It all started in April 2007 and still going strong ,only that now filtered (& genuine people remain).
Main Members : MiniY, Sid, Kiddo, Vim (Thakur…I find this very raw hence “Vim” ),Billu, Abhi-K, Abhi-W,CC (Acronym of his real nick name at IIT-k) & Myself .
Ohh lately the new regular freshy R-Dhika.
Ex- members : Sree, Amanchi , Jas( who left because of “family calling “) and last but not the least whom I miss the most- the footer ball.
Initial Crowd : Sas3, DP, S-tosh & others
The “Saturday Club” foundation was laid in April 2007. It was initiated by some health freaks and it was decided to gather at Vim’s place every Saturday and walk down to Necklace road to run and Jog.Though for me it was always walking.
There are two theories behind this.
Theory One : The Zara Hatake Group .This was also started in April 07, where the members grouped up to give birthday treats in every two months. As they say “Kuch pane ke liye Kuch khona padata hai”. The condition was we all have to complete some ** (was it 100 kms ?) of running or walking by end of * months in order to consume the free food. A proper schedule was chalked out in an excel sheet buy Abhi-k and the print out was pinned on to our boards. It did lead to some controversies and revolt by few. As it was not a compulsion, interested people did turn up. While the The Zara Hatake Group group dissolved in few months, the Saturday club evolved.
Theory Two : As a practice for the Hyderabad Marathon 2007 and the Mumbai Marathon 2008 and the Hyderabad Half Marathon 2006.
We all were warming up for these events?Really ?
Another reason was off course the encouragement and pushing by the highly diet & health & muscle conscious Abhi-K.
For me it was nothing less than a big challenge .Naah… not the running or walking .One can build up stamina for that with regular practice, the pain was to get up early morning at 5- 5:30 types that too on Saturdays, where we all know Fridays are known for party, late night movies,night out gupshup and such.I am not a morning person neither a night person, i go for hibernation not sleep.Trust me,long ago in my +2 I refused to join physics or any tuition class just because the timings were around 5:00 -5:30 am (which gave me fever during my initial trial days).
Habits change!
Time: 5:10 AM
Location: Begumpet
Day: Saturday
The alarm rings @ homes of some crazy people (as others find ).I am one among them.I search the loudly ringing phone usually below my cot, switch it off with my one eye half open. Peep out of the window and think - its too dark outside , probably I can catch up with few more minutes of that precious sleep and off course complete at least the climax of my dream.Then again the phone rings not the alarm.Its the wake up call from
MiniY : Are you up?
Me : Ya ya I woke up: D
MiniY: I will start in 5 minutes, will be there at your place.
I jump out of my bed, fresh up, slip into my running shoes (the one which I bought for Hyd 2006 run shelling some 2000 bucks. They were resting, unused in the closet for months …yahoo got a golden chance to use them regularly now.)
Then wait downstairs for MiniY.Other members like R-dhika and Sid too avail the generous bus service.
By whatever means (off which includes the Harley-Davidson ishhtyle bi-cycles oops i mean "bikes" of Kiddo and Sid) we all reach Vim’s place , start towards NR through the tracks and start the run /walk, come back to lake view park ,do some stretching exercises , the usual gupshup and then head way back to home usually by 7 -7:30 AM.
Initially I thought,we will go for few days and once the enthu dies off will skip. But eventually it became a part of the weekly routine. We started loving it. The time spent there amidst the early morning rising sun, cold lake breeze (hmm arrrhh…..not always), the greenery around , the birds ,the cute pie doggies , the body getting exercise, chai pani+ occasional pakodee and those humorous talks…..who am I to say no to all this? People might think what difference it makes doing exercising once a week,hey at least we “started doing” this though once a week. Something is better than nothing!
Since April 07 till Jan 08 all we did is walking and running ?? nope.We played games, mainly “The Ball” (The Beach Volley minus the beach replaced by the lake, minus the volley).We happen to find a court along side Hussain Sagar which later hosted the “Asian Circuit Beach Volley Ball Hyd 07”.Our Usual meet up time 5:45 AM was further changed to 5:30 Am (what a torture!!) so that we can occupy the court before other players use it.Yes, the guilt did seep in , we were depriving the professional players from practicing to satisfy our victory in a childish version of net ball game.Then footer and beech ka bandar , dodgeball kind of went for few more days i.e as long we had the court , the ball and the zeal to do so . Every Friday where others used to plan up their Friday night parties, this group inquired, ensured availability of its members the next morning. Anyways, later the access to the court was shut down so was our game.The ball too stopped coming. I ask why o why we stopped this? me crying ,sobbing.
The next season was full of drizzles, cloudy weather, breezy mornings, garma garam chai ki pyalee –pakodee sessions, nil running, only reduced kms of walking, more fun and relaxing .We started having tea breaks at eat street, more frequently at Vims’s place courtesy Jass, once “extended” pakodee (onion, potato,bread) treat at my place and off course the very well pre-pre -planned at CC, Abhi-W’s place which never kicked off.
The gupshup time also increased ,which always included one funny incident of CC’s life- be it learning how to ride cycle or hostel ragging, narrated with all emotion and actions.
The real and some serious running started only when the marathon days were nearing.
While the veteran runners –Sid, Kiddo, Abhi-K did the whole Hussian sagar lake circle and slowly incremented their targets to 10, 16, 18, 20…even 30km ….
The new running enthusiasts MiniY , Vim, CC, Billu extended beyond their limits..each was successful to almost complete the round >8 km .what did I do during all this?
Always made sure on Fridays that there is somebody to accompany me for walks the next day and vice versa, carried water, nutrition bars for the serious runners , of which half was consumed by me- they accuse me of that :(
Extended my walking limits to 6 kms and the best - was able to break only my own chota record of running continuously at high speed for 10 minutes (earlier it was 40 secs, 3 min, 5 min) with extra kilos, on treadmill.
The D-day arrived- Hyd Marathon 2007 (10 KM).We all completed that successfully.
The surprise participants were the “Initial crowd” members -Sas3, Dp ,Vaibh & others who fully utilized the whole purpose of lake road being used for marathons, by spending some “picnic moments” at the lake side gardens.Yet completed the marathon.
The D day for serious runners was the Mumbai Marathon 08,
21(half) km –Kiddo, MiniY
42 (full) km -Sid
Here the surprise pack was MiniY completing 21 km without ever practicing beyond 10-11km at one go and remote running at Hyd by Abhi-k.
Kudos to one and all!!
PS0 : Arrz kiya hai...............
Kal ajj aur kal.
Kuch bitey huey pal.
Samet loon inhain zara
Samay Zara dheerey chal
PS1 : If you find the post really long on the basis of more effort being spent on scrolling, copy paste the content in a word doc and then read.It takes only one page or may be another half a page.Psychologically you will not find it as lengthy as here.
