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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Off to Boston Marathon
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Off to Boston Marathon

Four marathoners, headed to the Boston Marathon for the first time, tell us what excites them about this race, and how they are preparing

The Boston Marathon is on 20 April.Premium
The Boston Marathon is on 20 April.

OTHERS :

The Boston Marathon on 20 April will be the 119th edition of the race. The only other high-profile sporting event which has seen the 19th century and survived into the 21st century is the modern Olympics. Unlike it, the Boston Marathon is an annual event. Add to this rich heritage the much talked about qualification norms for the event. The marathon admits a majority of its participants via the qualification route, unlike its peers.

Ask any aspiring runner what it is to see that extra column on the results page of any marathon which shows the two letters “BQ" (Boston Qualifier) next to the time, and their answer will tell you how coveted this qualifier is.

We spoke to four Indians who will be first-timers at Boston, to find out how they are gearing up for the event and beyond.

KC Kothandapani, 57, Bengaluru

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K.C. Kothandapani. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

His Boston story: He is targeting a finish time of around 3:30 hours on race day. He has not made any big changes to his training, which includes three days of running and cross-training on other days, as well as strength-training a few times a week. However, he has tried to run on hilly routes on long runs to prepare for the famed hills of Boston.

Post-Boston, he plans to run another international marathon, perhaps at the 2016 New York City marathon and wants to participate in the ultra-marathon Comrades in South Africa in 2017, along with some members of his running group, PaceMakers.

Sunil Menon, 41, Hyderabad

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Sunil Menon. Photo: Harsha Vadlamani/Mint

Despite a full-time job, he devotes over 3 hours daily towards training. He does workouts to improve his triathlon (swimming, cycling and running). He has participated in international triathlon events, including an Ironman in Zürich, Switzerland, and other shorter events in South Africa and Sri Lanka. He also does yoga and strength-training with resistance bands and weights three times a week. He qualified for the Boston Marathon with a time of 3:11:1 at the San Francisco Marathon in July to beat his age-group norm of 3:15 hours.

His Boston story: He’s quite excited that he has qualified for the mecca of marathoning. “I am a runner essentially and this is a real challenge. I participated for the San Francisco Marathon in the hope that I would qualify for Boston. In fact, I was in San Francisco Marathon for a work trip and had signed up for running with this aim," says Menon.

Menon is the only one from Hyderabad to have qualified and is looking at running Boston Marathon in under 3 hours, having trained on Hyderabad’s hills. “I have not really talked to anyone else who is running at Boston, neither am I obsessing about the route. Security-wise (there were bomb blasts at the 2013 edition), I am not worried either. I want to enjoy the race," he says.

Post-Boston, he intends to return to challenging pursuits such as the Ladakh Marathon in September and the 100km race at the Bangalore Ultra in November.

Neera Katwal, 39, Bengaluru

Neera Katwal is a familiar face for amateur runners around the country—she has had a podium finish almost every time she runs, whatever the distance.

Neera Katwal. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
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Neera Katwal. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

She began running in 2009, training for the 10K event in Bengaluru. She qualified for Boston at the SCMM in January 2014 (she had qualified in 2013 too), with a timing of 3:34:59, to beat her age-group norm of 3:45 hours. She doesn’t, however, train conventionally, opting to run when she can. Considering she’s a fitness professional herself, she’s well positioned to do so. She does a host of other fitness-related activities, such as strength-training, yoga, Zumba, Pilates, etc.

Her Boston story: Katwal chose not to travel especially for the marathon in 2014 because she wasn’t interested in heading to Boston without company. This time, there is a bunch of people travelling for the race and she intends to spend time sightseeing in the US. Since she hasn’t been in the best of health in the lead up to the race, she has no time goals for the event. She does intend to continue training, although she now prefers the shorter races. She has run around 10 marathons—it’s the most she can handle, she says.

“For me, qualifying twice is a big deal. I am running just to enjoy and don’t really have a strategy or extensive training in place. I was ill most of January and could not really work to improve my time," she says. She is keen on ticking off the first of the World Marathon Majors (a series consisting of six of the world’s largest marathons), in case she decides to complete the circuit and participate in the other five races—Tokyo, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York—later on.

Dnyaneshwar Tidke, 41, Mumbai

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Dnyaneshwar Tidke. Photo: Devendra Parab/Mint

His Boston story: Once Tidke qualified in Janurary 2014, his friends in the running community crowd-sourced funds to ensure he could travel to Boston this year.

Training wasn’t as smooth. Tidke was in a motorcycle accident in November; this derailed his training plans for over a month. He has tried his best to catch up and since January, has been trying to run twice a day whenever possible. “I have been training to run in the hills too and have done three long runs in Kharghar Hills in Navi Mumbai in the last month," says Tidke. He is targeting a finish time of around 2:50 hours on race day and says he is not worried about security issues at the Boston Marathon.

Dharmendra D. is a running coach based out of Bengaluru. He will be running his first Boston Marathon this year.

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Published: 13 Apr 2015, 08:07 PM IST
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