Appeal to support Dream A Dream..

In 2007 I raised about Rs 80,000/- for Dream A Dream via the Bangalore ultra and Mumbai marathon. This time I have the ambitous goal of raising much higher amount. Having volunteered at several of the IT programs for children from NGOs like Ananya and Vishwas I have experienced first hand the tremendous imapct DaD is making on vulnurable children in Bangalore. Volunteering for DaD and interacting with the dedicated and passionate employees of the organisation has also provided me huge learning and also a sense of satisfaction of making a small contribution to make a difference.

I am a bit behind in my fund raising goals this year. I know a number of runners who are successfully raising funds for a number of different causes. So there's no dearth of donors. It seems to me that people give more readily for causes related to health care, natural disasters and disabilities. Dream a Dream is doing something that is quite niche - it seeks to empower children from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life skills and at the same time sensitising the community through active volunteering leading to a non-discriminatory society.

However with the help of a number of supporters and well-wishers I hope to raise significant funds and make up over the next few months leading up to the Mumbai marathon in January 2009. Meanwhile, if anyone who would like to support this cause has any questions or clarifications regarding the work done by DaD then do not hesitate to get in touch with me. If required I can also put you in touch with Vishal or one of the other wonderful employees of DaD. Any contribution, however big or small, will be highly appreciated!

Kaveri trail Marathon 2008

Completed the full marathon today in 4:42:19 - while it was a bit slower than what I would have liked I am still quite satisfied. The course, while mostly flat, turned out to be tougher than anticipated - the terrain was quite uneven with stretches of stones. While the weather was mostly OK with patches of sun and clouds it was very warm whenever the sun was out. At times it seemed almost s warm as Mumbai minus the humidity. I did the first half in 2:05 and felt I would be able to finish around 4:30. However, the 4rth leg turned out to be very very difficult. My hamstrings were hurting and I ended up walking in small stretches which I rarely do in my marathons. The finish was also not as strong as my usual marathons(and this was my 14th one including the Ultra!). I felt a a bit nauseous after the finish and recovered from it only after the lunch. I am not sure why this happened - the only thing I can think of that I did differently is eating salted peanuts. In any case I broke the cardinal principle of not doing anything new in a marathon - I have never eaten salted peanuts in a 25K+ run before . I also had a 'bad laces day' today - my laces coming out at least 3 times.

The race itself was reasonably well organised - the bus from Cubbon Park with the Full marathon runners not arriving on time was a setback. As a consequence, full marathon runners started in 2 batches at 6:45am and 7:45 am respectively. Not having RFID based chip timings was another setback . It worked well at the Mformation Urban Stampede and would have gone well with the runners. Finally, despite there be 4 water stops in the 10.5Km course I felt that the water stops should have had small water bottles for runners to carry along with them. The kind of day it was ,many runners ,including myself, would have preferred to sip water continuously.
Click here and here to see some wonderful pictures of this magnificant trail.

Thanx to Pankaj Rai of Red Dragon fame for driving to and fro to KTM today - he did a phenomenonal job specially on the return leg. It must have not been easy after completing a Full Marathon under tough conditions. I would also like to thank Vishal Talreja and Jaydeep for taking the time to leave comments wishing me recovery from my back strain. Now onto the ultra in 4 weeks!

Misbehaving Garmin Forerunner 305

I have owned a Garmin Forerunner 305 since July 2007 - a device with a GPS receiver and a wireless heart rate monitor that has made significant contribution to the improvement in my long distance running over the last year or so. While initially I used the device to monitor and control my heart rate during speed training (tempo or fartlek runs) subsequently I have become addicted to the pace data that it provides on a real-time basis. Now when I set out on a run I break down the target distance and completion time in terms of the average pace(Minutes per Km) required to achieve it. I then fine tune my pace by continually monitoring the current and average pace during my run. eg to finish around 4:30 in tomorrow's KTM I plan to keep my average pace around 6 and a half minutes per Km. (There are several pace calculators on the net - this one is quite cool!). I am so used to the gadget now that I often wonder how I trained and ran my first 7 marathons without one. So much so that I am not too satisfied with a run if I don't have the Garmin 305 on my wrist or if the battery dies during a run.

The main reason for this post is that since the last 2 months or so my Garmin device has started misbehaving. I have experienced a couple of issues:
a) At times it seemed to be losing time ie showing a lower time and distance than actual - this happened for the first time at the Hyderabad marathon in August - the device showed 3:59 and 41.2Km at the finish. Of course, I ignored the distance and was thrilled thinking I had done my first sub 4 hr marathon only to realise later that my Garmin had acted up!

b) The bigger problem is that increasing frequency the device powers off with a message saying low battery when powering it on in the morning even if it has been fully charged the night before. This is irritating as then I have to run without the device. This seems to be a known problem with the device. Checkout Garmin Edge 305 Lockup / Not Powering Up Problems or Power Problems with Garmin 305 . I continue to get the problem on and off even after implementing the suggested solution.

I hope the device works fine during KTM tomorrow - I intend to update the firmware on it soon thereafter.

Count down to Numero Trois : KTM 2008

With just about 12 hours to go before the start of this years Kaveri Trail Marathon this Sunday I seem to have recovered from last weekend's muscle pull. The back strain has vanished completely and the numbness in the foot that I had during the week is almost gone. I attribute this to the two sessions I had with Doc Rajat and Sarika at Back to Fitness and a week of rest - I ran a 7K and 5K, did not cycle at all and skipped my strengthening sessions at Manipal. Normally I take 2 days of rest before a marathon or a 32K+ long run. This time I made an exception and I did a slow 5K on Friday - in order to put in at least 2 days of running in the week before the Full Marathon.

Went to the pasta party at Herbs and Spice, Indiranagar on Friday evening - as always it was great to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones over decent food. Among the new people I got to chat with are MD Ramaswamy who's coming back from injury and doing a 10K tomorrow, Pallavi and Gaurav founders of the North Indian Vegetarian restaurant chain MastKalandar and Anjana Kaul of Footprint Ventures - a VC firm that has funded them. Personally, I liked the food and the ambience here more than the Bistro on Brigade road where RFL pre-race parties have been held in the past. The fact that this place is much closer to where I live did not hurt! BTW - I (and my family members) love the food at MastKalandar too.

Little disappointed to learn from A2 that there won't be chip timings in tomorrow's run due to the unavailability of the vendor of the RFId system. I am now looking forward to a decent run tomorrow. The KTM route is quite flat and based on last year's performances of runners its tempting to try nd do a 'fast' full marathon. However, I don't think its prudent to push oneself tomorrow and I will be satisfied with a finish between 4:30 and 4:45 and NO after effects.!!

Down with a lower back strain or is it a sprain?

"A strain is a muscle or tendon injury; a sprain is a ligament injury. Back strain is also referred to as pulled back muscles." I came across this at Bigbackpain while researching lower back pain on the net. And the reason for spending the Sunday evening doing this research is to assure myself that I will recover in time to run the Kaveri Trail Marathon on 19th October. While stretching yesterday morning, I pulled my lower back muscle on the left side. This muscle has been strained a few times before but this time it seems to be much more severe and coming so close to a race has made this one of the most depressing weekends in recent memory. After the 50K clocked last week, this week was anyway planned to be an easy one with maximum of 30K run. I did 20K between Wednesday and Friday and was planning to do an easy one at the Hash run off Old Madras road on Sunday afternoon. After straining the back yesterday morning I have been pretty much resting the weekend and also taking pain killers. I feel much better Sunday evening but still not fully recovered. Apprehensive about running the KTM next Sunday and fearing the worst(need to take an extended break from running and inability to continue my '12 in 12 at 50 endeavour') has made me very irritated - with the family at home bearing the brunt of the irritation. It is always challenging to maintain a balance between work, family life and long distance running and injury only adds to this- more on this in a future post...

Two consecutive days of running

Personally I very rarely run 2 consecutive days. My weekly training schedule typically consists of 3 days of running including a weekend 'long' run and 2 days of cycling. I rest two mornings in a week - I do go to Manipal hospital for strength training in the evening of weekday rest day. While training to run the 1st Bangalaore ultra in 2007 I did a couple of long runs on consecutive weekend days as this is recommended as part of ultra training. This weekend was an exception to my cardinal principle - I ran on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was a great 12K run at EGL catching up with Rajesh Vetcha(another passionate running evangelist and also a key organiser of the Hyderabad marathon). I had planned to do a 20K + run on Sunday but when Rajesh called Friday afternoon saying he was in town and available for a run Saturday morning I could not let the opportunity go. I then decided to do the 20K+ run on Sunday instead. Due to the time commitment required including the to and fro travel I skipped the fortnightly RFL run at ONV and ran solo at EGL. I ended up doing 25K in just under 2 hours 30 minutes and clocking a total of 50K this week. The left calf muscle hurt a bit towards the end of the run but otherwise it was pretty good. I do not remember the last time I ran over 20K alone - it was not as difficult or boring(thanx to the 'Time tunnel' on Radio Indigo) as I had anticipated it to be.

Running in a coffee plantation

During my wonderful vacation last week at the homestay called Nature Nirvana in the midst of a coffee plantation about 35Kms north of Chikmaglur I did a couple of runs of 5K and 7.5K within the property. The runs were fantastic - greenery all round, chirping birds , hardly a sign of another human being and a daschund called Mala for company . At the same time they were tough due to steep gradients and also very uneven terrain with lots of stones. In such terrain there is high risk of either twisting your leg or tripping - the soft surface ofcourse is kinder on the legs. My average run speed was 6 minutes 45 seconds per Km and even at that speed I was pretty tired at the end of the run. However, the runs were immensely enjoyable!