While athletes like two-time national winner of the Standard Chartered Marathon Liliama warm up for her fifth marathon (will she pull off a hat-trick?) there are others who are dusting out their trainers for the first time, getting ready to join the swelling crowd at Mumbai’s most talked about sporting event that has gained in popularity since it was launched in 2003. Why do people run the marathon again?

The original idea behind the Standard Chartered Marathon is to run for a cause and while the sentiment is a noble one, not to mention a fantastic exercise in corporate branding. It has its share of me-too and page-three types who run to get noticed. Some run to meet that special someone—a friend enrolled just so she could faint next to the person she had a huge crush on-while others just like the sound of how with-it it sounds over dinner with some posh friends.

There are yet others who have a cause and want to get noticed, like the people in wheelchairs, the senior citizens (the oldest runner is 94), the coloured folks and the women’s rights folks, who all want to spread their word.

“I genuinely think that it's truly something about the city and the way its people take ownership of it. That’s what gets them out on a Sunday morning at 6 am to run,” says Anurag Tyagi, producer/ correspondent for a leading channel who have exclusive rights to cover the event live.

Perhaps it’s everyone’s dream to have five minutes of fame and get the camera to capture that flattering shot of them running beside the Marine Drive sea, but in the early days, when people just ran without much media coverage, it didn’t deter their spirit. At least we know for sure, there were no camera’s on

Pheidippides, a runner who took news of the Greeks winning over the Persians in 490 BC to Athens. Legend has it that the marathon man was able to utter just three words, “Rejoice we conquer” before he dropped dead.

Clearly, today’s marathon runners are more realistic when it comes to doing the dream run. A lot of people begin to train before they actually run so they don’t die of a stitch inn the first lap itself.

In the long run, the marathon has proved to be good for a lot of people, but there’s also a flipside. Many give up training and pile on the pounds with steak and potato binges. Many coaches report of withdrawal symptoms, like a co-dependency gone wrong.