Mihira Singh will spend Sunday morning in the company of strangers.
The Class VIII La Martiniere for Girls student will stand shoulder to shoulder with them, straining her ears for the starting whistle of the 5km Fun Run, a part of the Kolkata Marathon, in association with The Telegraph.
A member of the school basketball team and an avid sports enthusiast, the teenager cannot wait to run her first road race in the city.
So can't many other Calcuttans. Young and old, professional and amateur, runners from varied backgrounds and abilities will converge on Red Road on Sunday morning for the flagship race or its 15km cousin or the 5km Fun Run.
Deepak Bajaj will participate in such an event for the first time. The 46-year-old stockbroker from Lansdowne Road is a regular morning walker doing the rounds at Ritchie Park in south Calcutta. He read about the Kolkata Marathon in newspapers and decided to take part in the 5km run. "I am very excited about the prospect of running at an event like this. It provides such a competitive atmosphere and you come across so many types of people," he said. "I will be at the Kolkata Marathon office on Saturday to complete the registration process."
Apart from the beginners, the race will also see many of the city's seasoned amateurs. Sushmita Patnaik, an IT professional who lives in New Town, has taken part in several road races in the city over the past couple of years. "I've restricted myself to the 5km run because it becomes physically taxing for me after a while," she said. "But running is always a rewarding experience."
It doesn't get more seasoned than 33-year old Soham Mishra, a businessman living in a housing complex on the Bypass and an amateur runner, who took up running to lose weight and stay fit. Mishra has taken part in races across India and is a veteran of many a marathon.
"Managing a long distance race in a city is very difficult since it involves the setting up of suitable amenities along the way and the holding up of traffic," he said. "I have run the 25km road race that happened in the city in December; it was quite well managed... I am positive that this race, too, would match up to the standards set by marathons in other cities."
When it comes to the pros gunning for glory in the marathon, the buzz is around Binning Lyngkhoi, an army runner from Meghalaya, who was the winner of the 2009 and 2010 editions.
He is considered to be on a par with the late Shivnath Singh, who holds the Indian marathon record (2 hours and 12 minutes) and Ram Singh Yadav, who participated at the 2012 London Olympics Marathon.
In 2012, at an open marathon in Delhi, Binning fell short of the Olympic qualification mark by 49 seconds finishing the marathon in 2 hours 18 minutes and 49 seconds. This time around, he hopes to improve his timing.
