My First Sports Prize

TCS 10K, an international gold label IAAF race, introduced corporate challenge. Corporate challenge is an inter company running completion in which two gentleman and one lady from a company participates as a team. Each team member runs 10 km. Team with least sum of individual timing wins. We (I, Anto and Arundathi) decided to participate in it. When we didn't get sponsorship from our company, we agreed to sponsor self. We truly believed we will be able to get in top three which means we will have some good cash as prize.

My training plan period was for 9 weeks. I have been doing one marathon every month. To make sure, I recover well before TCS 10K, I kept enough gap between them. I had interval, tempo, long run etc included in training.

At Finish Line

On Race day, we reached Kanteerava Stadium well in time. Weather was just perfect for running. Running environment was perfectly set up. Crowd in all colors were energized and enthused. We had Elite men and Elite women race before our race. It was so inspiring to see them. Only wish, i could run at a pace comparable to them. It was so encouraging to see Senior Citizen run. A commitment of good health to self and family.

Arundathi, Anto & I

Next was our turn. We had advantage of being at start of  five thousand plus crowd participating in open 10K. But that didn’t shield us from few pushes here and there. I fired up from starting itself. My first km came in 4:25. Probably my fastest ever first km. Second and third km came in 4:31 and 4:33 minutes respectively. Fourth km which had downhill stretch came in 4:26. This was totally against my plan. I intended to run slow in starting and increase speed later. But instead I went fast in starting. Fifth km was pretty difficult with uphill. It came in 4:56 minutes. That made my 5K in 22:51 - A PB. Run got difficult thereafter with 6th km in 5:08. I stopped twice in 7th km - Once for water and then for energy drink making this km in 5:30. Eight km came in 5 minutes. Then, I increased my pace completing 9th and 10th km in 4:43 and 4:38 minutes. Extra 70 metres by Garmin took more 19 seconds. I finished my 10K in 48:13 as per my Garmin. This was my personal best for my 10K, beating previous one by 86 seconds that I did long back. Also, I beat my last year timing by more than 16 minutes.

Anto and Arundathi did their run 51:08 and 48:43 respectively. We waited for another one and half hour. Then we were told that result cannot be announced same day due to technical issue. Result appeared on website next day. And our result was not announced though we knew we should have been second. We were told that my timing chip was not scanned at starting point. It took four days for us and organizers to agree on our result. This was more difficult time than to really run the race.

Merit Certificate

Finally, we were awarded 2nd position - My first ever sports prize in this life.

Silver Medal and Trophy