Musings of a runner: Indian marathoners

Intro

This blog as might be apparent from the title has to do with running, biking and basically other outdoor individualistic sports, sometimes extreme, such as rock climbing . But don't be surprised if you find articles on work, personal life, music and even philosophy, this blog is an exception in this aspect in the blogosphere of running blogs and I am trying to revamp the blog to make it more runner friendly. You might want to look at the sidebar titled 'categorised', which as is obvious, categorizes my posts into different areas of interest.
The other thing that might interest many people is a section on 'running videos' and 'general videos' on the side bar, which I keep updating now and then.
I plan to bring in more posts on running and biking, with some added colour, so as to make them 'complete'. That's about it for now.
As a post-note, I have run a half-marathon, but I am yet to attempt a marathon, which through some concerted effort and time should happen in the future, but that ofcourse is not the culmination of this blog, it would on the contrary be something to jumpstart this blog onto new vistas.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Indian marathoners

Why can't we have indians running 2:15 time..why??? I have thought a lot on this and have come to a conclusion that there are many reasons for this..:
1) People are not aware of the distance..the usual questions asked are..what is the distance?
Can people run so long????..crazy really..given the proper training yes...
2)Speaking about training..if we have good coaches, and I mean internationally renowned ones, we could have some talented pool representing india on the international scene..
3) We hardly have any races being held in India....only recently with the bombay international marathon begun last year, IAAF halfmarathon held in newdelhi last year, bangalore international
marathon going to be held on may15th, that India is finally beginning to discover a new sport...the money in these races are huge...around 20,000 us$ or more and we get to see some kenyan runners blazing the roads.
there are other local races being held, like the chennai marathon..around feb., thane varsha marathon on 15th june, thiruvananthapuram marathon, etc..but the competition here is visibly poor..rather nonexistent.
4) Another point to be noted is that the people winning these marathons are mostly jawans from the armed forces who are able to pull off the times they run on the training they get there..but
apparantly this is not enough...

Some suggestions: We should have very well organised state level races to bring out talent..the competition in these races should be of a very high level...It is easy to see why USA is the top destination for the marathoners..a)the sheer volume of races held b) the money.
To conclude, there is no dearth of talent here in india, being the second most populated country in the world.
Even casual joggers can become subelite/elite class if only they had the motivation and the trianing required for raising to such levels...There are many examples to prove the above point...Sandy Jacobson of canada,Emily Levan, etc

Running is such a simple sport(yes there is no doubt about that), all it requires you to improve is...RUN