Training begins

The training begins for the Standard Chartered Mumbai marathon (SCMM)
This year the SCMM is scheduled for 15th January 2012

Bangalore Ultra 2010: Race Report

This has been pending since a long time. So here goes the race report.
The same report was earlier sent to BHUKMP gang as well

On 14th Nov 2010, I again found myself standing at the starting line
of the Bangalore Ultra, India’s first Ultra marathon. This was the 4th
edition of the Ultra, and my 4th attempt at 50 KM. It all started in
2007 as an impulsive decision to register for a 50 KM race, surely at
that time I wasn’t trained for it, but I was happy to have completed
it (obviously with injuries). This has always been a special race to
me, talk about the trail, the awesome fellow runners. Overall a great
event organized by RFL.

On Saturday everything went according to the plan, had a good (to be
read as heavy) breakfast with Ankita (obviously), Pankaj, Vinod,
Prateek, Priyanka and Meher. Then did nothing the entire day, read a
book, lazed around in the house and drank a lot of water. Had an early
dinner and slept at 9:00 pm. Woke up at 3:00 am and started for ONV
(the venue) at 4:00 am, like always we were the logistics experts for
the Ultra 2010, with Pankaj, Nagraj and me driving our respective
vehicles.

Reached the ONV a little late, thanks to RFL for missing the most
important sign board, but still managed to reach the start line before
the official start of the race, Meher helped me tie the timing chip,
while I pinned the bib, and so runner 5020 was all set to run the
Ultra 2010.

After some regular race related information by A1 (Arvind Krishnan),
the race was flagged off. I found myself running a little fast in the
first loop, I was running at an average pace of 6:05 min/km well
doesn’t sound a very fast pace if we talk of veterans whom I was
running with, but it was definitely a little fast for me if I was
running for 50 km, so decided to slow down a little, the weather was
perfect and the runners enthusiastic, met Sabine on the trail, she was
completing her first loop (she was running 75km, and started at 5:00
am), was greeted by typical Sabine cheer , which anybody in a 1km
radius would hear easily. Also met Praveen Singh with his infectious
smile, lansnayak Dharam and observed that he has become size zero now,
Chandra was happily pacing Athreya, who looked strong as ever,
identified Bhasker when he was 500m away, thanks to his stride, and
there came Nari just behind him!

I kept Meher in sight all this while, and then recalled that Meghana
arrived a little late at the start line, anyways I thought that she
has a timing chip and this is not going to make much of a difference.
She was running her first 50 km at the Bangalore Ultra, on her
husband’s (Sudarshan’s) birthday, and so was my training and running
buddy Meher.

Damn! The laces fell apart in the second kilometer, and I had to stop
to tie them, thanks to the laces Meher got a little more far from me,
anyways decided to stick on to a steady pace and not screw up things
at this early a stage. Reached the U-Turn mark and popped in an
edurolyte tablet, turned back and started again, met Pankaj Jathar,
Partha, and Honda San.

Near the 8th KM mark saw Meghana coming, with the Phone in her hand
and earplugs in the ears, was relieved to see her smiling and was
happy to find out that she wasn’t tensed at all. Anjana was pacing
her, she wanted to do her birthday long run, and also just wanted to
beat the Ultra trail, so here she was kicking some fine dust on the
trail. In the last leg of the first lap, saw a lot of 25 km runners,
cheered loudly for Ankita, Priyanka, Nitin and Deepti. All of them
responded back with the same enthusiasm

It was a good first lap, turned around and found Prateek just ahead of
me, caught up with him and then ran the next 6 km with him, it was a
good 6 km, well we didn’t speak much to each other, but it was good
pacing with him. Reached the U-turn mark and stopped to pop up the
endurolyte again, and Prateek got ahead, now I started running with a
couple of Pune and Mumbai runners. You have to adopt these strategies
on the trail while running, of chatting with different people you
meet, otherwise the trail would be very boring. So ran the next loop
with them and discussed about the trail, Pune city, love for Mumbai
and of course the awesome Bangalore weather which was not that awesome
by this time.

The sun started getting really bad after the second lap, but I think I
was doing good. Meher was scorching the trail as usual, and so were
Pankaj and Priyankar who were right behind her. This was a tough lap,
the sun got from bad to worse, but that didn’t affect Praveen Singh’s
smile, he was looking strong , completing his 37.5 Km and so were
Dharam, Athreya, Chandra, Bhasker and Nari. I must mention about the
water and aid stations here, they were awesome <in Barney Stinson
accent>. Talk about sandwiches, oranges, peanuts, salt and sugar, they
had everything! They were like the Jeanie on the trail, they even had
ice!!!! Was pleasantly surprised find cold water in all the aid
stations, trust me there is no other luxury than having chilled water
in a marathon!!

By the time I finished my 37.5 km I started feeling dizzy, to make the
matters worse I threw up at the 35th KM mark, guess it was the heat,
immediately after throwing up I had a lot of oranges with salt on it
and a lot of Lucozade,  to prevent the dehydration. Met Prateek at the
36th KM mark and he wasn’t looking in a good shape either, it seems
that the sun was bothering him as well. So here I completed my 3rd
loop and was greeted at the U-turn mark by Atul, and thus started for
my last loop, in not a good shape, by now I started cramping up ,
guess it had something to do with throwing. Finally saw Ankita
completing her first loop, she was looking okish, bogged down with the
heat and humidity. Finally saw Meher, she was in her 49th KM!!!!!!!!!!
:) Wow! She is going to beat her target timing by 20 minutes, I was so
happy for her, and yet another podium finish by her, gave her a hug
and carried on my journey. Met Praveen, and Priyankar who were right
behind her, saw Amrita, she was walking guess she started cramping as
well.

This was the loop that screwed up things for me. I threw up again at
the 40th KM mark and by this time was in serious trouble. I started
contemplating if I should really carry on with the remaining 10 KM or
should give up and take a ride back with one of the crew members. Well
decided otherwise and decided to walk the rest of the 10 Km, maybe the
strength was given by Sudha Mehta Cancer foundation, there were people
who were supporting my runs,  well I just cant leave the trail and
take a ride back. The 10 KM of walk was a very emotional experience. I
was all alone in this stretch, and in a lot of pain, still was
managing to do a run walk. Finally the pain and crawling ended and I
completed my 4th Bangalore Ultra in 7 hrs and 14 min, yes I took about
2 hours for the last loop. It was very emotional to see Meher and
Ankita waiting for me in the sun just before the finish line and so
were Pankaj, Vinod, Rishi, Amrita, Prateek and Priyanka.

Random Moments:

1) Every time me and Nischal met on the trail, apart from discussing
that we are the members of the thunder thighs club :-P, we just stood
there touching our toes, and relaxing our back muscles. I think
Manjula has taken our photograph in that position

2) Santhosh Padmanabhan is an inspiration for all of us in the running
community, he ran for 24 hours and all his loops had near consistent
splits of 1 hr 30 min – 1 hr 45 min. He was looking so focused that I
found it inappropriate to disturb him by cheering him up. He was
looking oike a running monk

3) Chandra Gopalan and Preeti are rock stars, the completed 75 KM! Way to go!!!

3) There were 3 other iron ladies attempting a 100 km: Cathy (finished
in 11 hrs and 03 min), Emma and Aparna Chaudhary

4) Nishchal running 100 km got married three days back! I gave her a
congratulatory hug on the trail and we laughed, that only a runner can
congratulate other runner on the trail :)

-Shantanu

Mumbai Marathon

With only 2 weeks left for the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, the runners running SCMM for SMCF have started their tapering .

It was a fabulous training period. All of us piled in miles and miles of training. Now it is the final two weeks of eating right and not falling sick

-Shantanu

Happy Birthday Mom

Happy Birthday Mom

Thanks for everything.

Love

Activity Update

Most of the initial part of starting this foundation had us running around for getting the paperwork done, Pushing them through various stages of approval and then finally getting the approvals. I will write a longer story on that sometime next week. This post is more about the recent activities that we have done.

Dr. Dana and Dr. Gaur in the Mathura Das Mathur (MDM), Hospital are our contact points for most of the activities that we are doing in Jodhpur. MDM is a government hospital with a dedicated Oncology department and most of the patients in the Jodhpur and the adjunct upcountry area come here for their treatment. Few days back, Dr. Dana gave dad a call to sponsor oral chemotherapy for one of his patients, Phool Kanwar. She is suffering from Breast Cancer and is currently in the Chemo phase. We have sponsored oral chemo drug Xeloda for her. This is a relatively inexpensive Chemo drug with a monthly cost of 30-35K INR.

Do drop in an email to us if you want to help with her next round of treatment.

Also, we have donated Mom's wheelchair to Samarthanam. It is a trust for the disabled that takes care of about 100 kids and a few adults. It will be used by Mahesh who works as a documentation assistant at a office in HSR Layout, Bangalore.

The entire experience of donating the wheelchair was very uplifting. The HSR branch is managed by two visually impaired persons, a woman and a man. They also instruct the kids on computer usage apart from this. They were definitely a most fitting representation of triumph of the human spirit. Something that the team at SMCF strongly believes in.

The Human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it

Running For SMCF

All the runners running the Bangalore Ultra Marathon finished their respective distances. Some ran 50Km and some 25Km. We salute their spirits and their determination to complete their distances inspite of the grueling sun, cramps, pains, falls and dizziness. Your determinations eggs us on.

Thanks!

T-Shirt Launched

Hi Everyone,

We have been away for the last month. There are a lot of updates that I hope to make in the following posts. There has been a lot of activity and I need to share the details on the same.

To start off, Toube Bas has launched a 'Beat Cancer' T-shirt in association with SMCF. For each T-shirt sold by Toube bas, INR 150 will be donated to the SMCF. You can get a preview of the T-shirt here.

This is what Sorabh has to say about the design done by his team:

The Design
I am a huge fan of simplicity - and that's what makes any creation a supremely difficult job for me. With sensitive issues like breast cancer ... the challenge is that much more enormous.

Prateek had been talking about 'hope' and 'fight' when he spoke about SMCF, and these became the keywords for me for this design. Of course, the t-shirt also had to convey that it's supporting the cause against breast cancer.

The result: we decided that the t-shirt would have a sporty attitude (it's all about the fight, ain't it?) - and decided to imitate the sportswear designs that are used in the universities of the west: bold block letters, curved appropriately, and placed right at the top of the t-shirt. It took a long time for me to decide on what text to put ... and somehow it dawned that the word, "BREAST" can be made to look like the word, "BEAT" ... and so it becomes, "BEAT CANCER".

 Here are few of the designs that the T-shirt is available in:

 

Unveiling the Logo



After working relentlessly for a few days, we have been able to get the logo right. There was a little back and forth on this but finally we have closed on the above logo. When the SMCF team sat down to conjure up a logo for the foundation, there were just two words ringing in our heads: Hope, and Fight. We believe that the logo speaks as much about hope as about fight against this disease that the foundation has set out against.

We would also like to thank our design team which has worked with Sorabh to deliver this logo.

The logo comprises of three key elements:

Shield: Helps a warrior defend and, when required, can be used as an offensive weapon too

Pink Ribbon: Universal Symbol representing the fight against Breast Cancer

Angel Wings: They denote not just hope, but are symbolic of miracles as well

I hope that the logo communicates to the larger world what SMCF stands for. I hope that Mom likes it too!

Run report - KTM 2010

All the runners with SMCF finished the Kaveri Trail Marathon. We had four runners who had signed up on the short notice. Prateek and Shantanu ran the full marathon and Ankita ran the half. Priyanka had originally signed up but was unable to run.

It was a difficult run and the fortitude and resilience of our runner kept them going. The team hopes to sign-up more runners as the marathon season in India warms up. We have had a few runners outside India who have offered to sign up for future runs. Would urge runners who are interested in supporting the cause to email us.

We have had a lot of non-runners who are willing to support the fund raising exercise in a big way. Would really like to thank all of you who have reached out. I would be sending out the details to each one of you. Please give me some time to put together a small introductory brochure for the same. I believe this would be important as most of you have volunteered to help through the corporate route. Will try and quickly turn this around.

Execution plan and Help required

When we started the aid activities, there was an over-riding concern about ensuring the efficacy of any monetary aid we end up extending.  There were quite a few hurdles visible even to a non-discerning eye. As it is the case, majority of under-privileged cancer patients end up at government or government-aided hospital given the economics of the treatment. We could clearly see the following as factors that might limit the efficacy of the aid.

• Placing the money in the hands of the doctor was a clear conflict of interest. Moreover, it would have limited the control that we would have had over funds 
• Money in the hands of the patient would also not guarantee that it would be spent towards treatment. Given the socio-economic reality of most of such families there might be comparable pressing needs that might warrant diversion of funds towards them 

Hence,we decided to take advantage of existing frameworks at the hospitals. We decided to pay either directly to the hospital or to the pharmacy against the medicines that would be issued.

Concurrently, we also decided to constitute a medical advisory board, where in we have done thorough background checks on the doctors and we support their referrals for treatment or medical advise. Our medical board also has eminent doctors across Bangalore, Bombay and Ahmadabad who have committed 'x' amount of time to SMCF. They will counsel the patients that SMCF refers to them and also liaise with pharma companies to reduce the cost of treatment for the referred cases.

You can support us in a multitude of ways. Depending upon the resource you want to contribute, You can drop in a mail to smcfindia [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com :

Please put ‘Financial Support’ as the subject if you want to make a financial contribution. We are an organization that is 80(G) certified and all your donations would be eligible for income tax deductions.

Please put ‘Volunteer’ as the subject if you want to volunteer with SMCF. This is the biggest contribution that you can make to the cause. We need all hands and legs that we can muster to reach out to a larger pool of patients and the medical community.

Please put ‘Fund Raiser’ in the subject if you want to help us if the fund raising for the organization. Given the dreadful nature of the disease and the lack of coverage offered by the Indian medical infrastructure, fund raising can help us reach out to a larger audience. Some of you have already responded to help on this. I am waiting for the website to be up before I formally kick start the fund raising process.

Thanks for your encouragement and I look forward to your continuous support.

What We Want to Do

There have been a few questions on what we want to do and how can one get involved. I will answer the questions in two parts. This post addresses what we want to do. I will post a rejoinder on where we need your help.

Having undergone this utterly harsh experience, we realized the impact this disease can have over individuals, families and communities. We realized that there is a certain section of the larger community which would be devastated by an incidence of cancer in the family. They might give up the fight against the disease even before starting it because of financial reasons. This might be possible even in cases of excellent prognosis. The financial impact is more pronounced in the case of families that are poor. For them, it is a unmitigated disaster and the very future of everyone in the family is at stake. Children forgo their education, nutrition and the patient loses respect, hope and, in most cases, his life.

Cancer in women has a devastating impact on Indian Rural/ Poor urban families as they are vital financial support as well as the force that keeps the family functional. The void caused by her absence is very difficult to fill, if at all. Lack of awareness, unwillingness towards open discussion and willingness to undergo high degree of pain and discomfort invariably result into a late diagnosis of this disease in women. Thus it results in a poor prognosis, low survival rates and poor life spans in women especially.

This where we plan to step in. We plan intervention at three levels:

a)      Financial Support

·         Financial Support to patients for the treatment of the disease

·         Financial support to wards/ children of the patients towards education and vocational training

b)      Medical Advice and counseling

·         Sponsor travel to designated centers for medical advice

·         Awareness initiatives at health centers and government hospitals to ensure higher degree of knowledge

·         Liaise with the Oncologists and Surgeon community to create a channel to, hitherto inaccessible, superlative medical care

c)      Treatment and On-going Support

·         Access to medicines by tie-ups with Pharma companies (To offer medicines at lower than market rates)

·         Ensuring funds are utilized for treatment by enforcing high level of control over the treatment chain

·         Becoming an exchange of individuals seeking to make a difference and people suffering from the disease

   

Hence, the help that we expect from you would be around these broad objectives. There are various ways in which you can help. More on that in my next post.

Getting the Sudha Mehta Cancer Foundation off the ground

The idea of starting a Cancer foundation in Mom's memory came from Dad. He was extremely charged to do something about it. I think in some way it helped him deal with the reality. We got an elementary deed in place and started working towards closing the legal paperwork around putting the foundation in place.

As usual some of the things very easy and some difficult. And some were incredibly difficult.
It was easy to get the initial non-govt stuff done. Closing on deal, putting the MOA and AOA in place, getting the initial board in, getting the PAN for the foundation was easy. We could move very quicky on that side of the activities.

We then started talking to the doctors. The first set of doctors that we met were in Jodhpur. They were people of good reputation working at the government hospitals. They showed moderate enthusiasm and willingness to refer cases to SMCF.

The next set of doctors were those who had come in touch with Mom. She had literally charmed them through the treatment and they were more than willing to pitch in. The fact that she had the grace to smile just before going into her final trip to the ICU was inspiring enough to all of them.

Dad did all the leg-work of getting the trust registered. From numerous visits to the Income Tax office to pitching the case for 80G certification. He has been a big force and the one pushing the action. Now we are at a stage, we can focus on the core set of activities. We are contributing the first tranche of funds to organization and are kick-starting the fund raising.

I will be personally writing to many of you over this week and the next week. However, if you want to reach us, we are available at smcfindia [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com

- Prateek

Why SMCF

I lost my grandparents to Cancer, this dreadful disease has taken away one of the most important people from my life, and we cannot do anything about it ?

No, we can make a difference, the best way to feel close to them is to challenge this dreadful disease. This is our way of doing it.

Yes, we can make a difference, we can help others fight this disease.

Starting the blog flow

Hi Everyone,

If I look back a couple of years, I had never thought I would writing a blog on this. Last year has been particularly difficult for me. Dealing with the loss, inability to deal with the grief and in some way anger with the world at large. But I think, the only way I can deal constructively with the fact the Mom is not around any more is to take the fight back to this dreadful disease.

We believe that the human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it and the fact that we can make a difference.

Am hoping and counting on the support from all of you out there.


Thanks
Prateek (On behalf on the SMCF team)

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