Auroville Marathon

This weekend I went with my friends Jacob and Leah to watch them run the Auroville Marathon.  Auroville is a funny place just outside of Pondicherry, which is about a 3.5 hr bus ride South of Chennai.  Auroville is hard to explain, it's like it's own country/commune, and while there you can't really tell you're in India.  I hadn't seen that many white people (or toilet paper) since the airport!  They have a lot of self sustaining things like wind mills and water treatment, etc, but I think there may be some sort of religious thing behind it as well.  I can't decide whether I think it's too new age hippy or if it's really cool.  Check it out for yourself.  Either way, it was an interesting place to have a marathon.

The marathon was small, maybe 50 or so runners (about 100 for the half marathon), and the course was 21.1km (half marathon) so the full marathon runners had to do 2 loops.  Marathon started at 5am, but we had to meet the bus at 415 on the road.  There we were, in the pitch black, alone on the road, dressed like runners (except for me), numbers and all, and the bus pulls over and asks, "are you going to the marathon?"  They did this with all the runners on the way, which gave us a laugh and brightened our moods, which had been pretty dark and crabby as we had woken up at 330am.

I love watching marathons.  I love love love it.  This one was so fun and interesting.  Because it was so small I was able to see my friends (and all the rest of the runners) at least 4 times throughout the race.  Alot of the people who signed up for the full stopped at the half (including Jacob).  Running a marathon is hard enough, but when it gets to be in the 80s for the last 10km, you're running on red sand and the water stations are every 3km, it's just plain crazy.  I spent a chunk of that time at the 36km aid station, giving people water and electrolytes and spraying lots of knees and ankles with an awesome NSAID spray that they make in India.  There were no more oranges or bananas, just water and electrolytes, with only one more aid station to go before the finish.  At this point people were just drenched in sweat, like they had been swimming.  My favorite part about watching marathons is helping runners, and these guys needed lots of support.  Then watching those same runners finish just brought tears to my eyes!!!

Also, the announcer was the funniest announcer I've ever heard at any sporting event ever.  Yes Nate, even funnier than the big guy at Gloucester!  Afterwards, they served up idly, sambar, dosai, and vadai, which was delicious.  The other thing that made it fun was that I got to meet a bunch of Jacob's friends who he knows from running marathons (there arent that many South Indian marathon runners, so they all see eachother at all the events).  So I finally got to hang out a bit and even got to have some beers!!!


Leah and I were luckily offered a ride back to Chennai with Jacob's friends Shyam, Hamsa and Sathish, sparing us a very hot and crowded bus ride.  Also, we got to experience the madness that is driving on the ECR.  There are lane markers, like any other road, but they mean nothing.

Overall I had a lovely weekend; I got to travel a bit, meet new people, drink beer AND support marathon runners!  Here is a pic taken before the start of the marathon:

 

 L to R; Amol, Sathish, Jacob, Leah

To see more pics, please go here

I also learned how to say the following things in Tamil; jackfruit, do you have ice cream?, run!!, it is good, shall we go?, hello good friend, and let's elope (which is literaly the words for "run" + "shall we go?").  I used some of the phrases at work today and while shopping this morning, everyone was impressed!