Muthu Marathon (MM) 2012 at Konganapuram, Selam, Tamil Nadu
On January 7th, I participated in my 22nd Marathon event “MM – 2012” at Konganapuram, Selam.
We planned to travel by train.
I woke up at 4:30 am and got ready to travel to Selam. I reached Guindy Railway station at 5:00 am and bought 4 tickets (including Anbu, Arunagiri and Sridhar) to park station and we caught the local train to Central Railway station, from here we caught Kovai Express at 6:15 am.
We travelled in un-reservation coach. The train was fully crowded, we were managed to board the train. When the train reached Arakkonam then we got seats and went to sleep. Around 11:30, we reached Salem Junction. We waited at the bus stop for five other participants, who are our co-runners Jegadeesh Kumar, coming from Coimbatore; Selva Kumar, Bala, Rajesh, Arun Kumar, coming from Villupuram.
We caught the bus from Selam to Edapadi via Konganapuram. We reached Konganapuram and went to AGN School, met event organizers and we shared our experiences and some information about the marathon events.
They booked a marriage hall for staying for participants, we reached there at night. It is also a registration point, we did registration and discussed the marathon route.
Here registration went up to midnight, we can’t sleep peacefully, it looks like a marriage function. At midnight some guys from the village played music loudly. I was terribly angered and shouted to those guys “stop the music and go to sleep”.
On January 8th, we woke up at 4:00 am and got ready for the event and we walked from marriage hall to starting point with our baggage, but our mind thoughts are there was any baggage counter or not but there was no counter, We knew the committee members, talked to them and at last after a great confusion, they arranged a school bus to keep the luggage’s, later we warmed-up for a few minutes.
First, Full Marathon category flagged-off, then school children's event (Anbu comment: It is totally useless and foolish tactics, 9 or 10 age students were running, they don’t know how to run, a lot of students were dehydrated, I asked them to walk slowly, don’t run. Think, School students were running in school attire with school shoes!!! How can they run and surely they had cramps. KRISHNA OR RAJAMANICKAM-please take this organiser or school authorities), after this, Half Marathon category flag-off.
My plan in this event was 5 minutes per KM, so I start running at my pace, weather was nice, I took water breaks for 4k, 8k, 13k, and 17k.
I ran with local guys and local people were encouraged by the runners.
I successfully finished 21.09km at 01:49:30 hrs and my friends also finished this event.
There was No refreshment (initially they said it will available at the finishing point), no water at the finishing point. We waited there to collect the participation certificate. Around 11:30 prize distribution ceremony finished and we took some snaps and collected participation certificates.
We have waited at Selam JN for Kovai Express, but travelled in the weekend special train from Selam to Arakonam, Thank God... first 3 hours peaceful travel then we caught Kovai Express. The train was fully crowded, with absolutely no space to get in; however, we all managed to board the train and we reached Central railway station. We went home with the memories of our event.
