Experience of Puran Rai in Mumbai Marathon 2014

Puran has written his expereince in Nepali, which is translated to English by Bishal Lama.

 

Since 2012 we have been running under the slogan "We are Gorkhas and proud to be Indians, Jai Gorkha, Jai Hind" and hope this continues. Among these 3 years the performance of team "Run with Roshni" has been the best this year. The best timing of the team 'Run with Roshni' in Mumbai marathon 2014 is 1hr 17 mins and the average timing is 1 hr 20 mins. The credit goes to the sponsors and Roshni di for bringing us early this year which was not the case before. Tapering the last week before the marathon, helped us immensely to bring out the best in us. Till last year we used to reach Mumbai just two days before the marathon. The day before the run we had to collect bibs and by the time we reached our homes it would already be too late. The exhaustion probably slowed us down on the final day!

In my opinion, if Prabal and Ramesh were present this year they would have definitely finished in the top 10. First of all, we reached mumbai a week before and the bib collection was done the very next day. We had proper rest for 8 days. We are thankful to Coach Daniel Vaz and Satish Sir for giving us invaluable last minute tips before the marathons. We are grateful to Mohan Daju, NK Pradhan Sir, Poonam didi and Jaya didi for all the support, they have provided us during our stay in Mumbai. We got to learn a lot of things from them. On 18th night, we were all biting our nails in anxiety as to how our performance would be the next day.

We went to sleep early but I could not sleep. It was aournd 12 am when finally I went asleep. My alarm woke me up at 2.30am on 19th Jan, 2014. Although it was hard to get out of bed so early having slept very less, we all lined up for the bus and set off for Bandra from where our marathon started. After reaching the starting line, we all did some warm up and stretch a bit to get ready for the marathon, which started exactly at 6am.

Coach had advised us to go easy for the first 5 kms which I did. Sixth KM onwards I increased my speed, but then my legs began to pain! Till the 17th km I ran at a speed lower than my normal pace and after that I again increased the speed. I completed the SCMM 2014 half marathon in 1 hour and 32 minutes 25 seconds. I am proud of my team's performance.