1st Oct 2016
In India I often traveled to different cities to run and explore the places around. Now that I have traveled around US for a while, I thought why not the same can be repeated in a foreign land. After having run couple of half marathons and 10k in Atlanta, I decided to venture out of Georgia. Initial aim to identify run in states neighboring Georgia, later look for distant places.
Cherokee’s Harvest Half Marathon falling on 1st Oct, well suited me giving me some time for preparation and also will mark it last marathon before my wedding. These days my weekends where mostly occupied by Cricket matches, giving my weekend long run a hit. I decided to run couple of long runs over the weekdays though. After losing out of the league, I started to focus on my runs. In fact, couple of matches I stood out and practiced my long runs.
One more thing that excited me about this run was my hiking group was in Bryson City, which was around 20 miles from Cherokee. I decided to join them for the hike on Sunday for a nice and easy hike.
I started from Atlanta early as 5 am, it’s around 2 hour drive to Cherokee. I reached the start point at 7.15 am, parked my car. I realized it’s colder than what I thought it would be. It was a small crowd for run but looked great to start from the middle of the mountain.
It was freezing at the start, my nose and hands were pretty cold. Route was marked pretty well and there were volunteers guided all through the run. As usual, I maintained my normal pace wanting to complete just around 2 hours mark. Half the way, I caught on a fellow runner who was pretty much limping and running, I spoke to him. Said he pulled is calf and not able to run much, he was pretty much fast runner with 1 hr 40 mins finishes. We spoke for the next few kms and I continued. I finished with the decent time of 2 hr 8 mins.
208. PRASHANT PATIL 31 M
Atlanta GA 1327
2:08:36 9:49 2:08:27 0:09
Happy Running !!
