Mumbai Marathon 2011 – Run Mumbai Run

Consecutively second time today I participated in Dream Run of most awaited Mumbai marathon. I was more interested in running half marathon but like last year this year too I couldn’t register myself, but managed to get a 21km bib all thanks to Jagdish Parekh. He is the one who inspired me to run 21km marathon but felt sorry as I couldn’t run 21km and participated in Dream Run due to lack of practice. Would like to tell that last Jagdish bhai ran 21km last year and this year at the age of 56 he ran 42 km and successfully completed it.

This time I was running for our own group the sapling project. We (Ranjeet, Satish, Vijay, Jason, neeraj) met at CST station and from there we headed towards Azad maidan. On the way met an Onion, no i am not kidding we met a Mahafreed who was dress in onion with a price tag 5000 Rs per piece. She was looking just awesome and was also the center of attraction while on the way to Azad maidan. Anubha had created few headbands for the sapling group which were just too good and which also become the identification of sapling group. We were later joined by shailaja, Maithili, Anubha, Priyanka, and Stanley on Azad maidan. We were all set with Banners, headbands and also were wearing Sapling T-shirts.

When the race started with shouting slogan “Ped lagao , Duniya bacho”. More than 10k people were in dream run. Lots of media people could be seen taking snaps interviewing people and the crowd was cheering the cause and as I said before Mahafreed was the center of attraction for the media photographer and everyone watching the event. Few celebrities, socialites, politician attended the event (just to wave hand from the stage).

Dream run participants were cheering the runners of half and full marathon as they were about to complete the race. The spirit and the stamina were exceptional for the people who were very tired but still were running toward the finish line.

The sapling group met Malishka the bajate raho RJ near Queens Necklace. She was very impressed with the Mahafreed costume and to our surprise she took the sapling group live on air. It was a great moment for the sapling group that we were going to be on air. We reached the finish line after a 3 and half hours of walk.

We not just walked but we did ran the marathon when we were 10 meter away from the finish point. After finishing we directly went near the refreshment booth as we were thirsty , hungry and in need of energy. The refreshment kit includes Apple, Orange , Horlicks Nutribar, Kingfisher mineral water and Lucozade Sports Drink. For me these were quite enough to get the energy required to reach Thane from CST .

I took the medal which say “I Finished ” which was actually for those who completed the 21km race. I had the bib of Half Marathon (21km) but i participated in Dream Run (6km) then also i decided to take the medal as that will inspire me to be ready next time for Half Marathon.

It was fun running.. i mean walking the Marathon. Hope people have take the note of what we tried saying through banners and slogans. And wish they would support the sapling project and help us make INDIA GREEN.

More Photos of Mumbai Marathon

Satish: Flickr

Maithili: Facebook

Neeta : Facebook