Pardon my self-indulgence

But I was bubbling to say this. This weekend was spent at Hyderabad, and the aim was to run the Hyd half-marathon on Sunday. The stay was very comfortable, courtesy the wonderful hospitality of Raghu's parents and extended family.

Although both Raghu and I were scared because the starting time was 6am and we only had three hours of sleep the previous night, but we somehow made it just five minutes late. The marathon itself was pathetically organized (bad medicinal+water infrastructure), but the run itself was great and there were only 200 odd runners in the half-marathon, with no Kenyans/Ethiopians to spoil the party.

Both of us managed to vastly improve our personal best, clocking 2 hrs 9 mins each. As Raghu rightly mentioned, we managed to finish within twice the winner's time, and thats a mean achievement!

I will stop now before I lose any more readers.

Its done. Its over

Thats what Frodo said when he finally threw the One Ring in the fiery chasm of Mount Doom. I say this because I finally successfully finished the 21 km Half-Marathon in Delhi this Sunday.

It had been a dream of a small boy living in a big city, aka me. Finally joining my ranks, was Goldie-Boy, who was running to impress his fiancee. And so we ran, finishing the race in two and a half hours each, thereby setting a personal record of sorts.

The race was rife with all elements of a successful drama --- will power, focus, the inevitable cramp at 16 kms, limping, mixing jogging and walking, and the cheerleaders. Goldie did it for his fiancee and I did it for those unnamed cheerleaders from Kingfisher.

If there was ever a sight prettier than those Kingfisher-ians doing their stuff, it was the sight of the 20km milestone, which signified that the end was nigh.

I will stop here and nurse my sore legs and will advise all of you to go and do it atleast once. A warm fuzzy feeling is guaranteed.