About

Tanvir Kazmi – About Me

It was way back in 2005 that I really started long distance running. I had been a shorter distance runner during my school days topping out at a max 100 meters (though I did always looked forward to our annual school 5K cross country race), and I guess my love for running just took on another shape when opportunity presented with a local city half marathon in 2005. Since then, its been half marathons, marathons, and even a few ultra marathons (which I have tried to keep a track of on my personal blog at tanvirkazmi.com), running never stopped once I got the bug.

So far I have run 27 marathon, half marathons and ultras, including various cities in India (Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon), as well as few international events (South Africa, Singapore). Without any doubts, my most memorable run has been the Comrades Marathon, an 89KM run between the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Durban in South Africa, known as ‘The Ultimate Human Race”, worlds largest ultra with participation figures going into 20,000. It has a 12 hour cutoff, and I finished that run in 2010 in 11 hours 56 minutes, less than 4 minutes from the cutoff, that was an experience of a lifetime! That Comrades Marathon was also the first time that any runner from India had finished that race, making it all the more special for me.

My love for running has also taken me to start on online forum for Delhi NCR’s largest community of runners at delhirunners.com, with the objective of bringing together runners from all across Delhi and its neighboring cities on a common platform where they can discuss, share, and contribute to all things running. This community is now a thousand members strong, and growing day by day.

What else, well, I have been a Race Director for a race as well! I organized the DR50, a 50K ultra marathon in Delhi in 2011. Though meant for the local runners community from Delhi NCR, it saw participation from runners from various parts of the country, including some Comrades aspirants as well, and it was a great learning experience for me in terms of race logistics and organization. Besides that event, I have organized several fun half marathons in Delhi, at beautiful locations like the Jahanpanah Forest, Nehru Park and Deer Park – Hauz Khas.

In 2012, I had an opportunity to be an official pace setter for Mumbai Marathon, India’s largest marathon as well as an IAAF Gold Label Road Race. I did the pace setting for the 5 hours 30 minutes target finish time group, and again, a wonderful first time experience, with our pace group finishing in 5:29, just a minute under the target time. Later that year, I did the pacing for the 2:30 finish group at Airtel Delhi Half Marathon, another IAAF Gold Label event. I also ran my first 24 hour races this year, doing 100 KM at the Bhati Lakes ultra, and 125 KM at the Bangalore Ultra. Looking forward to my first 100 Miler in 2013 at the Bhati Lakes ultra.

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