Amit’s e-world

I have just recovered from a 10k run at London yesterday. We had around 20 runners from the current batch & a few alumni also joined in. It was a great event and thankfully went off peacefully given the renewed security threats in the UK. We left by coach in the wee hours of Sunday & found our parking after struggling to find unblocked roads that led us to St. james park. As we waited some distance from the start line, we got to touch & hold the olympics torch that would be used in the 2012 marathon, as one of the officials was carrying it for everyone to see & feel it. The race started at 9.35 a.m. & the professional runners got off the mark first. Though Dheeraj, Graham & I were around 50-60 metres from the start line, it took us a whopping 26 minutes to cross the start line, as the organisers has narrowed the start line to give racers enough room to run once they started. One of the differences between this run & the half marathon that I did last year at Mumbai was that yesterday there weren’t markers at every kilometre. I remember seeing only the 1k marker and the 6k marker. Psychologically, this gives infrequent runners like me quite a good feel to suddenly see a 6 km marker, after the first one. I must also admit that the number of walkers that I saw yesterday were considerably lesser as well, perhaps an indication of the general fitness levels of people in this country. It was good to bump into a few other runners from Cranfield after almost 8 km into the race. I am very happy that I was able to sprint in the last 100m of the race to make a glorious finish in 69 minutes. The winner did it it 29 min 48 sec. After the race, I collected my well-deserved good bag with a much needed Red Bull, a granola bar and a prestigious medal. To finish it, we had a picnic organised by the Cranfield trust (the charity we ran for). It was a great day & a great experience and we enjoyed it thoroughly.