Thane Half Marathon

Ran my 3rd Half marathon on the 24th of February 2013, after this in December & this in January. Striders , one of the better training groups for runners in Bombay had organized the Thane Half Marathon at Hiranandani. Striders is run by Praful and Deepak along with a bunch of enthusiastic trainers who meet and train runners at various places in Bombay thrice a week. Weekend runs are organized at NCPA / Bandra / Powai where various groups of runners get together for long runs.

For me , running the Thane half marathon was a different experience. No butterflies in the stomach, no last minute jitters, no sleepless nights (er.. ok for those who know me don't ask "when on earth have you had a sleepless night?" nnu). The only fear was to reach the venue on time considering the travel to Thane was a fair distance. It is in times like these that my husband says he becomes a Marathoner himself driving me to the Marathon venue which is a good 41 kms from home.

Enjoyed the run through and through and didn't mind the challenge of too many ups and downs. There weren't too many loops either. The route was like this ->

As usual, the last 3 kms is when I struggled a bit but went on to do a PT Usha in the last 200 metres (he he). Deepak awarded the medal and was quite surprised to see me at the finishing line. And repeated, "Not bad ya.. you ran 21 kms !!" thrice. Wasn't surprised considering the last time he saw me was when I struggled to complete 2 kms :-p

The Thane Half Marathon was when I became truly confident of my running. A big thank you to Team Striders for adding yet another medal to the big bag of Marathon certificates and medals.