Around 8 months back, a couple of members of Runners For Ever, an amateur running club co-founded by me, shared their plans to train for Comrades Marathon - 2016. I simply wished good luck. A couple of minutes later, they started pitching the same to me and were aggressively confident that I too could do it. Though I had 30+ Marathons to my credit and roughly half of them in diverse terrains and weather conditions, I am a cruiser than a speedster. They jumped back and said, that's exactly what Comrades needs. They were not wrong!
A 90 KM run, full of hills, with a 12 hour deadline and 6 intermediate cut-offs, needs a lot of endurance and composure, and none can afford any aggression. Training, of course, dictates the actual pace. But, composure ensures that one reaches the finish line at the planned pace, and finishes strong. We believed in that and prepared our training sheet for 5 months. We managed to finish it strong!
When I registered and started training, I didn't know the stature of Comrades Marathon among distance runners. I took it as just another run as part of My Overseas Marathon Odyssey, which started around 6 years back. Towards the event day, a couple of incidents made me realise the importance of it. One of the finest amateur runners of India mentioned my name along with a runner who holds the record of fastest Indian at Comrades, casually in a conversation about the 2016 participants from India. A marathon runner in my gym suddenly stops during a conversation and asks "what is your name?", when I mentioned that I have been training for Comrades; In the same fashion, as one asks "who the hell are you!", when they hear something incredible.
The moment we entered South Africa, we were part of the elite crowd, right from the airport. While waiting to get into a plane from Johannesburg to Durban, a couple of random guys walk to us and wish us. One of them was travelling to Durban, just to be along the Marathon course and cheer the runners. We lost count of people who approached us, the days after the Marathon, when we were walking around in TShirts with Comrades logo on it. It continued till Bangalore airport.
We made our training plans, keeping 11 hours as our target time to finish. That gives us an hour of buffer for surprises. Being a first timer at Comrades, I had quite a few surprises, though I thought that I studied the course and elevation well. We planned to run at a pace that lets us reach each cut-off 40 to 50 minutes before the official cut-off time. I managed to do that till 3rd cut-off. After that I started using up the buffer time gradually. The course being very wide where one ends up doing a lot of lateral moves, I ended up running 94 KM, roughly 5 KM more than official 89.3 KM. This, along with a late start due to being in the last block of runners (around 7 minutes), ate away around 25 minutes of my time. So, I was left with only 35 minutes of buffer, if I ran at the pace that we planned. I used up around 20 minutes of it, after the 3rd cut-off and managed to reach the finish line in 11:46.
The support en route was something unmatchable. Except for a few KM, there were supporters through out the course. There were 47 official support stations stocked with water, electrolyte, coke, biscuits, chocolates, boiled potatoes and fruits. Knowing about coke and potatoes in advance, we did a few of our training runs with them. I had more coke that day than all the soda that I had in the last few years put together. Apart from the support stations, there were innumerable people along the course that offer something to drink, munch or just cheer the runners.
Comrades Marathon alternates between Pietermaritzburg to Durban (Down Run) and Durban to Pietermaritzburg (Up Run) every year. It was a Down Run this year. Contrary to the popular belief, Down Run is not so Down Hill. There were several serious up-hills along the course. It's only around 10-15 KM, between 60 KM and 80 KM, that's down hill, which again is intertwined with some up hills.
The finish was something unforgettable. The stadium had a million people cheering and making everyone who crosses the finish-line feel so special. The moments towards 11:59 were quite tense. Probably, no matter what is the cut-off, there would be someone who misses it by a few seconds. When the count-down started for 11:59:59, there were several runners who entered the stadium and could see the finish-line a few meters away. That was really heartbreaking. We could see one runner collapse a couple of meters from finish line, who had a few minutes to finish, only if he could stand. Despite the help from fellow runners, he couldn't even stand and couldn't make it.
After finishing the run, we got out of the stadium and started walking towards our hotel, which was
less than a KM away. It was dark, though it was only 6 pm. We took a couple of wrong turns and quickly lost. There were hardly anyone on the road and almost all shops were closed, that being a Sunday. We finally found an area with a couple of shops open, and a car parked in front of it with someone in driver's seat. As we approached the car, someone started walking from across the road and asking us whether we need any help. We told that we were lost and need to go to our hotel. He offered to drop us at the hotel. We hesitated for a minute, but realised soon that all we had were stinking clothes and Comrades Medal on us and nothing else, and got into the car. Apparently, he was going home from his work, saw medals hanging around our neck, parked his car, and ran across the road to find whether we need any help. When we reached our hotel, the lobby had a few masseurs helping runners relax their tired bodies. Surprised to find that those masseurs were practically everyone who were working in the hotel (kitchen, house-keeping, including a daughter of someone who takes care of the front desk), just helping the runners relax, free of cost.
Needless to say, we reached Bangalore to receive a heroic and heartening welcome from fellow Runners For Ever, who dared a weekday evening traffic in Bangalore and came all the way to airport to receive us.
