Pinkathon 2018!

What began as a gentle whisper in our community, soon reached dizzying heights as more and more ladies joined in to run the Pinkathon on February 18, 2018, in Bengaluru, India.
For the uninitiated, ‘Pinkathon’ is the run founded by Milind Soman and Reema Sanghavi specifically for women, primarily to give importance to women’s health issues particularly, breast cancer. It encourages women to lead a healthy life by running and doing other physical activities.
January 2018:
It was just about a month back that one of our “Pinkies” decided that she was planning to run the Pinkathon and was preparing for the same. I was always a bystander in earlier marathons and acted only as a cheerleader! 🙂 I never imagined I would want to do it and neither did many of us “pink sisters” in our community.
But slowly, but surely, more and more people signed up to do the marathon. I also finally signed up though I never thought I would have the motivation to do it. Motherhood had made me rusty and I was not too much of a fitness freak except for my slow paced walks daily. We were finally a grand total of 22 ladies who had signed up for the run.
But once we signed up, the positive energy rubbed off on all of us! 🙂  We encouraged each other for daily practice sessions. I also tried a new fitness app(never a fan of all these digital devices that track every breath of your life)  to keep track of my daily walks and calories. New shoes were bought, appropriate apparel was chosen for the D-Day.  Our whole community wore a fitness look and one could see women jogging or doing a brisk walk everyday!
For many of us, it was the first “marathon” in our life! There were 3K, 5K, 10K and 21K runs. Most of us newbie marathoners, chose 3K – not knowing how exactly it would be.There were the healthy stalwarts who chose 5K and 10K too! 🙂
Will I be able to do it was the big question tingling in my head?! (3K is actually not much of a distance – even if you “brisk” walk the distance – we can complete it in 30 minutes)  But still doing it in a marathon setting is a different experience. And the thought of getting up at 3:30 in the morning for the 6:00 a.m. run was more grueling than the run itself!! 🙂
February 18, 2018:
The big day was here and as I woke up at the grueling time( a big thing for a night owl like me!! :))  all pumped up and excited !! All of us traveled to Kanteerava stadium and it was amazing to see the electricity in the stadium. There were 11,000 women eager to lead a healthy lifestyle and running was just a starting point! The day started off with some Zumba to loosen up the muscles. I do not remember swaying to any of the moves as I just wanted to get started with my run/walk! 🙂
At approximately 7:15 a.m., we , the 3kers zoomed off with great gusto and enthusiasm! My 3K was more of walk than a run(did not want to take any risks there!) and most of us were done by 7:50 a.m. The run was amazing in that it had women from all ages. One could see the determined young mothers with their babies, elderly ladies,sari clad women, ‘madisar’ clad women amongst us.There were runs for the visually impaired as well.
It was a fantastic experience for all of us and a week post the marathon we are still pursuing our fitness adventure! The experience empowered all of us – who went from  “Can we could do it?” to ‘Yes – we could do it”!! 🙂
Cheers to the all the Pinkies in my community to make this happen! 🙂