Nike+ Human Race!

Last saturday was one to remember with the Nike plus human race happening for the first time in Bangalore @ Clarks Exotica resort, near the Airport. I and my running mate, Santosh took the Nike arranged buses to reach the resort. The place was well decorated (red and yellow being the theme this year and looked like Nike spent a lot to create a party atmosphere rather than a running one). I was surprised that we were all subjected to security checks before entering the event location. (never heard of one for a race where the runners are checked!) As we entered the amphitheater, the dancers were practicing on stage and the place was slowly getting full of runners with the same uniform. We changed to our running attires (we run or not, but are specific about the running gear :)) and got ready for the warm up exercises.

The event started with a very energetic host giving us the instructions (i didn't listen to them!) and then gave way to the instructors from the Golds Gym for conducting the warm up exercises.
First time in my life, i'm doing warm-ups with some music (i don't know whether they can be really called aerobics), but it was fun which ended with being performers of the mexican wave.

Then we had our esteemed guests for the day - anju george (the long jumper making the news after a long time), mahesh bhupathi and sreesanth (always in news for the right and wrong ones) giving their words of advise (badly prepared ones that too). As the start time (it was @ 4.30 PM IST) got near, we made our way to the starting point where there was a small lecture by someone. we couldn't hear anything as the sea of runners were full of enthusiasm! The three guests flagged off the event on time.


The race route was good, but narrow and had so many turns. I hoped no one should fall in those sharp turns. All the way through our route, we were cheered by the localites (who were surprised to see so many people with uniform running for no reason - according to them!). Then there were some nice music band (2 of them) en route to provide us the much needed energy. I was disappointed not to see the cheerleaders (they informed us about them encouraging us all through -1 for Nike on this). It was not a good race for me (i clocked 56 mins) and was not comfortable running after 5KM (maybe because i had almost starved the whole day except for 4 bread slices in the morning)

But it was fantastic races for Pradeep (clocked his best of 50 mins) and Santosh (clocked 59 mins on his first run). Hats off!
Foot Massage post race really helped us cooling down and plus 1 to Nike on this. We were treated to some great post race entertainment - dance performances, laser shows, rock bands - which got the whole crowd on their feet again making us forget that we had run 10K just an hour before.


Dinner was ready by the time we finished dancing and we gorged on it. It was not great, but enough to fulfill our hunger....
By the time we finished, it was time for us to say goodbye as we slowly moved to the buses. The day ended with me and Santosh going to Gelato Pazzo and treating our run successes with some great ice creams!

Thumbs up to Nike and looking forward to the event again next year.