The recent goof-ups at the Hyderabad 10K run have got people asking one question: Why can’t the Hyderabad Runners and the 10K Foundation come together to organise one event?
While the Hyderabad Runners are a group of passionate runners with organisational skills that are often appreciated, the 10K foundation has the who’s who of the city on board. If the two come together, it will meet the two most important requirements — the funds to organise an event and of course, the knowledge of organising a run that comes with experience.
Salman Babu Khan, the chairperson of this year’s edition of the Hyderabad 10K run says, “We already work together. We take advice from Hyderabad Runners for the events. Even for this year’s run, we worked together and had regular meetings, they told us about how we could have better distribution of medals or placement of water stations.” He adds, “We are not competing organisations, both groups just want to organise runs in the city. Yes, we would work together for the Heritage Run earlier but that stopped because the Hyderabad Runners wanted to go ahead and organise full marathons, in which they are doing a brilliant job, but we are one of the oldest organisations in the city and would like to focus only on the 10K run.”
But those who have been a part of runs organised by the two organisations have a different perspective. Suresh Kochattil, co-organiser of Great Hyderabad Adventure Club who is closely involved with the Hyderabad triathlon, says, “I am of the opinion that you don’t need to club all running events into one. The more the merrier, but each one needs to have their set objectives. Why are we doing this event? What is the USP of this event? There is a difference in running for fun and serious running.”
Before the start of the Hyderabad 10K run there was an extravagant Zumba session
Hyderabad Runners has been regularly organising runs on Sundays. And there lies a big difference between the two groups. Suresh adds, “I remember participating in the first three 10K Hyderabad runs. But I gave up after that, it was almost like being pushed around in a Mumbai local train. I don’t see the two groups coming together because their focal points are different. The Hyderabad Runners, like the GHAC, are not awash with cash. The group consists of passionate runners. They develop runners and they have been able to carry their name to different states, whereas the 10K run foundation focuses solely on 10K runs. It’s good for the city to have different events every Sunday, but we should ensure that we don’t trivialise it.”
Shilpa Reddy, another avid runner from the city says, “It’s true that the 10K foundation is well-connected and the Hyderabad runners are more passionate. In theory, it might seem like a great idea but because of the differences between the two groups, I’m not sure how it will work out in practice.”
Rajesh Vetcha from Hyderabad Runners diplomatically says, “Yes, we did provide our inputs to the Hyderabad 10K run this time. And you never know, there could be a possibility of the two groups coming together in the future.”
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