My half marathon journey

Hey folks!

I am sure you all are doing well.

After having read my article on running — an amazing sport, you might have already taken initiatives to kick start running few steps regularly. I will be curious to hear you all who have started running, it motivates me as well to continue my running journey and keep covering long distances with regular and consistent efforts. With this, I would like to present my half marathon journey which i just completed on 17th November, 2024 at CME campus, Dapodi, Pune.

After having completed my 10K run in the month of October, I couldn't stop myselves in registering for 21K run that is Half Marathon. I know it requires a lot of guts to register for 21K immediately after completion of 10K run for the very first time but believe me I did it and completed half marathon at a decent amount of time: 2hrs 37 mins. This marathon was special for me as I not only wanted to finish the challenge but also wanted to see Corps of Engineers (CME) campus, located in Dapodi, pune. The campus is very huge that it can accommodate at least 1000 cars, has lots of department buildings, canteen store department (CSD), cadets accommodation, training grounds, ATMs, banks, malls, etc. Apart from this, the campus has one of the Asia’s largest rowing node that is, The Army rowing node (ARN) with a beautiful nature scenery around it, with different species of birds chirping in the morning and overall, a pleasant, cool place which motivates the participants to keep running and look around the beauty of the nature. This is the campus which trains cadets to become the pillar of Indian army and provides support in the front-line during war times and I am very much fond of our Indian armed forces, So wanted to participate at any cost and make the challenge a success.

As I completed my first 10K run on 6th october, I continued running to complete another first run of 21K which is gonna be challenging. I truly believe “Consistency is the key to success”; “ take baby steps everyday to achieve big in your life”; “Small things makes a lot of difference”. Hence, with this motivation, I continued to do so with lots of variations. Sometimes, I used to run 3–4Km, sometimes, 7K, 10K (I prefer long runs during weekends), Sometimes, 1.5–2K run as well but a faster pace to know how much stamina do i have to perform running at my maximum capacity. Brisk walks and lower body workout has specially helped me during my running sessions. Altogether, the complete blend had made me prepare…