Gagan Singh: Core-AdVentura member
Mansi Pingle: Twice First runner up in the Open Mixed catagory (which is no idle accomplishment)
Ravi Ranjan: 'Harry' from team tom, Dick and Harry.
Sriram: 'Dick' from team tom, Dick and Harry.
Vishal Dave: Core-AdVentura member
Suneja, Partho, Miraj, Satish: Good old college friends.
Rohan Kini, Nikhil: Run www.BumsOnTheSaddle.com. Active cyclists.
AdVentura: a group of Infosys employees that plan out and go for treks in the area around Bangalore. open for non Infosys people too. Email:
January 14th, 2008. That's when the mail from Vishal Dave came into my mailbox informing me about the Enduro3 2008 challenge. Now, I love outdoor sports and activities, so the second I found out that suce an adventure race was happening in India, I signed up. That is, I went about finding people to form a team. AdVentura was willing to sponser one team to go to the challenge and was preparing to hold a mini contest to find out which team that would be. Unfortunately, not many people responded so the idea waas scrapped. Gagan then contacted me and expressed his intention to form a team and go directly for the Enduro race. I signed on immediately.
Finding the third team member proved to be a bit of work. We ended up contacting Mansi Pingle through her blog http://sportlover111.blogspot.com/ and managed to find Ravi Ranjan. He's an avid bicyclist and runner. We then met up at Gagan's place to appraise our team and formulate a strategy for the race.
On the 1st of Feb, Gagan told us that he had to go abroad because of his clients, so that left us without a team mate again. However, he got us a replacement in the form of Sriram. Now Sriram was in top notch condition. He's cycled around a lot. His latest trip was to Kanya Kumari down south. If we had any reservation, we were worried about his running/trekking condition.
On the 2nd of Feb, on Ravi's advice, I went to purchase a Trek 3700 from BumsOnTheSaddle. (www.bumsonthesaddle.com/) Met Rohan Kini and Nikhil who were very helpful in assembling my bike and more importantly, teaching me the various aspects of maintaining it.
3rd of Feb, we went for a duathlon down Kanakpura Road organised by cyclists/runners from Bangalore Bikers Club Bangalore-bikers@googlegroups.com. (Mainly Ravi and Roahn Kini from what I hear. People who have more to add please comment :D) We cycled about 50km and then went for an 8km run in Lal bagh. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I remember reaching the starting point in front of (not anymore) Family mart at about 5 or 6 am and cycling down the road till i reached the Ford showroom coz I didn't see a single biker. (I was told that when I saw cyclists, to stop there :P) After the exercise, Ravi, Sri, Gautam and I went for lunch to Sukh Sagar near the Jain temple in Jayanagar. throughout the week before the big race, I went through cycle maintainence tips and practiced dis assembling and re assembling my Trek. On wednesday eve, Ravi came over so that we could disassemble both our bikes and pack them up properly. we worked in the light of the car he came in on the footpath. We really looked like a cycle shop I think :).
Thursday, the 7th of Feb, I flew to Pune via SpiceJet and landed at my college friends place in Aundh. Sri had arrived earlier and was waiting for me. Ravi had gone to his in-laws place. It was good to see Suneja, Partho , Miraj and Satish again - after a long time. Partho has this tradition of going off somewhere everytime we have a chance to visit :P. He had to go to Bombay for a few days, which meant I'd catch him on the last day before I headed back :(
That evening of the 7th, Sri and I packed our bags and double checked our provisons and then went to sleep - waiting for the next day to start.
1 comment:
Awsome boy :-)
Post a Comment