Our first 10k.

The morning started badly. Baba’s alarm did not go off as usual because his alarm is not set to work on weekends, and he forgot to modify his settings the previous night. So, we woke up with a start a good fifty minutes past four, our regular time. Usually, Baba bear wakes up at four and then prepares tea, milk, coffee, toast, etc before getting ready himself and then waking us up at five, but today, since we were to report behind the Main Building at SPPU at six, Baba bear was to awaken us at half-past four itself, so we could be out of the house by five. Anyway, the morning started with a bang, with Baba bear waking us up without the usual soft cuddles and singing and music, and everyone rushing into the bathroom to get ready.

But we did get ready on time and did manage to get to the venue at sharp six, along with Baba and Mamma bear, Masi, and our neighbour, Taara’s mum too, where we were joined later by Aji, Mami Aji, Mama Ajoba, Rasika Atya, and her daughter and our cousin and BFF, Raavi. We listened to music on our new Walkman to ‘put us in the mood’ and keep us away from chit-chat (the last part was Baba bear’s suggestion to help us focus).

At SPPU, we reported on time, and while they didn’t have a t-shirt our size (their smallest one would fit us in say, four more years), there was much fun to be had, with a stage set up and loud dance music playing, and two aerobics instructors getting us warmed up with dance steps. Mamma bear and Janhavi aunty (Tara’s mum) also joined in the dance. Baba bear told us to warm up separately too, since we are a serious athlete and dance may be a good way to start, we need to stretch properly before our run.

And then, there was all the attention we were getting from the organisers, the press, the other runners, and even the spectators. We were too shy to speak even when people were shoving their microphones into our face, until Baba bear rescued us and took us away to warm up.

The first start was the full and half marathons, at half-past six. Ashish Kasodekar, a very ambitious man, is pitching to set a world record by running 60 marathons in as many days, and the beautiful, nature-covered environs of the Savitribai Phule Pune University are going to be the venue for this attempt. Our run, and others too, is to encourage him and give him company as he reaches to succeed in this crazy feat. So, he gave a nice speech, and then took off for the first of hopefully 60 such runs in the next 2 months. At ten past seven, the 10km and 5km runners were flagged off by the Vice-Chancellor of SPPU, Dr.Nitin Karmalkar. We did a count-down and off we went.

A bit of backstory and clarification on some stuff for our readers: Baba bear has been discouraged from letting us run for the longest time. However, whenever he consulted sports specialists and paediatricians on this topic, he has received many conflicting recommendations, but one consistent advice: “Let the kid run as long as she is having fun. The moment you ask her to push through pain or you have to force her to continue, you are entering dangerous territory.” So far, except for the first 3-4 minutes (maybe less) of slight crankiness every morning at the time of waking up (which is easily solved by some singing and tickling) and the refusal to eat our toast/banana on some days, we have NEVER needed to be pushed or forced to either wake up, or get ready, or warm up, or run, or run faster, or run longer, or whatever. Baba bear just takes us to the running venue, we warm up, he helps us stretch, he then starts the clock and says, ‘Go!’ And then, like a hare, off we go, trotting at our pace, running. We run 7km every day and 10km on Monday. We then work out with Baba bear in the gym or at home (we LOVE this part) before having breakfast and logging in for chess, the first class of the day every weekday. Also, we have a regular life with playtime, friends, playdates, sleepovers, cousins, neighbours, tv, online and playground games, outings, picnics, vacations, movies, books, music, and the normal life of a 7-year-old, along with regular schooling, except the last part is at home. We also learn the piano, Mandarin, and ISL (Indian Sign Language), apart from practising our Marathi in a separate class. We might start German or guitar soon. But all-in-all, as ‘normal’ a childhood as anyone else we know. So, we cannot see why we should run less, or slower, or less often, or why Baba should be reprimanded and constantly advised to somehow get us to stop. When we do not feel like running, we’ll stop automatically. As they say in the military, we will stop when we are done.

That out of the way (hopefully permanently, or at least for a longish time), let us describe the run: We started with the crowd, and then the serious runners moved ahead, leaving the slower ones, of which we were part. We split into two groups: the really slow ones, who would stop, walk, stretch, and then jog again a bit, and those that wouldn’t stop, but continued slowly. We decided to try and keep up the middle, the slow runners, and decided to target one, overtake them, and then target another and try and overtake them. As Baba bear had warned us, the objective of the run today was not to run fast, but to breathe properly. So, we did just that. Halfway through the first 5km, we saw Mama Ajoba and Mami Aji who were clapping and waving at us. Mama Ajoba was recording a video. We smiled, waved back, but went back to focus on our breathing and running. The first 5km was completed in 37 minutes. That was fast. Baba bear (who we saw at the 5km mark) told us we are doing well. So, we got a bit of ‘josh’ and sprinted to overtake a few other runners, only to run out of steam quickly. The sprint was a mistake. And that meant, we slowed down as we passed the 6km mark. We tried covering it up, but we ran the second 5km in 43 minutes, considerably slower than the first, finishing with 1h:20m:38s as our official time for 10km, which is 8 minutes faster than our personal best. Not bad for a first-time racer!

As a reward, Aji gave us a bar of chocolate, the organisers once again called us on stage and gave us a water bottle and a bag, and then Mamma bear and Baba bear took us to Barometer for breakfast, where we ended up eating lots of bacon strips and a large strawberry milkshake, our favourite!

Later, we were visited once again by Aji with flowers and gifts, and we were allowed to play for as long as we wanted with Tara, our neighbour, as well as watch as much tv as we wanted, and then, we could even have a late night because there is no running tomorrow. Yay!

We would rank this day as somewhere in our top 10 best-ever days! But Baba bear says that we are too young and our 10 best-ever days are yet to come. We can’t wait.