My First ever Race Award (Celebration Mysore Run - 10K)

One day while surfing internet I came across this site http://indiarunning.com .

It had details of all the popular races of India for the current year and that's where I came to know about Celebration Mysore race!  

I thought this can be my first out station race and was so thrilled with this thought that I registered for it on July 31st.  Mysore is just 160 kms away from Bangalore, so I decided to drive there, finish race and drive back. I checked with Ranju if she is interested for the long drive over the weekend and she agreed.

We started from Bangalore on Saturday, September 06th. We passed through NICE road and then three major towns Ramanagara, Mandya & Srirangapatna. 

NICE Road

We took a break at CCD Mudugree and after entertaining our tummies we resumed back. I told Ranju if she want to take a nap, she can, she did took a nap without getting afraid as I was driving at the speed of 105 Kms per hour :)

Break Time

It was too much fun driving in Bangalore-Mysore highway.

Driving Selfie

The very first thing to do after reaching Mysore was to meet Nitesh and collect my BIB. We met Nitesh and went to expo location (Reliance Trends Store, Next to Hotel Regaalis, Vinobha Road, Mysore) using goggle maps. We collected my BIB and then went to see the race venue. The next thing was to look for a hotel to stay for a night, soon we were able to find a decent hotel to stay. 

We had some time in our hand so we decided to go for a dinner and a night show. Movie "Mary Kom" was running in the theatre, we got the tickets in PVR, was surprised to see that, because in Bangalore getting movie ticket on a weekend is so tough, you always need to pre-book it in advance.

Mary Kom!

We ate dinner, took few selfies and went inside the theatre. Watching Marry Kom turned out to be good for me as it gave me more motivation for the next day race ;) Once we were done with movie we headed back to the hotel to take rest. It was already late and we had to get up early.We chit-chatted with each other and didn't sleep until 2 am. 

Selfie Time

Next day I managed to wake up Ranju and Nitesh by 4:45 am. We got ready and headed to the venue. As this was the charity run my guess was right not many people came for the event from Bangalore. So I though there is a good chance that I may be able to secure a position in top 5 under my age category ;)

I did little warm-up before the race and when the flag off took place started running, it was nice to see that Ranju and Nitesh were cheering for me :)

The route was very scenic and it had good elevations too. Everything was going fine, but just after reaching 5K mark my left foot started hurting, so was limping with one foot, but then I remembered the lines *No Pain No Gain* and I just forgot about the pain and kept uttering to myself to just run run run....  And touched the finish line soon. 

Dil ye Jiddi hai!

After finishing the race I was sure that I am gonna be among top 3 in my category, so just waited for the award ceremony.

First Runner up

After the award ceremony we went back to hotel got ready and checked out. By the time we were done it was lunch time, so we decided to quickly finish lunch and head back to Bangalore. We were so hungry that we ended up going to Oyester Bay for the yummy lunch.

Lady busy eating (:

Once we were done eating we dropped Nitesh and headed back to Bangalore with a great satisfaction.

* The End Result *