It was an event where college students, professors, school kids, locals all come together to celebrate fitness.
So i left from Mangalore to attend the marathon in Manipal which is about an hour journey from Mangalore. Very excited for my first ever marathon i had a sleepless night in a not so fancy hostel room , twisting and turning in my bed waiting for the next day . We woke up at 5 am because the reporting time to the ground where the marathon would begin was 6am . So i got ready , wore my shoes and clothes and walked towards the ground where i could see a fun filled day happen.
So as we reached the ground i was astonished to see the amount of people that were gathered(I wasnt expecting it to be such a huge event -there were 5000 people). There were people as young as 8yrs and as old as 80. After seeing that my excitement just doubled.
As i was looking around they announced that the warm up is going to begin so we gathered around the stage . This was the fanciest part, they start playing awesome music and a zumba instructor walks in and says “lets begin” . She starts doing some crazy zumba moves and there are 5000 people warming up doing what she does, it was awesome. Then when it was done everyone starts running towards the road where the marathon was about to begin.
So we go there and on the 3rd count we start running. Now there were three categories to choose from 3km, 5km , 10km and 21 km. I chose the 5km run because 10km was too much for me and 3km (i thought) was too less😂. The energy that was in the air was nothing i can put in words here.
There were water stations everywhere along the road. So after my first km i was almost giving up, i stood there drinking water when i saw a almost 60 year old man running. I really felt ashamed of myself to be honest ,thats when i thought “ok arzoo lets do it” . That was it now i just wanted to finish what i started and not give up. So i continued running. I ran upto 4km after which i had to slow my pace because i just couldn’t take it, so i decided to walk the last km.
I am really proud of myself that i finished it and not give up. The picture was taken after the tiring run. You can clearly see the happy face😂😂
The marathon was a very challenging yet fun event that i chose to do and i look forward to going for more such marathons. Probably the best thing i have done till date 😎