I’ve been looking forward to running Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon since May 2015. I took some time in 2015 to train and qualify. I ran 2 marathons before this one and finished both of them in 5h 47 mins. I moved to Mumbai last year, so I trained along the route for the most part as well. SCMM 2017 is the first time I had to DNF a race.
I planned to train well, but sometimes all the planning in the world won’t help. I had a family emergency in the end of November. I had to be in Kerala until the first week of Jan with my parents. So I went into SCMM with 6 weeks of no training.
I planned to finish in 5h 45min. It would mean running at a steady 8:11 min/km pace. Managing my pace has never been my forte and I did particularly bad for SCMM. At the 11 km mark, I was ahead of my planned pace by almost 5 mins. This difference was quite steady and consumed my energy. I was on the verge of learning to control my pace after Bengaluru Marathon. The break from training completely ruined it.
At about the 29 km mark, I cramped up. Both my legs had muscles which were pulsing if I tried to run. I could barely walk. I hobbled about 2 km to take help from the physio at the medical tent. They massaged the pain out of my legs. I could walk again, but running was still too painful. It didn’t help that I was feeling a little dizzy. Not enough that I feared a black out, but I knew I was a bit of the edge.
The sweep bus was coming along on the other side of the road at this point. I decided that if I was far away from Peddar road when it passed by me, I’d get in the bus. Otherwise, I’d walk the course and make it to the finish line. The bus approached me as I merged onto Dr. Annie Besant Marg and I decided it was best to cut my losses and get on it.
I have no regrets in giving up. I’m glad I decided to give up when I hit my limits rather than push through and hurt myself. This has made me realize the importance of consistent training and a good base. Over this year, I aim to work up on base. I’ll be racing less and working on training well.
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