Dreams will be true, when? If you Hard Work...: #18. Celebration Mysore Half Marathon (CMHM)

Celebration Mysore Half Marathon (CMHM) — 2011

On September 30th, I participated for my 18th Marathon event “CMHM – 2011” at Mysore. I reached Guindy at 8:20 pm and bought 2 tickets (including my friend Anbu) to park. We both met around 8:30 pm at Guindy Railway station and caught a local train. The train was fully crowded, absolutely no space to get-in; however, we both managed to board the train. We reached park station around 9:10 pm, All of a sudden I remembered that we had to buy dinner and medicines as I had soar throat. We searched for many medical shops near the subway but of no avail. We had no option but to buy dinner and catch the train (Kaveri Exp. 9:30 pm). So we ran through Moore Market to buy dinner. It was already 9:25 pm and there was hardly 5 minutes for the train to leave; Here, I would like to mention that we actually began our race here with full weight of our luggages on our back. We successfully managed to catch the train at the exact time!!!!

In our compartment, there were also DAV School boys. We could not sleep the whole night because of their roaring noise. Having a sleepless night we tiresomely reached Mysore on October 1st around 8:30 am. We waited in the station for one more participant who was our friend, Chellapani, coming from Theni. He reached around 10:00 am. It was a nice meeting time with a round of breakfast.

Then, we enquired for “Reliance Trends, Vinoba Road” to acquire our race kit. But no one directed us to the exact route. It was less than 2 km from the railway station. One man told us the wrong route; as a result, we had to walk nearly 4 km to reach Reliance Trends.

We collected our race kits finding our way to Youth Hostel, Saraswathipuram. Each person showed us different directions. We were thoroughly confused. We finally came to a conclusion “Enimel Neenga Anniye Pudunga Vendam”. We realized that Google map will be our best guide (I had printout). We found the correct route and reached Youth Hostel around 1:30 pm. We checked-in and kept our luggages in the dormitory and went for lunch. We took rest till evening and then had dinner. My health was not fine the next morning as the sudden change of weather had aggravated my throat condition. I was unable to find any medical shop nearby.

Me and Chellapani in Youth Hostel

On October 2nd, we woke up around 4 am ready for the event. We all took the city bus around 5:30 am and reached the event’s starting point around 6:15 am, warmed-up for a few minutes thinking the race will start at 6:45 am but it got delayed by 45 minutes. We met our other participants at the starting point.

Due to sickness I was finding it difficult to run my normal speed. The route was very sloppy with lots of ups and downs. I ran at the speed of 10~12 km/hr and maintained this till the finishing point. After the 16th km I developed nausea but managed to run somehow. I motivated myself with a strong will and determination to successfully complete this event. My pace was decreasing gradually. I took 1 hour 53 minutes to complete this Half Marathon. After reaching the finishing point, I vomited and went to the medical camp at the venue. The attending doctor prescribed some tablets and syrup.

The event was well-organized and we had a lovely team of supporting and cheering volunteers.

Later, all our participant friends met and we took snaps near the Mysore Palace. After having a gala time we reached the hostel and freshened up.

We checked-out the dormitory at 5:00 pm, my friend, Chellapani left Hostel at 4 pm as he had to baord Tuticorin express at 6 pm. Now Anbu and me went to Chamundi Hills by bus around 6:30 pm. Due to the Dassera festival there was heavy traffic on the way. We were unable to visit the inside of the temple because of crowd. We took some snaps of the temple and had an awful dinner.

Finally we caught the bus to the city bus stand. There was heavy traffic 1.5 km before city bus stand. We had no other choice except to get down and walk towards railway station. We had half an hour only to catch the train and the roads were flooded with a mad rush of passersby. We managed to get an auto and reached the station 5 minutes before, went to our berth, slept soundly and got up only to find ourselves at our hometown. We went home with the memories of our event.

My hearty thanks to Mr. Anbu and Mrs. Usha for helping to write these memories.