Usual travel to office from home..I took my overground train to Queens Park and got down at Paddington to take the quicker Elizabeth line.
People observed at Elizabeth.
A yound girl in her early 20s, In a black top and a blue jeans with a black and white Adidas shoe.
A young boy, presumably her brother In a green jacket and a brown hair.
Another lady next to her in a light brown Coat.
All of them got down at Tottenham court road before I could observe more.
A lady in a red shoe, black bag who was in the Bakerloo to Queenspark was also on the Elizabeth exited at Farringdon. Not sure if she followed me.
A guy In a violet jacket, late 20s, black hair and a trimmed mush and beard, blue jean, black and white shoe, a coffee cup, black watch, headset playing with his phone dipped at Liverpool street.
This exercise is to improve my observation and get used to the British accent
This is the train to Abbey wood and next stop is Canary Wharf. This voice was loud and clear.
I recently participated in an 5K Race for life event organized by Cancer Research UK in partnership or supported by Citi. I received a mail a month back and I was a bit hesitant to participate in the event. One fine day, I registered for this event at the last minute. I was a bit double minded even 2,3 hours before the event.
The individual event has a registration fee of 15+ pounds but when registered via Citi, it was all sponsored by Citi. There were 1000s of participants during the event and was inspiring to see “Citi” sponsor such events for all the Citi employees. It may not be a big amount for a corporate bank like Citi but still it is commendable.
The platform was quite fabulous. It creates separate fundraising page for everyone who registers for the race. And anyone who sponsors, there is an additional 20% sponsorship from giftaid. Here is mine, please do f sponsor if you would be interested to ( in the following link)
Apart from the fundraising page, it has integrations to Strava, Fitbit. I can register my Strava which provides details of my recent activities registered in Strava. I realized and started my Strava a bit late on the event day. Here is my Strava activity at BatterSea park . https://www.strava.com/activities/9222198148 (Not sure if this is publicly available to view).
The platform has an option to join a team and gamifies it to see which team has raised more funds. The winning teams were celebrated at the podium on the race day.
It also has an option to personalize your story. That is the main crux of this post.
I lost my father 10 years back to Cancer. I don’t know if I have done anything to satisfy him or made him proud. I always have this guilty feeling . However, this is a small gesture of gratitude to him, after a very long time, for all his sacrifices and the pain he took to what I am now.
I recently lost a friend of mine, Prashanth Edwin. We both were working at 8KMiles 5-6 years back. He was working at AWS and had helped me out at a lot of occasions. A very nice gentleman and just around 40 years but was unfortunate to see him leave very early. I got to know about his Cancer very late. We had a lot of conversations after, he constantly messaged me about his progress. I made a point to pray for him whenever I visited temples. He sounded positive on his recovery but later could only see his mortal remains, that too on a live-stream. None of our common friends could digest but there is no other option left. The least that I could do is remember him , pay my respects and gratitude to him via this blog and via participating/completing the Race for Life event.
[The above pic was at Besant Nagar, Jonah’s Bistro where we went for a lunch with Prashanth Edwin.]
The irony is that this is the 2nd time this is happening, where I couldn’t be part of the final rituals to pay respects to the dear ones. I fondly remember my Chithappa, Mr. Sethu Manoharan, whom I lost in March 2010 when I first travelled to US. I just landed in US and was staying in hotel, I hear the news of his demise. Most of my childhood memories were with him . I feel very unfortunate and sad everytime I think about it and as well as I write this post. I think I troubled him a bit so he bid adieu without telling me 😦 . My bad!!!
Getting practical and coming out of the serious note, Back to the present on the Race for Life.
Following is the group of Citi volunteers marching for a photoshoot
This was at the start of the race. Before which there was a stretching session where the coach made us to jump a lot where I exhausted most of my energy well before the start of the race 🙂
We were split into 3 groups of people.
Serious Runners
Joggers
Walkers
I was part of the jogging group. There were cheerleaders, There was a choir singing songs, cheer leaders, volunteers with placards and whistles encouraging all of us. I jogged for about a km initially, very slowly. Then was jogging intermittently and was walking when exhausted.
The serious runners completed the race while I was at my 3+ kms range. I felt pathetic about my fitness levels . Hope to improve my fitness soon. Finally after a cocktail of walk and jog, I completed my 5K at less than an hour.
The organizers surprised us with a small medal, energy bar and water. The walk ended well with a quick photo shoot and the day ended well with some satisfaction remembering my well wishers .
Once again , my sincere gratitude to my dad and Prashanth.
Mukund & Mukund Only 