Mumbai Marathon ‘23 - Took us 5 years :)
Prelude
21 January 2018 was the last time I raced and finished a marathon - Mumbai Marathon 2018. Little did I know that the next marathon finish will be 5 years down the line! These past 5 years have been nothing short of a whirlwind - From the highs of the Comrades Marathon to the lows of DNFing at the HK 100, Malnad 50K; from the highs of running a successful distance running coaching business to the lows of putting on kilos and even walking in a couple of half marathons in 2022, like which fit late 20s chap walks in a half :)
Showed up unfit and borderline obese at a 30K trail race and slogged my way through a slow 6 hour finish!
Genesis
Racing the Mumbai marathon wasn’t even the plan. The intial idea was to race the Rotterdam Marathon in April 2023 (Read as dreaming of a 40 minute Marathon PB followed by a solid day out in Amsterdam <3) but the good lords at the Dutch Embassy decided to randomly reject my Schengen Visa application. So all we had left was either the Mumbai Marathon in January or the Delhi Marathon in February as a qualifier for the Comrades Marathon - You see the idea was to do a repeat of 2018 :)
Between the two, Mumbai Marathon has my heart for obvious reasons (No other race in the country comes close to the atmosphere and the vibe created by the Mumbai crowd). Also, getting in the qualifier early gives more time to put in a solid block for Comrades compared to running Delhi at the end of February. So, with 6 weeks to go, Mumbai Marathon it was - Putting on the coach’s hat, I would have lost my shit if an athlete of mine would have come to me and said, I want to race a marathon in 6 weeks! But I convinced myself saying that the base work put in the past 10-12 weeks counts for something plus all we needed was a sub 3:20 to get into the B Corral at Comrades. (Just the naivety even after all these years of running - beats me!)
Spent a lot of time training with these 3 fine gents over the last 6 weeks
Work
Marathon fitness doesn’t get built in 6 weeks’ - Period! But the past 4 months have been good. September 2022 was when I had reached out to TimTim Sharma to help me out with my nutrition game (Read: It’s a myth that a Coach doesn’t need a Coach. A third person especially one who knows their stuff not only brings in abundance of knowledge but also an independent third person’s perspective) and how things have changed. The changes we made to my nutrition were minor but they went a long way. I started shedding those kilos, the body was responding to the training stress and before I knew it, I ran a 19:31 5K TT followed by a 01:33:27 half marathon in November <3.
The idea for these 6 weeks leading into Mumbai was to keep things simple, keep the legs moving, get in two quality sessions a week including the long run and just show-up on race day as fit as possible and that’s what I almost did if we ignore the 2 weeks I fell sick out of those 6. I barely fall sick even once a year and then I fall sick twice in a period of 6 weeks leading to a marathon! But it is what it is - I was lucky enough to be back to 100% by the Monday of race week which gave me the confidence to toe the start line - otherwise I would still be waiting for that Marathon finish even now :)
One of my best races execution wise - 3 minutes of my PB but we will get there soon :)
Race Day
The weekend leading into race day was super seamless for me. Thanks to Amit Uncle and Diganta landing in Mumbai a day earlier and collecting my bib as well. All I needed to do was land, check-in, pin my bib, eat my food and sign-off for the day early. The race plan was to just keep it super simple - Get through half way in 1:39:30 which was conservative enough while also giving me a good chance of getting under 3:19. In terms of Nutrition:
Pre-run - Three Hours Before - Overnight soaked Oatmeal (Oats, crushed walnuts and anjeer, Cocoa Powder and Chia seeds soaked in Curd); One Hour Before - One small banana; Fifteen Minutes Before - One Maurten Gel
During-run - One Maurten gel every 30 minutes alternating between Caffeine and regular - Like I said, kept it super simple ;)
Post-run - Recovery mix within 30 minutes of finishing the race followed by lots and lots and lots of food (Still can’t forget the Kheema Pao at the Colaba Social)
Hydration - I was so glad when the race course was offering Bisleri bottles. I remember from my 2018 attempt when access to aid just became impossible post 28K due to the Half Marathon crowd. So as soon as I saw bottles, I decided to hold onto it till I pick-up another one later on and it worked. Through the course, I would have picked up 8 Bisleri bottles of 200/250 ml and kept on taking sips of water every km while pouring some water on my elbows, neck and head to keep the body temps cool. Having said that, from an environment perspective, I believe paper cups make more sense. A lot of runners were picking up a bottle taking a sip and throwing the bottle away not only wasting water but also creating more plastic waste! It’s a small water bottle - latch on to it, finish the water and then find a bin to dispose it, not a hard task you know ;)
30 minutes before the race start - That Coach Jacket from Athlos is my new favourite piece of apparel
The race start was super smooth. Got a cab on time, got down and walked about a km to reach the Maidan - changed into race gear and deposited the finish line bag. Warmed-up well, took a leak and got to the start line in the nick of time! Couldn’t have gone better :) One thing I just disliked was how dingy the path from the Maidan to the start line was. There were absolutely zero lights and it was super easy to trip on a small rock or the roll the ankle 5 minutes before the race start. For a Gold Label race, these small things should be taken care off!
The race starts on time and I spent the first 2-3K weaving around and finding my space and rhythm (Pretty much everyone got 42.5K on their watch. Moi like a genius ran a 42.67K - So much for finding the shortest way forward :p). Probably, for the first time ever in a Marathon I stuck to my pacing and nutrition game. Most likely coz I am older now and that grey hair has reduced my cockiness. I just found my rhythm and went on hitting those splits. I remember climbing over Peddar and getting down that hill and instead of enjoying it, I was just overwhelmed imagining how do I climb this on my way back after 35k at marathon effort (Note to future self - Stay in the present, enjoy what’s in front of you - The outcome won’t change just coz I end up stressing out. All I can do is execute the plan and trust in the process). Anyway, before I realised we hit the Sea Link and I was looking around to work with someone on this long never ending stretch. I was so happy to have found Kartik Subramanian right then running a similar pace and just worked with him for as long as I can through the Sea Link.
I got through half way exactly at 01:39:24 which was gold. Never have I ever stayed so calm and paced so consistently. For context, the cocky me from 2018 got through the first half in 01:38:46 which was a half marathon PB then.
Just a kid happy to be racing a Marathon after ages
22K to 28K was probably the strongest I have felt during the race. I was on top of my nutrition and hydration, I was clicking off those kms like a metronome and things just fell into place. Somewhere around here, Karthik Nadar caught up to me, we shared a wet sponge coz both of us like geniuses latched onto the same one and ran together for a bit before Karthik decided that I was too slow for him and left me behind :D. 29K was when I first struggled where my legs just started feeling the effort, the cadence dropped and I just felt slow in general. I was just telling myself to get those sub 5:00/km in for as long as possible which shifted to 5:10/km and finally telling myself not to walk anywhere in the race when around 34K I just stopped running and started walking a bit!
There is no bigger anomaly than investing in racing super shoes and then walking during the marathon :D
I started running again and I just could feel my right calf (the same one I tore in 2021) twitching/spasming which got me worried. You call it experience/grey hair/mindset/lack of training but I was adamant not to throw a pity party in the name of calf cramping up. I was still on top of my nutrition and hydration and I was feeling rock solid from an energy level perspective. I got into this solid rhythm of walking for 50 metres and running/jogging for 450 metres. The new goal was to not run a km over 6 minutes and to run on the Peddar Road climb in the same pattern and that’s what we did till the end finishing with a time of 03:30:14. A minuscule PB of 8 plus minutes :)
Thoughts
The most stupid thing I did through this block was deciding to run the race on a truncated block. But apart from that, I don’t think I could have done anything different. I did what I could in those 6 weeks, showed up on race day with a game plan and executed it till the end. The legs gave up 2/3rds in but that’s the risk I knew I was taking when I decided to register for this so late.
See - Holding onto those bottles and disposing them off responsibly is not too hard ;)
What Next?
Remember how all this started in the first place since I needed a qualifier to go run the Comrades marathon. Well, I won’t be running it this year. I in fact hope there are takers for the substitution bib so that I can recover a portion of my race fee atleast!
All the time spent introspecting during the race and the days after, it just made me realise that 7 plus years of running and I have never ever put in a full fledged block in for the marathon distance and respectfully raced it. So that’s what we are going to do sometime this year. (Read as: this going to be the BQ year, well hopefully. Actually on second thoughts, I just hope that I don’t take another 5 years to race a marathon again!)
PS: I couldn’t have been more happy with the result of the gents I was travelling with (Linking their strava activities below - Massive PBs with solid execution) and the results of my coaching athletes (Keeping this for a separate post - hopefully I don’t procrastinate for a while)
Amit - 03:31:46
Diganta - 03:35:13
Srini - 03:37:31
