The day before :-
I reached Mumbai two days before and I used one of the days to visit near by places. The day before marathon I visited one such place and returned to check in to YMCA hostel in colaba (before that I stayed in other hotel). I checked-in in the afternoon after 12 PM. The cost of one day stay is Rs 1600 which was paid already by friend when it was booked. However when I was checking in I was asked a membership fee of Rs 120. By the time I reached YMCA I had used up all my money and left with few notes of 10s and a 50. I had no energy to go back to an ATM to get the money needed. I searched purse, bag and pockets and summed up all the money I had and it exactly came to Rs 120. Ufff!! I have a roof on my head now 
I had to go World Trade Center of Mumbai to collect my bib (the running number) and the championchip (for timing the run) if needed (I did not). I had no clue as how to reach this place but I had this great friend in Deepa who took me to this place. She left soon after to collect her bib from her office. The WTC was buzzing with energy with lot of people coming in to collect their stuffs. There were counters of sponsors who were playing quizzes, providing free soup (I took 3 times as I was hungry) and much more.
I visited most of the counters but remember doing 2 interesting stuff.
The first one was checking my BMI with some cool instrument. The report was not very encouraging (may be due to faulty machine) as the report said I was 10kg over weight and have excess of fat. Come on! 10kg overweight? do you want me to run tomorrow or not?
The second was Nike foot angle check where they made me to run on a thread mill and measured some foot base parameter and based on that suggested few shoes. Though I did not buy the shoes it all looked very convincing and I almost bought myself a 4k topi (shoes I mean)
I left the place to YMCA and took some rest. Later that evening Pooja and Deepa came to pick me up to show me key places of Mumbai. We went around Colaba and saw the Taj, Tridand – the hotels affected by Mumbai attacks and finally Marine drive. Marine drive was wonderful, I had never seen something so good. We sat there for some time and left to have dinner.
I know, I should have had the lightest of dinner but it so happened that I tried new cuisines as suggested by two ladies. my stomack was yelling at me as what I have done knowing well that what is in store for me the next day. Sadly it has to go through the brunt of toung’s and mind’s desire (as always). The ladies were kind enough to drop me near to YMCA.
I had to check out before 12 PM next day and I was not sure if I can finish my marathon and reach hotel to check out on time. So I packed all my stuff into two bags (one for marathon and one for locker room). I pinned the bib into shirt and ChampionChip (yes I did buy it in the end, thankfully) to my shoes. So I set all the things ready the day before itself. As the battery in the cell was low I kept the alarm as 5 AM the next day, switched off the cell and went to bed. Good night!
The D-Day :-
