XLRI dream run
It was Ravikanth from IIT Hostel 9 who inspired me running a marathon. I always admired him, and 2nd-3rd year of my BTech I tried running long. But was never regular and couldn’t run more than couple of kilometers. I never ran after that. I gained 10 kgs of weight, thanks to Pondicherry and lifestyle at work. Dombivli/Mumbai suburbs is not a great place to run.
When I came to XLRI, one of my aim was to loose weight and run a marathon. XLRI first term went in “acclimatization” and finding company for the run. I think all people are just lazy like me, waiting for company, so in the end nobody turns running. I broke this laziness in second term, ventured in jubilee park in morning and found some good tracks to run. My colleagues at Cushman & Wakefield had given me athletic shoes on my send off, which helped running on tar roads. However, since I ran only in morning I was never regular. I suffered so many injuries.
At the end of second term, I got company. People joined, jogged along for few days then stopped. Finally it was Vikas Sharma and later Sandeep who were quite regularly coming for run. Now we ran all times of the day. I remember running at 9pm in dark. But injuries kept stopping me from running long. I couldn’t register for Mumbai or the Delhi marathon. At the end of third term, I had developed a good stamina, could run 4 kms at stretch and ran more than 20 kms per week.
Summers stay at home with work, IPL and no trek or sport, I gained good amount of weight. My target this year was Delhi Marathon in November. But I cant run with this heavy body. Did one week GM diet, which started the loss of weight. I lost 4 kgs in 4 weeks. I found running more comfortable in my new running shoes. I hit 40 kms per week by the end of 4th term.
Now when I think back of Ravikant, no wonder running is addictive. As Robin Sharma says in Monk who sold the Ferrari, any activity done 21 days continuously becomes an habit. Running became part of my daily routine.
Most of the events in XL could be seen as competition between seniors vs juniors. This never happened in IIT. Competition was between two hostels, which was not the case here. In third term I created the proposal of XL marathon for XLANC. It would be a team event and each team name should be a name of bird (I wanted to promote my birding blog). This proposal remained on my desktop for next few months. Making people participate and run at XLRI was such a challenge. Garg was always interested. He had the same idea in his mind. I knew with XLANC and sportscom this could happen.
Fourth term nothing happened. XLANC whom I had been close to did not take major initiative. One day my neighbour, Harbir told that he was interested in organizing event – marathon for CII YI. I am always sceptical about committees and their motives. I shared my idea with Harbir and kept my condition that I dont work for CII and I am not interested in organizing marathon for outside XLRI junta.
Somehow things worked, by the end of fourth term we met Prof. Shukla briefing him about the event and seeking his advice about a Cause. Making people run has always worked when a cause is attached to it. This is the practice at major marathon worldwide. We found our cause – “the XLRI Social Entrepreneurship Trust”. Given the experience with XL junta at previous major events, we were very much doubtful about participation. We needed to create sufficient buzz and generate interest. Thanks to Joomla, we created a website www.xldreamrun.com quite comfortably. We introduced some special categories – Heavy weight champions, XL ki kudiyan and Guru Chela team, just to encourage participation of from people who tend not to participate in such run. When we started registration, we just thought maximum participation would be about 200, out of which only 150 would turn up on the race day. We were proved to be wrong later. XL Dream Run – named by Prof. Shukla was to happen along with Alumni Homecoming on 16 Nov. Subsequently route was modified to end at Beldih club where Alumni play golf on second day of homecoming. Alumni homecoming team took most of the responsibility of arranging the run.
With just few weeks left for the run, Alumni homecoming got canceled. Now it was upto us to arrange and organize the event. Search for sponsorship began. Shukla sir’s network helped us get 4 sponsors within few days. Tata sports came forward to arrange race day activities, this ensured that we wont require volunteers from XLRI to work on race day rather participate and run. Garg’s idea of Graffiti did really well creating buzz just before the run. While I was busy doing last minute registration and cancellation, Harbir gathered his team. I liked his breifing on the day before the run, he tends to go in too much detail. He cared too much of the runners :-) Things seemed to be working well, but fingers crossed for the race day.
We had kept Tshirt and chest number distribution since 0730 hrs. This is very very early from XLRI standards! To our surprise, all came on time. We stopped distribution of Tshirts by 0815 hrs as planned and had a flag off sharp on time 0830 hrs. It was amazing to see the momentum. Its always the peer pressure which works, person who never ran earlier in his life ran seeing other people run. The route was just 4 kms to ensure all people participate. Regular runners like me found this route too small, as we would finish this in about 20 mins. Bharath was one who took early lead and maintained it to finish first in just 18 mins! I somehow managed to finish 13th in 21 mins. Many professors ran too and completed the race in good positions. Everything was happening as if a dream, most of the things worked beyond expectations. We just messed up with team calculations and had to distribute team awards later. This had been probably first full scale event management for me. I feel satisfied now. Run went quite well and we could raise about Rs.5 lakh for the trust.
Now 3 days after the run, I have started running again. Time now to cross the 9km barrier. My next target is the real marathon – Mumbai Half marathon 21 kms to be held on Jan 18.
More photos at www.xldreamrun.com
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