The Goa River Marathon 2022 journey

I didn't really believe this photo would have been here in this post yesterday

I wasn't at all confident early morning at 5 am and I wasn't confident enough for the last one week or more

Paulo Coelho had written somewhere, "Life has a way of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all, or by having everything happen at once!"

And my life was not treating me well, so I thought; things were not going the direction the way I planned or wanted to, both at work or otherwise

On the work front, I had a tense fortnight with several things happening all at once and inspite of efforts weren't going well

As for the marathon, I had planned practicing throughout of October and November, and to my dismay, the months flew past

To top it all, I realised I had put back on all the weight lost earlier with me tippling the scale at a mind blowing 82 kg!

And carrying all that 82 kg of me over 21 km on the trot was benumbing

Meenal unfortunately had a fracture due to a fall and so was not participating (she's okay now) and so I had to go alone

I went early to the starting point of the marathon and tried to fight all that tension in me, but was not very successful

I didn't meet even a soul whom I knew so I could talk to, but gathered a few strangers who had abundantly more enthusiasm than what I did, and I guess that helped a bit

So there was a group from Pune, another from Nagpur and yet another from Gurugram and one from Cochin all travelling to Goa just for this one mad run

A fellow from Delhi became a good companion towards the finish but that is later

When I started, I started alone, nervous and not happy, but all this ended once I crossed the starting line

Somehow I realize now in hind sight, I  ran like a man possessed and I ran like I never did before

The speed wasn't there but the consistency was and somehow my feet didn't seem to tire

Throughout the run, my mind was numb and the road under me just moved past in a rhythm with a music that I never heard

Half way down, I realised I was drenched in sweat but it was a good sweat and I could feel drops of it dripping down my elbows

A fellow from Delhi gave company for the last few kilometers cracking jokes and posing funny for photographs

It wasn't until I reached the last kilometer did I glance at the time and realized that I am within an unimaginable 3 hour timer

I crossed the line just a minute or two within the three hour mark, and boy! I had tears in my eyes!

I ran straight to the beer counter and gleefully collected my beer and sipped a few gulps before getting down to the cooling down stretching exercises taking care not to spill my beer

I then collected my medal and breakfast packet and climbed the hill side from Chicalim to Regina Mundi Hogh School parking lot where I had parked my bike

Somewhere in between I got a couple of photos clicked through a fellow from Chennai

Meenal was flabbergasted that not only did I complete the run within 3 hours, but still I had the energy to climb up the nearly 1 km steep hill to the parking lot and drive home

The organizers have a bus arranged to drop us to the parking lot, but I somehow didn't bother about it

That, my friends, was the story of my run that almost never happened

And now I have reached the office and suddenly I find all those things that weren't going through have disappeared and I am suddenly finding everything happening at once

Things do not always happen the way I would have wanted to, but sometimes they happen way better!

And no, I still don't go searching for happiness, happiness finds me!

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