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The most awaited event for everyone running SCMM. Reasons are multi-fold - best management, great route, great Mumbaikars cheering all the way and to TOP it all 25 mins early start. Couldn't manage to reach early as planned, but reached nick in time at 5:45 AM and met Prawaal, Nishant, Sandeep and Alok. Very quickly everyone started to move towards the starting area and exactly at 6:15 AM we started. I had been going over and over again on what pace should I maintain and in the process found a group of 3 folks - 2 men and 1 women in red t-shirt best to follow. I was able to pace up with them till about 8 Kms and took a urgent break at that point and lost the group. From that point the intention was to catch up with this group and I paced up a bit (just a notch up to ensure that I do not burn out). Managed to caught up with the lady after 5K and then from there on, we were moving close to each other. I also caught up with the 5 hr bus and met Sujit in that bus (it was nice to have finally met you). The atmosphere in the bus was amazing, hats off to Amit and the group. I was always hearing "Another one bites the dust" as the group crossed any Kms. It was really cheerful to be around them, but I had planned to stay ahead of them. Completed 21K in around 2 hrs 17 mins, same as my Pune HM timing and I didn't feel that I had pushed much. Then came the killer Sea Link bridge, I took it easy on this...walked a bit, poured a lot of water on my head, sponged myself etc. Eat half a banana on the way and the sea link was out of picture. Due to this, the 5 hr Bus had managed to cross me and I was left alone with no target in front or company with me. To overcome the difficulty, I managed to grab couple of folks with me, cheered them to run again and some of them ran with me for 5K approx. Ashish and Sachin were with me till Peddar Road uphill which we decided to walk initially, then I thought what's the point of training on NH4 if I have to walk a small hill. So, I started running again and these 2 guys were left behind...shortly I met Nikhil and then caught up with Prawaal who was also walking. At that time, we had completed 35K in 4:05 and looked all set for sub-5. I was all the time cheering, thanking the cheering crowd and grabbing everything the organizers had to offer - water, glucozade, banana, oranges...except the Parle-G biscuits. I was a motivator for a lot of folks out there and made them to reduce their completion time by couple of minutes, but the real reason was that I was able to run only with Company, alone I would have easily taken 10 more minutes. So, finally we saw the mark of 500 meters to go and Prawaal and I crossed the finish line holding hands. I am very thankful to all the support provided by SCMM organizers, volunteers, mumbaikars taking time out from their Sunday mornings with biscuits, bananas, oranges etc to help us, fellow runners who without saying anything were inspiration to me just by doing what they do best - run and to TOP it all fellow DMers. They were always there during the training period, motivating and guiding through the difficult part - training. A wonderful journey of SCMM 2011. A lot awaits in this year, for later to sort out.
