Why Hyderabadi Rajesh Vetcha and his team are the go-to people when it comes to hosting a marathon
Rajesh Vetcha moved to Hyderabad in 2007 and founded the Hyderabad Runners Club
He is the face of the Hyderabad Runners Club and the marathons held in the city, but for Rajesh Vetcha, the tryst with running started long before, when he was just 13. “I still remember, they were supposed to telecast the 1984 Olympics closing ceremony live, but they started broadcasting a little earlier, thus, showing the men’s and women’s marathon. I was mesmerised. I started asking my school teachers, how does one run for 42 kilometres, as those days in school we would have the cross country run. They would always reply, ‘You first try to finish your 10 km run’.”
Though he had always been an active kid, the love for running started only when he moved from Chennai to Bengaluru in 2002. But it was only when he was 33 that he started training for his first marathon. “At the time, all the programmes I heard of sounded like a weight loss programme,” he says.
After 14 months of training, Rajesh participated in his first full marathon in Mumbai in 2005. “During my training, I realised how lonely running was. I wrote on a meet-up group to check if anyone was interested in running, 24 people said yes. That’s how the country’s first formal running group started in Bengaluru. it evolved into Runners for Life that now has 15,000 members.”
Every city Rajesh has lived in, he has taken along the running culture. He moved to Delhi for work in 2006 and started a running group there too. In April 2007, Rajesh moved to Hyderabad and in May, he founded Hyderabad Runners.
Talking about how the idea of organising marathons came about, Rajesh says, “In 2007, I participated in the New York Marathon and I thought why can’t we have something like that here?”
And subsequently, they did something that went down in the history of running in Hyderabad. “In 2008, the Hyderabad airport was being built. That’s when we had the chance to run on the runway. About 150 people turned up for that event,” he says. The first Hyderabad marathon was organised in 2011 in which about 1,250 people participated.
For someone who is so actively involved in running, it was but obvious that his family too would be a part of it. “This time it will be my wife Vasavi’s second 10 K run. My daughter Spruha is in a
boarding school so she won’t be able to come down. Meanwhile, my 10-year-old son Shritan will be taking part in the 3K run,” he says. People from around 160 cities in India come for the Hyderabad marathon and this time too they are expecting over 14,000 to participate.
Rajesh has also been of great help in organising marathons in cities like Chennai and Coimbatore. Sharing a few tips he says, “A marathon has to be a community binding event. It’s the only sport that is beyond age and gender. It has to be as inclusive as possible. Also, the organisers should aim to spread awareness about an active lifestyle.”
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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