Satara HM 2015

Satara is located in Maharashtra not very far from Pune, Mahabaleshwarlocated in western ghat. PaceMakers decided to run this HM instead of Hyderabad beginning of the year and booked a complete hotel in February itself. That caused a uproar in Indian armature running community. The registration for Satara HM for out station also got closed as there is a limited hotel accommodation in this town.

Personally I was not very keen to run to it given the remote location and no direct train and flight. Registered for Hyderabad HM which was only a week before. Then one day there was a twist :) Satara HM opened additional 300 slots for outstation runners and I applied. The organizers came out with noble and unique idea to accommodate runners via home-stay(B&B) and many cases staying with organizers home itself. Such lovely and warm people of running faternity.

Initially was supposed to travel in a XUV 500 which got cancelled at the last minute but being part of a bigger group was able to find a free slot in the Bus and traveled with the team. The journey was long and was tired and slept most of the Saturday afternoon as soon reached hotel.

The team went to explore the famous Khas that i missed completely. The race started at 6, the starting point was 800M from the hotel. The route profile is very simple UP to the half way half mark and down :). Between 4-7KM is the steep part. I was very unsure how the race will turn up after running AHM a week before. I started my own thinking not to collapse or doing something stupid during the race and also giving my best. Like last week had a GU Gel as pre-race and one around 9KM mark.

I am very happy and pleasantly surprised to see my result. I was on the top 10 of my age category. There were 3 from PaceMakers ahead of me :). As usual our group collected many silverware.

Some pictures from the trip

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