It is no mean feat to be a first-timer at the world’s biggest skating marathon and finish it at an impressive two-and-a-half minute per km, competing with some of the best professional skaters across the globe. City based business entrepreneur Rana Uppalapati, who returned to the Port City after successfully completing his first Berlin Skating Marathon on Friday, made it look like breeze. “If someone were to tell me last year that I would be skating my first full marathon under two and a half minutes a km, I would have smiled, snoozed the alarm and gone back to sleep; for it would have been a dream, considering the backbreaking injury or otherwise,” said Rana, who completed the marathon in one hour 40 minutes, a very good record considering he was placed under the amateur category behind 5,000 skaters.
The Berlin Skating Marathon is a major sporting event held annually in Berlin, Germany. The official marathon distance of 42.195 km is set up as a city-wide road race where professional skaters and amateurs jointly participate. This year more than 5,500 skaters from across the world participated in the marathon.
“I was a newcomer and thus, I was put in a category of skaters who are expected to complete the marathon in two to two and half hours. Being kept behind 5,000 skaters was a very challenging experience as I had to try my best to skate forward crossing several others,” Rana told The Hindu .
Because of his impressive timing, Rana will qualify to be in the one hour and 40 minute category for next year’s marathon. Rana had earlier in the year skated 800 km from Visakhapatnam to Chennai for a social cause. and the Mumbai-Goa journey travelling 600 km on skates in 10 days.
Speaking about the experience of being a first time skater at the Berlin marathon, he said: “After 35 km, you just have to skate through pain! That’s the time I told myself that I had done it before. My experience of long distance skating counted for those last seven km which appeared excruciatingly long then.”
