and get the sport of running in vogues here. The huge participation, is I believe, exactly what they were aiming at.

Yudi was the host, though I wasn't very impressed, and there were also, Anju Bobby George, Mahesh Bhupati and Sreesanth, who didn't impress with their talk either. The entertainment was...... entertaining :) and the band(from Goa) was pretty darn good.

All and all a spectacular event, not to be missed. So those who run, and missed this, should feel like kicking themselves in their behinds!! :)

Waise, my timing was 58 minutes and 52 seconds :) just below an hour! yeyeye