Grey Matter

I practiced rather hard over the weekend to run in today’s Chennai marathon. I ran through the marina beach stretch yesterday early morning for practice. I was pretty confident of running the 7 km race without stopping anywhere. But i over worked by walking a lot more kilometers through out yesterday that my legs already were stiff over the morning.

A bit of Amurthanjan and stretching, I was ready for the D- day.

All that i wanted to do was to finish the run without stopping. It drizzled a bit in the morning. Suddenly some part of me was hoping it would rain heavily and everyone will stay back at home so that i would win the prize

But my silly little hope evaporated quickly as Mr.Sun came staring down at us.

I started from home. I had planned to catch a 21G bus which goes to War Memorial,which was the starting point of the marathon. I was waiting at my bus stop and three 21G ’s came and none of them stopped. Then did i realize that 21G does not stop in yellow pages (My stop) on one way.

I walked till the next stop and waited for the bus. No buses for the next 30 min. I thought by now the buses would have been diverted and started walking towards beach.

Even pedestrians like me were diverted as the 21 Km race was already going on. Throughout the way i saw people from all walks of life walking towards war memorial. It is probably a 4 to 5 km walk from Gandhi statue to war memorial.

I already had walked 8 km before a 7 km race. Perfect. The Sun was suddenly blazing heavily.

When i saw a empty train going over the chepauk bridge did i think i could have come by train. But then common sense is such a rarity for me.

When i finally reached the starting point there were already millions of participants in front of me. And millions of them behind me. It was like a big political party procession. No one was running. And no one can run standing in middle of such a huge crowd. Until a few meters down the road i wasn’t able to run. Then suddenly the road widened and i had enough space to dodge people and run. I started running.

The turn near the Omandurar’s estate is such a narrow place that everybody was back to the crawling mode.I tried not to stop so kept moving in between people at times jumping over to the foot path.

There was procession like attitude in most of the people. They carried placards like “save the trees” and Aids control. Good that they want to spread some awareness but that left me little space to run.

And there were corporate employees who were out to make team building exercise. Lets take a group photo here. And lets take a group photo there.

Back to the Marina stretch. School kids were standing all along the stretch playing band music and cheering the runners or should i say walkers. I waived at a bunch of school girls who were in the cheering crowd. And they started making even more noise. Yay! Felt like an Hero

And nobody ahead of me ever cared to make a u turn in light house and come back to Gandhi beach. There was a huge human traffic Jam in Gandhi beach that even i gave up running beyond that. And did i say by now i had stopped for 3rd time. At the Gandhi statue desk teachers were calling their lost students,friends were calling their lost friends,fathers’ were calling their lost sons. Basically everybody was calling everybody.

Over all it was a pretty good run even though i had stopped in between a few times. I could know that from my legs which was so light that I didn’t feel lifting them.

Sun. Sweat. Tan. Breath. Run. Been There. Done That.

Two sandwiches,

Idiyappam with coconut milk,

A Medhu Vadai,

A Bar one,

Little bit of Masala Vadai,

A packet of ground nuts,sun flower seeds,gems and raisins,

Two boxes of Idlis,

A coffee,

A tea

2 Bajjis,

1 Kadalai Mittai,

6 murukkus,

A fruit- mix with badam milk,

And rice with pepper rasam and a pappad.

2 Bananas

All this is what i ate for a day!

Well actually i am on diet.

I don’t read celebrity blogs. But due to the recent Umar Abdullah’s much publicized speech in parliament and the new found affection for him in the blogosphere I looked at his blog.

I was really amazed by the clarity of thought and words in his blog that i read through the entire archives at one sitting.

This is my favorite lines from Umar’s blog:

“I am sitting and writing this blog from one of India’s most sought after clubs. Membership is not exactly limited but is not easy. The selection process is often cumbersome, very often expensive though there is no fixed membership fee – some pay in crores to gain entry and yet some get in by getting others to sponsor the fees. Membership is for life,once in never out and though membership is not automatically transferable to a member of one’s family this too has been known to happen with great regularity. The food is not much to write home about but service is quick and the food is so cheap that concepts like inflation exist in theory only and do not practically bother those using the facilities.

Where am I sitting I hear you ask. It’s simple really – I’m in the Central Hall of India’s Parliament.”

UPDATE: The blog seems to be closed now.