The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : They come, they run, and they give life

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Monday, Sep 01, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

They come, they run, and they give life

Kannal Achuthan and Sruthi Krishnan

Chennai Marathon sees scores of tired feet and yet a tireless feat

— Photos: S.R.Raghunathan and R. Ragu

Heading together: (Left) A view of the well patronised GiveLife Chennai Marathon on Sunday and (right) Physically-challenged persons awaiting their turn to run on the wheel-chair.

CHENNAI: The usually sedate Light House Mass Rapid Transport System (MRTS) station found itself crammed with tired feet after the marathon on Sunday morning.

“There were no buses near the Gandhi statue, which is the finishing point. So, the train became the only option,” said K.S. Muralikrishna, who had completed 21.09 km in two hours and forty minutes. Shrugging off his feat, Mr. Muralikrishna, who had come all the way from Tirupatthur in Vellore district, said, “I did not practise. Though I walk briskly every day, I have never run such a distance.”

Mr. Muralikrishna’s attention kept shifting to Dhanu Malayan, who was trying to go down on the escalator while its steps kept chugging upwards. Running the 7 km half-marathon had not exhausted this Class IV student’s store of energy.

But not everyone shared this boy’s penchant for physical exertion. For those stretched on the platform, while waiting for the train, it was time for hard-earned rest. Some of them had left their bags near the Island Grounds and took the MRTS train to return to the starting point. “Legs get cramped with the strain,” said Anand Babu, a physiotherapist, who was posted at the finishing line. “Stretching and ice-massaging are some of the things we did to help people. If you run suddenly without previous practice, you tend to get cramps.”

And practice means zooming past the finishing line of the 21-km marathon in one hour and thirty minutes, as Hibson Babu from Loyola College will tell you. “I run daily, so this was easy,” he said.

Apart from the half-marathon for professionals, a run was organised for those above 50 years and those on a wheel-chair. Seventy-eight year old S. Damodharan, who keeps himself fit by training at Prime Sports Academy, said he was glad for the opportunity to run.

Students managed to get in bright and early even from suburbs as far as Nerkundram and Pattravakkam. A young woman had even brought her baby along on a pram. A group of youngsters from RAACK Academy of Dance waved their silvery pom-poms to peppy music. “We feel good to be cheering the lot,” said M. Sandhya, one of the cheer-leaders.

Separated from associates

A large number of school students had joined the general 7-km marathon. The thronging crowd made it difficult for the children to stay together. At the D-5 Marina Beach police outpost near Gandhi Statue, police had to make announcements for at least two hours on the request of children, parents or friends who had separated from each other.

According to the police, at least 200 such announcements were made but people eventually managed to find who they had been looking for.

Gopinath and Jayasurya, students of Class VI, looked for their brothers for over an hour before they found them.

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