A beautiful morning in north Atlanta. Cool and cloudy. Perfect day for a run. The usual suspects – Samaresh, Arup, Manas and myself were there. Rupak, in spite of threatening to, did not show up 🙂 We missed Speedy Gonzalez Amitesh for the run (partying too late) – but he sprang a surprise by showing up for post-run coffee. And he bought us coffee for missing the run 🙂
Our motley crowd of Bengalis did not have our group run today. Amitesh is in Myrtle Beach, Arup is somewhere up in the high mountains, Samaresh is in Altanta and I am in Hilton Head.
But come 7:30, as promised, we all got out and ran a virtual group run from wherever we were.
A promise is a promise is a promise.
[given Arup’s running attire today, I can safely assume he is in a colder place than the rest of us 🙂 ]
Taking advantage of the cool morning, tried putting in negative splits. First mile at 9:08, second one at 8:48 and then gave everything for the third mile at 7:10. And soon I realized that it might be cool in Milton at 5:30 in the morning, but it is humid as heck. Was sweating bullets for 15 minutes before I even dared to go inside the Starbucks to order a coffee….
After a long time ran 5 miles in the Georgia Tech area. The campus looks beautiful in the early hours of the morning. I had my red shirt and red shoes on. If you think that is weird, listen to this. As I came up the hill on State Rd and pulled up at the intersection of 14th street, I ran into another runner coming up on my left with a red shirt and red shoes on!! And she had red earbuds for her iPod to match. As we waited for cross traffic to die down, to make polite chat, we almost simultaneously, landed up saying “Nice shoes” to each other!! Awkwardness soon gave way to levity and coincidence of the moment : we laughed out loud and continued running our own way… Funny start to a day…
After a long time, put in a 10K run on a workday. Also, after years, listened to music all the way. I know there are strong supporters and equally strong detractors of listening to music and not being alert while running. It did keep me distracted though and the miles came be more easily than usual.
Sunday morning run with my Bengali friends – the old Faithfuls – Amitesh, Arup and Samaresh. And then, of course “coffee aar adda” (Starbucks and chatting). Although, Samaresh did bail out of the coffee. There is something to be said about that. For, as a community, we the Bengalis, are not exactly known for prioritizing running over “coffee aar adda” 🙂 In fact, we have a very famous Bengali song about a coffeehouse in Kolkata but none about running 🙂 [Strictly speaking, there is a famous song about Runner – but in Bengali in those days – it meant ‘the postman’ – when mail was delivered by human beings running from village to village]
