The race was fun and quite different from any of the races I had participated in – the distance was obviously one factor but it was also a trail race – something I wasn’t prepared for. Within the first kilometer, I fell and scratched my shoulder and legs.
As the race drew on, I got more comfortable and aimed at running at a speed of 10 km per hour. The first 25 km were pretty easy and a 10 km per hour was not too daunting a task to maintain. I even talked to fellow runners who I overtook in the race. The race had a good mix of serious runners and running enthusiasts but every time someone passed you, they would smile and greet you and say keep going.
4 hours into the race, the sun showed its effects on me. I started to feel dehydrated but taking electrolytes helped. I ate 2 bananas, 4 peanut butter jelly sandwiches and had 1 litre of electrolyte solution every hour.
My biggest hurdle came after I crossed 60 km i.e. after 6.5 hours. My speed began to slow down, and I could feel a dull ache in my knees and ankles. I still ran at 8 km per hour. After crossing 80 km, my speed was 6 km per hour. I was fatigued, my brain was tired and it kept telling me to stop. And I did. I walked every 10 minutes of every kilometer for a while.
At the 87 km mark, I decided to take off my shoes because my toes hurt a lot. When I took off the shoes, there was blood under every toe nail. One toe nail had turned black. Owing to the dim light in the evening, the race was now confined to a 2 km loop on a road. I decided to run barefoot but the pebbles on the road made that task impossible and I had to put on shoes again after 2 km.
At this point, I was 10.5 hours into the race. There was excruciating pain in my legs. I would make an attempt to run and immediately come to a forcible stop. I decided to walk the rest of the race at a 3 km per hour pace.
But in the last 1 km of the race, I decided to run again. There was a lot of pain but it was fun to tolerate that pain. It felt like small shots of endorphins releasing in my body with every step. Crossing the finish line was amazing and I had a mini celebration with the race organisers who were cheering me on and my friends, who had come to support me.