Bed to Bessie/Eliot's Beach: How I spent the second last morning in the Institute

May 13^th was a nice and beautiful Sunday morning. I woke up at around 5 am and started to convince my body for the jog. I went to Vishnu MJ’s room to see if he is awake and ready to run. He wasn’t. I put my shoes on and left campus through Taramani gate at 5:45am. I went to CSIR road. It had rained a few hours before and the road was still wet. The skies were overcast and the wind was cool. It was a perfect day for a jog. As I was running towards the Rajiv Gandhi IT expressway a slight drizzle hit my face. It lasted only for a minute or so. 

Then I took a left onto Rajiv Gandhi IT expressway. The traffic was yet to pick up. I took a right in front of the suburban station. I ran through western avenue road until I reached Thiruvanmiyur bus station. The run was faster than expected and was helped by a downward slope near the railway station. There was no traffic on this road too. 

Once I reached Tiruvanmiyur bus station I started running into crowds and slowed down a bit. I took a left onto Valmiki street and a right at Kalakshetra road. People were cleaning roads and cars. There were dogs too. But they didn’t bother me. After I reached Kalakshetra gates I took a left and then a right at Arundale Beach Road. I was getting tired by now and dropped my pace. I met other joggers too. I turned left at Tiger Varadachari Road and reached Anna Velankani road. From there I raced towards Pupil along the 6th avenue. 

 I had coconut water after finishing my run. After resting a bit I walked towards the beach. It was heavily overcast and I knew that I had no chance of catching the sunrise. The beach was full. With trash and people. A nice Sunday morning has bought out lots of families, students, jobless people, sellers, children etc. I started walking from one end towards the other.

There was nothing interesting except the clouds, doing their best to hide the sunlight. And the silent horizon with some distant ships. The waves were busy doing their usual stuff. Families and children were involved in the usual beach inanities. There was a group of boys practicing acrobatics. A few lonely couples and some overexcited beach dogs. A few beautiful faces and some pestering peddlers.  Some lost souls busy on the phones too.

I strolled around till 7:30. Ninad Paranjape later told me that he spotted me on the beach, but I missed him. I was sorry about that. I did not venture into water as I would have spoiled my shoes. 

This is a rough map of the run. 

The Google route is slightly off at around Thiruvanmiyur station. But this was more or less the distance that I covered. It is about 5 kilometers. I took 25 minutes when running towards the beach. The traffic was low and there were not many people on the roads. While returning back I was chased by dogs and had to stop for traffic at certain points. I took me about 32 minutes to return back.