I'm back in Chennai after a lovely extended weekend in Bangalore. Although the TCS10K was my my primary reason to visit, I enjoyed an extra few days there, just hanging with friends and family.
The run was on Sunday and typical with all these events, they had an expo the previous day where you could collect your bib and check out various running & health related stalls if you so wish. I caught up with a couple of runners from Nitros and went to the expo together with them. As expected from a big event such as this, the expo was well organised and had some pretty good, worth-spending-time-at stalls.
All throughout Saturday I was pretty nervous. I hadn't run for almost an entire month and I had only run a slow, easy 2K run just 3 days earlier, my ankle was still iffy and I really wasn't sure how it would fare through the distance. Before going to bed I religiously iced, massaged and did the physio exercises for the ankle but come race-day, at the line-up, I was still feeling very apprehensive.
The event was huge. The number of runners at the start was staggering! (Probably close to 10K - there were 8553 finishers). I have crowd-phopia on a good day and so the feeling wasn't pleasant at all. At 5:30 a.m the gun went off and the crowd slowly shifted to the start line. It was 5:33 something when I got the startline... the last wave of runners crossed the startline close to half an hour later.
I guess I shouldn't have worried so much. The route was mostly flat with some very gentle ups and downs. The start was from the Kanteveera Stadium and the loop was a nice long round snaking MG road, Cubbon road and finally finishing through Cubbon park. The weather was perfect too. It was so much cooler than Chennai and there was even a lovely breeze almost throughout. The only damper was a section on MG road which had been flooded thanks to the previous night's rains. All the runners had to move into a single file and inch their way along the side where there was a crack of dry road.
For the first 4 kilometers, there were so many runners that you couldn't find your rhythm or your pace. You could only shuffle along while constantly trying to zig-zag your way through the crowd while dodging other runners trying to overtake you and avoiding shoulder bumps. This was expected. Things were looking up at the 5K-6K space and I had to tell myself to take it easy and not push too hard. At around the 8K mark is when the ankle started to protest (very feebly but still I decided not to ignore it). Took a few little walking breaks after that and did some ankle stretches to assuage the protests. The month long break from training definitely showed. I started feeling fatigued towards the end with the overwhelming urge to stop and not go a step further. When I saw it eventually, the finish line never looked so good. Inspite of everything, I managed to finish in 1:08:25 seconds - just a minute and twenty four seconds less than my PB.
Post-run I got to hang out with my cousin who had also run the 10K. He was running his first ever event and finished in 1:07. A yummy post-run breakfast (care-of my aunt) and hours later I was still thinking of my timing. My Nitros buddies (who I never even saw during the run thanks to the huge number of runners) had both run their PB and I couldn't help wishing that I had pushed myself a bit - just a teeny bit. The route and weather was just perfect to achieve PB. If only.
I could say there's always next time but the crazy crowds are a major deterrent and so there probably won't be a next. There are other races though. Need to scout around for my next 10K.
