The name of the post makes the intent of this post pretty obvious. If you are actually interested in reading this, I’ll make this post a little less boring to you by just talking about things that happened differently from my previous experience!
The best part of this year’s half-marathon was that the extra care I took to not repeat my last year’s blunders paid off and all my official timings were noted! Moreover, the precision of the net time (right till the seconds) and the fact that I finished ‘just’ (32 seconds) before the timeout gave a very international feel to the experience!
Also, I was mocked at, last year, by a few when I was the only one among my acquaintances to register for the event- after all, who would pay 750 bucks to waste a Sunday morning to run 21 kilometres and then live with cramped legs for a few more days? This year, however, five of my friends, all first-timers, participated in the half-marathon, folks who wouldn’t have had they not heard my last year’s story. And all of them finished the race before the allowed time of 210 minutes- one of them clocked just 2h52m!
And now the bad parts of the story. First of all, the weather was horribly hot that day- I still don’t understand why they kept the race at a time when the summers were still upon Delhi. I still remember the one stretch from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate which was the most painful of them all. My target was to finish the race within three hours but the weather made it mighty difficult for me.
Moreover, I had received more than 10 race-days photos last year but this time, I, along with four others who participated with me, didn’t get any. I was so confident that the photos would arrive later that I didn’t click any myself before, during or after the half-marathon. I was heavily disappointed later but there was little I could do about it. I sent across emails, facebook messages and tweets to the organizers but, of course, to no avail.
I had a good time at the half-marathon and although I took longer this time, the sense of achievement was there. I just hope they do things little more correctly next time.