Bangalore World 10K

Today I was a spectator at a race for the first time since I watched the Pittsburgh Marathon in 2009. Two friends from the lab, Ted and Sam, were running, and I decided to be a lazy bum (and a cheap bum, as I'm still in a suboptimal cash flow position while the slow gears of Indian bureaucracy get around to opening my bank account). My 10K was on Thursday, when Ted and Sam tried to get to the late registration and I showed them how to get to the starting line with a minimum of street crossings: getting familiar with the area is paying off!

I walked down to the race course at 7am and was able to cheer on the Microsofties at three different points in the race course. Ted and Sam are skinny fast track runners (if I'd run, they would have beat me by about 10 minutes), so the pack was pretty thin even after they'd passed my last cheering point around the 8K mark. I walked to the finish line, but then decided that was a zoo, so I walked back to the grand avenue. Cubbon Park's grand avenue isn't the most photogenic part of the park, but it's easily the prettiest if you ask me, and it's a great way to start the race's homestretch. I watched the race at a spot a few meters before the point where this photo was taken.

So, if you ever find yourself - an American who is, to a first approximation, extroverted - in a foreign country that is, to a first approximation, English speaking, and you find yourself watching a 10K, I strongly suggest you scream your voice out cheering on the runners. Because, hey, sometimes it's fun to spend a Sunday playing to stereotypes, and I the "we are loud and possibly crazy, but usually not in a scary way" is a stereotype of Americans that I'm generally happy to encourage. My spot was where I'd bother a minimal number of the quietly watching Indians, and I just yelled and clapped and cheered for about 20 minutes until my voice gave out completely. It was a ton of fun, and the runners really responded positively to the possibly crazy white guy who was soaked in sweat from the effort of jumping around and cheering. (I'm a sweaty man!) I got a great reaction for the running crowd: lots of cheers back, lots of people going from a walk to a run, dozens and dozens of high fives, and a half dozen requests for me to join the race.

As I walked home, I passed the corporate charity runners, who started later and were in big packs. Basically, the Bangalore World 10K is a 10K race followed by a 10K parade. Weird.

Sunday afternoon I was going to work on a tech report for a collaboration with CMU folks, but I cooked (man, I need to get some spices. lentils without spices are mad boring) and watched TV shows on the internet instead. Oops!

Saturday run, Saturday walk

Failed to do any running this week, so this morning I got up early and ran for a bit around Cubbon Park, and then after piddling around the office for a bit, took the scenic route home from work today; I'll have to do that again with a camera to actually give people a sense of the place.

My priority for tomorrow is to walk down to MG road and try to trade some U.S. dollars for some rupees so I can re-stock my kitchen. It is an inevitable complication of working in a foreign country that you always start out with an inconveniently small amount of foreign currency and end up with an inconveniently large amount of the same.

Happy Memorial Day!

2 Runs

Yesterday I talked about my walk, but Saturday (2 days ago) and today I went on some runs; these are likely to be more frequent.

Saturday's run was just around the block, I'm still recovering from the Pittsburgh Marathon and mostly just wanted to stretch my legs. This morning (Monday) I ran this route, which more-or-less went around the cricket stadium. I had plans to run the length of Cubbon Road and back, but those plans were not to be: in the confusion of construction in Minsk Square, I took Queen's Road towards MG Road instead of Cubbon, and then overshot MG Road, circled the stadium, and made my way back on Infantry Road, a path I'd thought though a little bit after the walk yesterday.

Having a GPS watch was absolutely a godsend for this run: I didn't have a clear idea where I was at any point between Minsk Square and Infantry Road, but I knew whether I was more-or-less running towards or away from familiar areas.