Thursday, January 17, 2008

2008 Mumbai Marathon this weekend

Mumbaikars are always in a hurry and are constantly running for something. Weather it is catch the 8.40am local or the BEST, to reach the office on time, to catch a rick, or simply just to escape the peak hour traffic jam and reach home early. This weekend the city will run but this time it will be for a cause. With all the daily running, Marathon seems like a cakewalk. It's the Marathon Weekend.

Yes around 30,000 runners, including 40 of the world's 100 top athletes, will be participating in the fifth Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, on Sunday. Thousands of Mumbai residents will line the over 20-km-long route from CST to Bandra Reclamation to see these super shuttles run.
The stars of the tinsel town, the biggies of the business world and also the highly sophisticated, prim and proper socialites will also be sighted running a pace or two. And I suppose that will be just enough for the media coverage. But can't deny the fact that their brief presence will surely motivate the other runners.

Last year, the marathon raised almost Rs80 million for various charities involving 150 NGOs. This year, the organizers hope to raise almost Rs100 million. The Mumbai Marathon, which is the richest marathon in Asia and also features among the top ten marathons in the world, has emerged as the single largest charity event in India. This year, the prize money has been raised by $10,000 to $240,000.

The Mumbai marathon includes five categories: the full marathon (42.195 km), the half marathon (21.097 km), the dream run (six-km), the senior citizens run (4.3-km), and the wheelchair event (2.5-km). Did you know that our city has some professional marathon runners? Well I never had a clue so until I came across this website;click here to read his blog. I also read somewhere that there are some very senior citizen runners (90+ yrs old) too. The city never ceases to amaze me and this is one of the reason I love this city.
The dream runners will include celebrities like John Abraham, Vivek Oberoi, Rahul Bose and Suchitra Krishnamurthy (all Bollywood actors) and Revathy Menon, Madhavan, Khushboo and Rohini (from the celluloid world of the south).
So Are you ready to run ?
PS: Don't forget your running your shoes :D

1 comments:

@GirishMallya 17/1/08 10:19 AM  

Thanks for the kind words viewer. Looking forward to the Sunday marathon.

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