India: Day Six – Bombay Running

In preparing for this trip, I looked for the nearest Parkrun, naturally. But surprisingly there are none in India, which is a shame. For a place like Mumbai, the starting time would have to be 6am, but there are a lot of possible locations to hold it, and certainly a lot of runners.

I didn’t realise just how many runners there are until my sister Hersha and I got to Narinam Point at a little after half five in the morning. The place was thronging with people of all ages, both men and women. Some in groups, warming up, some running or walking along by themselves or in pairs. 

This was evidently the time and place to be out on two legs. I even spotted a few cyclists in lycra. Santosh told us later that there were perhaps more people than usual because the Tata Mumbai Marathon was coming up on January 19^th. In 2024, over 59,000 runners took part on the one day of the year that some of the main city streets are closed to vehicles. That’s a few thousand more than New York.

It was still dark, but the streetlights were plentiful. I was hoping to meet up with a group called Bombay Running as I’d been in contact with them on Instagram. I say ‘hoping’ because my correspondence hadn’t generated the kind of minutiae of information that I like, especially when trying out a new place, when I ask things like what the distance is or the pace.

I was worried that I would be left behind, or worse, hold the rest of the group up.  But their reply was just a poster that said:

SUNDAY RUN/5:45 AM/N.C.P.A./COME RUN WITH US

Google maps told me that the National Centre for the Performing Arts was just next to Narinam Point. Hersha volunteered to go with me, so I thought that if nothing else, we’d pootle along Marine Drive by ourselves. Initially I had worried that I wouldn’t find them because perhaps I’d gone to the wrong corner of the NCPA. Then when I got there, I got worried that I wouldn’t find them in the mass of other runners. Eventually, however, after wandering around a bit, I recognised someone in a ‘Bombay Running’ t-shirt and we followed them.

Deepak, with a thick salt and pepper beard and Priyanka, who’d been messaging me back with the absolute minimum of information welcomed us warmly. Priyanka had been amused at all my questions and evidently didn’t consider them necessary. Their set up with new runners appeared to be to match them up with a person doing a similar pace and distance, so that turned out alright.

They called Santosh over who was doing a 10K at around a 10-minute mile pace. Everybody works in metric in India, so the 10 minutes per mile bit had to be worked out, but that seemed doable for me. Marine Drive, which curves round from Narinam Point, is very flat at least, and at just under three miles in length, so we pretty much ran the full length with a tack on bit. Hersha could have gone with a quicker person but decided to stay and jog along with us. 

It had been more than a week since I had last run, and I wasn’t sure how my breathing would hold up with the heat and the pollution. But I really enjoyed it, and Santosh was generous enough for me to stop every now and then to take a photograph and get my breath back. We could just make out people playing various games on Chowpatty Beach, and on the way back, as the morning light was getting brighter, the yoga mats were being set up for the various classes being held. 

Santosh was also doing the marathon in January, but it was in preparation for a longer ultra that he planned to do later in the year, in the desert. So, he was a serious runner. He told us that his family thought he was crazy. So perhaps running in India is a new generation phenomenon. Aside from a couple of older women speed-walking, I didn’t see many people older than me, and most of them were younger. 

Still, I hope the trend continues to grow. It was wonderful to get out on a run and to experience a little bit of Mumbai’s running life.