Hyderabad Half Marathon in November

I am thinking of going for the Hyderabad Half, scheduled for Nov 26th, 2006. The website for the event is at http://www.hyderabad10k.com/. Should be fun, an I've never been to Hyderabad before.

The site mentions "online registration" availability soon, though I am always cautious about these things never making it at all. The entry fee is a bit steep at Rs 350/-, but if they organize it well, it would be worth it for sure. The weather of Hyderabad should give me an added incentive to run my best time.

I was also thinking about the Pune marathon which should be early December, but attempting a full there might be too much with the limited practice I have. And going to run a half in an event where the main event is the Marathon does not appeal to me too much. I also have my reservations about events which do not put available resources to good use. Pune is a well established event but it is yet to see a decent website. The one which is there http://www.puneinternationalmarathon.com/ still seems to be suffering from the hang-ups from 2005.

Hutch Delhi Half Marathon 2006 Results

The complete results of the 2006 event are available online. Please check the below links for your result:

Results Men

Results Women

Some observations:

* Total 730 ranked finishers in the overall Mens category

* Total 87 ranked finishers in the overall Womens category

* Given the overall registration figures of 6,500 for half marathon, it looks like about 12% of the registrants used the timing chips

* As in last year, Subhash Chand Khatri from Delhi managed to sweep the Veterans field in 1:12:59, an amazing performance in the league of the top Indian runners.

* In Womens veterans, Sunita Godara (the Indian legend of marathon running) lost out to Rajshree Chaturvedi, who topped the veterans field in 1:53:21

Hutch Delhi Half Marathon experience, 2006

BIB No: 3212
Finish time: 2:18:49
Rank: 395 (420 overall)

It was a wonderful experience at the 2nd Huch Delhi Half marathon.
I had particpated in the previous years event also but what made this event special for me was that I really enjoyed this one. I had chosed a conservative strategy for this race, as I was running this with much less training than required. I was planning to run the race at a consistent pace of 6:15min/km. What I could finally manage on the day was about 6:30 min/km, which resulted in my overall finish time of 2 hours 18 minutes.

I will put in more details / photographs from the event later.

Results of HDHM 2006:
Men:
1. Francis Kibiwott (Ken) 1:01.36
2. Cuthbert Nyasngo (Zim) 1:02.30
3. John J. Korir (Ken) 1:03.16

Women:
1. Lineth Chepkirui (Ken) 1:10.40
2. Erkesso Teriba (Eth) 1:11.22
3. Dire Tune (Ken) 1:11.35

Performance of India runners (courtesy DNA):
Among the Indian runners, Ram Singh finished in overall 18th place, clocking 1:06.52, and also set a new course record in the process. He was the best Indian runner and went home richer by $2500, pushing veteran Bharav Singh Lone (1:07.11) to the second spot. P Nagendra Rao (1:07.25) finished third among the Indians. In the women’s section, the top three Indian runners were Pampa Chanda (1:21.47), Rina Das (1:23.16) and Laishram Devi (1:23:37).

Some snaps from the event:

HDHM2 this weekend!

Just a few days wait left for the 2nd edition of HDHM on Oct 15th.

Some statistictics for this years event:

6500 : Half marathon pariticipants
16000 : Great Delhi run participants
3000 : Senior Citizen's Run participants
150 : Wheelchair event participants

This makes for an amazing total of 25650 participants in all!

From the previous years estimates, there were about 5000 participants in the Half marathon, so this year sees a decent jump.

It was disappointing to note that the event website did not have any route map. Those interested can check out previous years map from my blog here.