life of 80

Today I walked part of the Hyderabad 10K with my coworkers, mostly just to promote our company.  It started with a group warmup and a live band, followed by the start of the race.  There were serious runners vying for serious prize money, but most people saw it as something fun to do on a Sunday.  Like many participants, we had no intention of completing the race.  I think we maybe completed 2K and in that distance I saw participants buying and eating ice cream and stopping for chai.  During and afterwards, the band played patriotic songs and the crowd danced and drank water and tried to get noticed by the camera for the big screen.  As a white girl with a clearly Indian company, I stood out a little.  I was interviewed by 2 local news stations (I don’t have a TV so I don’t know if I actually got air time).  Hopefully it’s all good press for GreenMango.  It was sure fun for those of us who turned out.

Other parts of the race were pretty much the same as what I’ve seen in the US.  There is a lot of corporate sponsorship and corporate groups running together.  This particular event was the first major public event in Hyderabad since the recent events in Mumbai, so there were moments of silence and words of support for everyone there.  I was impressed that the event had a large turnout despite the Mumbai attacks.