Kochi Mini Marathon
Today, I ran the Kochi Mini Marathon. Having run 5ks, 10ks and a half marathon before, this was my first time running in Kochi and more than the run the surprises were simply astounding!
I reached Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kallor at around 5:45am so I could register at the venue before the 6:30am start time. After a quick registration, I ran into Akhil, a 15 year old runner my wife and I had met a, few weeks back, at a district level school athletic meet. He was with a friend, and the three of us decided to start the race together.
But, then came the insensitive announcement that the race was rescheduled to 7:30am, all because important people like the Mayor, a justice, and a movie star were running late. And no, they did not run in the race!! Do these people even have any clue what making someone ready to run a 10k even means?!
The race finally took off around 7:40am. The entire run was mostly on main roads, and even though the roads were for the most part kept clear of traffic, that was not the case for the later half of the race. Around 6k mark traffic started flowing around us.
In the end it was a fun run, and even though I did not track my own time, there was no electronic chip based official timing either. They did not even announce the winners timing. The 10k route also seemed to have changed during the run, and it looked more like an 8k, considering that we did not even run on one of the sections on the map.
It was weird that for a 10k, basic things like route, starting time, distance, time tracking etc were either lacking or done with a “This is India” kind of attitude. I did finally mention these issues to a Manorama reporter, and to my surprise, he was defending the way things were done. All I could think of was, people do live in a well here; even a reporter has no idea either about how well a 10k can be organized or why in a run like this the runners needs are important.
But, it’s a start, so this time I am going to give the organizers the benefit of the doubt, and I really hope things improve for the next run.
