Musings of a runner: Mistakes repeated

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, February 05, 2006

Mistakes repeated - chennai Marathon

Yesterday, someone asked me if I am running the chennai Marathon. I told him that I wasn't prepared enough to run it and anyways the organisation is poor. He replied back saying that this time it was big with 20,000 runners participating, more than twice that of last year. I told him, the numbers don't matter, what matters most is that they allow runners sufficient time to finish.
But I did have some hope that the organisers would learn from their previous mistakes.
Alas, Murphy's law has a special significance as far as chennai marathon is concerned.
It seems, the runners who passed the 28 - 30 km mark beyong 3 hrs were asked to leave the course - how pathetic is that?? Man, it is not that the organisers are unaware of how international marathons are conducted - They simply don't care. You extract money out of first time marathoners and people who run for the heck of it and don't care about the time, and finally you ask them to move off the course? Where in the world does this happen?
The lesser it's said about the Chennai Marathon website, the better.

5 comments:

NaiKutti said...: ["the runners who passed the 28 - 30 km mark beyong 3 hrs were asked to leave the course"] -- that really sucks!... is this info from a trusted source?... but given the condictons, it may not be all that bitter to accept this pathetic act!!; 8:07 am, February 05, 2006
Arbit said...: The only reason organisers could site would be that the traffic can't be closed for ever, but the runner is ready to go for the full distance, knowing fully well the conditions...No, citing the conditions is not a justifiable reason for this stupidity.

This says it all: http://chennailiving.blogspot.com/2006/02/3-hours.html#links; 8:19 am, February 05, 2006
Arbit said...: Oh allright...I thought u were referring to the heat :-); 8:09 pm, February 05, 2006
NaiKutti said...: ooops... my wording was wrong and it read like i was justifying the act... NO... i meant that given the organizer's conditions and lack of organizing exposure, it is very much possible that this happened!!; 8:09 pm, February 05, 2006
Ram Viswanathan said...: Karthik & Naikutti

The police stopped us. period. Four (Shumit, Hari, Ajendra & I) us wanted to proceed further but the Officer simply stoppped us. He even flagged down an ambulance to take us back to the starting point.

If the pre-run shenanigans were upsetting, this abrupt ending was a absolute put off and made us angry.; 8:19 pm, February 05, 2006