Highest number of visually challenged full marathon runners was achieved by covering a distance of 42.2kms accompanied by Guide Runners India team,under the guidance of Head Coach Dr.Bhumika Patelat Bengaluru Marathon on October 21, 2018 .
The record has been submitted to Limca book of Records
A Big applaud for the Guide Runners India team to make the impossible possible as they put their heart and soul for continuous support to the visually impaired athletes throughout their journey to success.
For Full Marathon: Bhumika for full and Venkat for half, to be a strong support for Sunitha. Praveen Shetty to support Mala. Bhadresh for full and Sudha for second half, a strong support for Renuka. Nandeesh to guide Kavya, Rahul and Abhishek to support Nandeesh till the finish line. Sachin and Shekhar for support for Ajay.
When COVID-19 hit India, we jumped into action to help them prepare for the challenges,even before the lockdown started in India. It is a special concern for Visually Impaired as they mostly rely on touch.
The ones with Visibility disorder from needy families are a diverse group, experiencing different hardships in accessing information on prevention and risk of infection.
Firstly we shared COVID-19 precautions as per WHO guidelines with them through audio messages with translations in different regional languages like Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada. The guidelines was shared with the volunteers, who then communicated with the visually impaired in their respective languages either by phone or whatsapp.
We parallelly prepared a list of Visuallyimpaired who were in city, or left for their villages / hometown to stay with parents. We also checked with blind Institute or NGOs about the measures they had taken at the premises and hostel facility. If there was any shortage, we helped fulfill the requirement for hand gloves, masks, and sanitizers with the help of donations. About 600 hand gloves, several masks, sanitizers were distributed prior to lockdown.
We soon realized that that there were quite a lot of visually impaired elderly left alone at home. This prompted us to start assigning phone buddy to each of them to keep track of how they were doing. The buddy would keep the phone numbers of neighbor, maid and local ward ration shop (government outlet) and other helpline numbers to support the visually impaired.
We soon started receiving calls for help from the needy families esp. Mumbai slums for groceries and medicines. The daily wage workers were out of cash and no means to buy essentials. Many times the free food distribution and ration was available but they were unaware of this information. So the buddy volunteer became a very critical part to reach the information or the essential items. Over the last three weeks we have supported at least 200 families to get their ration and essentials.
The Phone Buddy also encourage and motivate the visually impaired to take care of their health and fitness and improve immunity by explaining how to do simple home workouts. This keeps them happy and healthy in these difficult times.
It’s been over 5 year since Dr. Bhumika Patel started providing voluntary support to women and children esp. the Specially-Abled & Visually Impaired across 6 cities in India (Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad). We participate in several events as VI-Guides in Pinkathon, Bengaluru Marathon, Mumbai Marathon etc.
This is sustained as there is a large pool of trained volunteers and guides from IBM and other corporates like Congizant and fitness communities, available for voluntary work on need basis. The team works with individuals and also several Blind Institutions/schools across the country. We work further to strengthen the other soft and hard skills too. This helps in their overall development, providing them access to wider opportunities to grow, thus developing a more inclusive society.
When COVID-19 hit India, we jumped into action to help them prepare for the challenges,even before the lockdown started in India. It is a special concern for Visually Impaired as they mostly rely on touch.
For the training team of guides and regular training girls, we started with a list of Kindness TO DO’s to be done in addition to HomeWORKOUTS and own fitness! This was a big hit with many contributing their time and effort wholeheartedly.
There are Badges to be earned as recognition for the training and acts of Kindness!
It was a tough week as I lost my aunt to cancer. But a memorable birthday and a race with a winning position in 3km, a team of 100+ Visuallyimpaired girls with guides+support team..totally 220+ enrolled for weekly trainings and then the race on Dec 15th !
Not just a regular event overall, the guide and Visuallyimpaired meetup started early by 3pm on 14th Dec. There was a technique session, song and dance , achievers were rewarded with running gear, both guides and Visuallyimpaired athletes. This coincided with my birthday 🎂 and we had celebrations of all the birthdays and anniversary of that month. There was cake and vada pav, lots of chocolates and gifts. 💐
Many guides stayed back for overnight stay together with Visuallyimpaired at Worli sea face venue. Post dinner we went for a walk along sea face and it was all our masti time.
Being blessed with good team members is what turns out to be a boon for me in every event. We had a very gala flag off by Milind Soman for each of the 3categories of race 3k, 5k and 10km!
I found myself on the podium with the superfast visuallyimpaired Sarita in the 3k category! I felt very happy I could guide her to win!
Overall it was a blend of fun, enjoyment and achievement!
Really appreciate the hardwork put in by my team – Sucheta, Bharath, Abhay, Anand, Abhilash for coordination since 3 months prior to event.
Suju, Lipika, Prochy, Vidya, Rajesh D’Souza and Milind Soman -USF team for constant support.
And all who helped a lot to carry this event successfully, there are many. Congratulations and Thank you 🙏
Bhumika Patel and her enablement team led by location Lead Ambassador Shradha Dalvi celebrated Pinkathon Day 2019 at Pune, Ghorpadi location.
The event was not less than a carnival with specially Abled boys and girls having participated wholeheartedly. Bhumika Patel and her team always celebrate this special day with the visually impaired and specially abled in order to honour and promote the power of inclusion. Every human being with any kind of disability has the right to fitness, has the right to participate in marathons and thus has the right to be included in every relevant celebration’ is what Bhumika and her team strongly believes in.
Bhumika Pate’s 3 teams across 3 cities have taken the lead this year for a unique Pinkathon Day celebration termed as ‘See From The Heart’ Pinkathon Day. These trainings have been an initiative on-going since a year by Bhumika Patel and her enablement team in different cities.
On Sunday Oct 20th 2019,we celebrated the 2nd edition of Pinkathon Day in Bengaluru.We are Happy to announce a new addition #PinkathonDay ‘See From The Heart’ to promote inclusion of specially abled people. This year 3 cities namely Bengaluru (Cubbon), Mumbai (BKC) and Pune (Ghorpadi) have taken the lead and participate in this worldwide celebration.
Bengaluru Celebrations:
We had the SpeciallyAbled and VisuallyImpaired girls as apart of the celebrations.
We had sari draping, to show that a dress can never stop us from running.
The victors group is a group of survivors put up an exhibition of their paintings. It’s a must see. They do fabric painting, canvas painting, kalamkari painting etc. They also make artistic thread and beads jewellery.
Manoranjini did an awesome Zumba
The Cubbon and Lalbagh training girls Vandana, Vasanthi, Kanti, Savita, Anita and team presented contemporary dance coreographed by Rithvik.
Visually impaired athletes…joined us from far and near. We felicitated their achievements.
A fusion dance performance by the Bannerghatta girls Swati, Rajlaxmi, Manisha, Kiran, Pavana, Vijaya and Shilpa.
Group dance by the Basaveshwarnagar training girls. They are doing a mashup of 5 language songs to convey unity in diversity in India.
Dr Ashu and survivors of Myshah foundation joined us.
We had cake cutting to mark the momentous occasion.
Thanks to Kajol bhatia and team for enthusiatic pariticipation.
Special thanks to Running Lab for sponsoring the breakfast.
Thanks to all who came volunteered and encouraged the team of specially Abled and guide runner
Boston Qualification!! 3 Bangalore visually impaired have qualified under Adaptive Program with fastest finisher with sensational 3h 17 min full marathon. You have a look at the glimpses of performances of the visually impaired from AFMC Marathon 2019, Pune and you will see how triumph goes down on its knees salute determination. 3 cities Mumbai, Pune,Bengaluru..23 visually impaired, 27 guide runners and their strength!!! A superbly organised event, extremely cooperative team of organisers.
2 Workshops conducted for Mumbai before start of trainings, some of vi had done half marathons already and Bengaluru vi have been training for 3 yrs in ultra distance.
Pune and Mumbai Guide Runners were taught techniques through workshops and pre -race meet up
Our team expert sports doctor Dr Eshwar provided the recommendation on exercises during training. Dr Ashu, Dr Jayshree from Apollo and other doctors in the team, helped with medical and nutritional support.
Pic: Mumbai – Running workshop 2 in August
My team was blessed enough to have NEB team supporting with the specially designed running gear, bib distribution and infinite other support.
IBM team Meghna, Jey, Zeba, Vinay and team thank you. Shraddha , Sucheta thank you for support.2GoActivewear for gear support 🙏 As a result, my team tasted great success. The Mumbai visually impaired Penav Mota and Hemendra Pratap Singh did their maiden full marathons with AFMC Pune after several months of training. An outstanding example of team work set by the volunteers, guides and the visually impaired!!! The list of visually impaired who attempted and finished the AFMC Marathon 2019 are as under:
1. VI Bhaskar -Guide Avinash Mane – Full Marathon
2. VI Kavya -Guide Meghna – Full Marathon
3. VI Nandeesha – Guide Amit – Full Marathon
4. VI Ramesh – Guide Venkatesh N – Full Marathon
5. VI Hemendra Singh- Ashok – Full Marathon
6. VI Penav Mota-Guide Bhumika Patel/ Jagdish Ramakrishna-Full marathon
7. VI Ajay – Guides Sunket/Dhanunjaya – Full Marathon
8. VI Praveen Bhosale- Guide Rajesh D’souza-Half Marathon
9. VI Sunitha – Guide Sandeep Bahot – Half Marathon
What can be called an ‘Accomplished Meet’? It’s at the Quarterly meet, when you have many satisfied faces, it’s when you announce the achievements of the year with great pride, it’s when the participants are awarded and appreciated for their achievements….
All Hands Meet 2019 was one such function with the Bhumika’s Training Team , cancer shero, care givers, visually impaired and sighted guide runners, held at the Eagle Ridge Resort in Begur, Bengaluru on 1st June 2019. It was the 4th year anniversary of trainings for girls. It was an amalgamation of a formal annual review meeting and an informal anniversary celebration where the leads of various locations had come together in person to share their updates of the year.
The meet started with a question and answer session by Dr. Eshwar who is a sports doctor from California, followed by the formal inauguration. As the objective of the meet was, the leads from various locations of Mumbai, Pune, Vizag, Delhi attended the function through a web conference and updated their location progress.
Head Coach of the Training girls, Bhumika Patel wonderfully hosted the event. The awards to the achievers of the years were given away by the eminent personalities from the marathon running sphere like Praveen Shetty, Asima Sultana. The veteran runner, cancer survivor and the active participant Uma Pai cheered up the atmosphere with her speech. Cult fitness was represented by one of their senior members who spoke about a fruitful partnership for supporting the visually impaired training initiative.
A team of cancer survivors from Myshah Foundation arrived and delivered touching but inspiring stories about their fight with cancer. The function was graced by Pragya Prasun, acid attack survivor and Nari Shakti Award winner. Pragya runs an NGO- Atijeevan Foundation that helps acid attack survivors become economically independent.
The function was a huge success, not to mention the partying and the games the training girls enjoyed after the formal function was done.
Empowering VisuallyImpaired & Beyond 