Dharani :
I am a Masters student in Biomedical Informatics at Univ of Florida. I finished my undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Chennai. Although, I moved here quite recently, thanks to Team Asha, I already feel Gainesville as my second home.
Running Experience:
I was a total newbie to running before Asha introduced me to it. When I started training roughly 2 years ago, running 15 k seemed a herculean task. To my own surprise, with 3 weeks of training, lots of motivation from peers at Asha, and charged by the crowd support, I was able to finish GRR 2016 and GRR 2017 successfully. Since then, I have tried to be consistent with weekly runs. I hope I will be able to better my performance this year
Anand:
I am a PhD student in the Department of ECE at Univ of Florida. I have been here since Aug 2012 and am loving the place, the campus and the weather. I am from the southern state of Kerala in India.
Running Experience:
During my growing up years, I was never athletic. The PT periods and Annual sports day in school used to be the scariest of times, when I would be reduced to a mere spectator. It was during the summer holidays at IIT Bombay, that I started running. The evenings used to be completely free and the picturesque campus nestled between Powai lake on one side and the Sameer Hill on the other was the perfect place to get going. I had a friend as my mentor, who used to literally do a triathlon (running, swimming and cycling) every day. I started running with him only to see him outpacing me within half a mile. But, I kept running. And, now it has become a habit and I hope it is here to stay. I came to know about Team Asha during the Praharsha event in Fall 2012 and started running with the group. I found running in groups extremely motivating. Saturday morning runs in the Hawthorne trail are an excellent way to start your weekend. I have run the Bangalore 10k event a couple of times and the Gate River Run last year. So now, I can truly say ‘been there run that’ :-). Thanks to the highly motivated runners of Team Asha, I was even able to run a half marathon last year. But, half marathon is just job half done. There could be a full marathon in the horizon and as a PhD student, I cannot be averse to long runs :-).
Our Request:
I am what I am because of what we all are. We were very fortunate to have parents who could get us the best education that we could have asked for. But, there are less fortunate people in the society, for whom we can be a helping hand. Finishing the run is an awesome feeling. And running for a cause, is the icing on the cake. We request you to help us in this cause, through donations however small it may be, in cash or kind. Thanks in advance for your support.
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