CTM15 Message from the Founder

Welcome to the 4th edition of the Chennai Trail Marathon!

 

Our core organizing team behind CTM15 has been working hard over the past 3 months to bring you a memorable trail and Ultra running experience amid the scenic landscapes of the city's Northern outskirts: Prabakar, Durai, Murali, Rakesh and Aravind. All have been instrumental organizers in previous editions of our CTM, Javadhu Hills Ultra and Chennai Triathlons and are themselves passionate runners. A team of 150 volunteers from the Chennai Trekking Club (CTC) are all excited to support your run along the trail this Sunday.  All credit goes to the organizers and our volunteers! I hereby wanna share a few words with all runners on behalf of myself and CTC. 

 

CTC is a volunteer based non-profit group of like minded souls passionate about the outdoors, sports and our environment. We organize hundreds of events during all weekends of the year including trekking, camping, cycling, (hill) running, triathlons, biking, photography, workshops, tree plantations, cleanups and more taking thousands of people every year into nature. Aside these weekly events we also organize a number of larger awareness events throughout the year including CTM, JHU, Chennai Triathlon (next edition coming Dec 19th), Chennai Coastal Cleanup, Trek Polamaa - all targeted towards creating more awareness towards outdoors, sports and environmental conservation. Do join us sometime according to your interest to get to know us better.

 

One of CTC's main objectives is to reconnect people with nature and bring out the best in people through adventure and endurance activities. We believe in a volunteer based approach focused on passion and free from commercial objectives. Accounts of CTM will be shared with the runners post-event. Our events are organized by the members of CTC, not through external event mgmt companies. CTM was born 4 years back along the Buckingham Canal in South Chennai taking around 500 runners into the trail during its first edition. Our wish is to get more runners out from the cities tar roads and indulge them into the trails amid natural surroundings to submerge them in true running bliss. 

 

We are also proud to organize the first Ultra run near Chennai. Ask any Ultra runner and he/she will tell you that beyond the 42.2K marathon distance running becomes more of a mental challenge and therefore it makes more sense to take long-distance running into scenic natural trails that inspire and instill mental relaxation to keep the Ultra runner going. If you love the CTM experience then we invite you to join our monthly self-support hill ultra runs across South which will take you to more challenging and more beautiful trails.

 

Coming back to CTM15 we have made slight changes to the trail this year to keep it interesting for the recurrent runners. The CTM trail is a natural beauty with great variety in terrain: dams, lakes, cashew, paddies, canyons, uneven sand trails, grasslands, small hills and more. It is no doubt more challenging then the standard flat road city marathon. We suggest you pace rather then race (unless you insist ;-), run at a comfortable speed so you can fully enjoy the trail and its scenic surroundings. Like the old wise Greek used to say: completing is more important then winning!

 

We thank our partners for making CTM15 possible: The Westin Velachery (hospitality), GOJAN (venue), Hanu Reddy Realty (associate), Decathlon (sports), Alert (first aid), Running Lab (prize), MyRace (timing), Unived (hydration), Adityaa Agro (biscuits), Marina Runnerz, Anna Nagar Dreamerz and Chennai Runners in aid stations support. Our sincere thanks to all runners who donated generously nearly 1 lakh towards the associated cause Ainthinai, CTC-s green wing, which is engaged through the year in building a greener future through various activities like tree plantations, organic farming, cleanups, education & workshops and more. Accounts on how the donations are used will be shared with the runners.

 

Have a great run on Sunday!