Comfortable 11th at Bellandur on 28th June

A bunch of us completed the Full Marathon at the RFL Bellandur run today. Besides myself the other runners who did 42Km+ were Rishikesh, Amrita, Prasad and Deepak. My 11th FM in as many months(and 22nd overall) turned out to be an easy comfortable run - without pushing hard and without undue stress I ended up doing 43Km in 4 hrs 43! Unlike the previous two marathons the run upto this one was not very hectic - I still was not very confident of a good run - my apprehension this time was due to a cold that lingered on for over two weeks and also a niggle in my left hamstring and calf post the Sunfeast world 10K on 31st May.

Eight of us started running at 530am. There was some trenches dug up in the route and the RFL markings were still not in place - thanks to Jugy and Sunil who also started running early we were able to take the alternate path without any trouble. Ran mostly with Rishi in the 1st loop; Uday joined us as we were returning to the start point. Just about 1Km from the start point we started seeing a stream of RFL runners. We completed the 1st loop at an easy average pace of 6:20 and did 21Km in about 2:20. Each loop was 5.3Km out and back with about 2Km consisting of a trail and the remaining tar road going through a sparsely populated area with open fields all around. Its not a flat course - there were a couple of gradual longish gradients. It was great to see several familiar RFL runners and many new ones too! Ran most of the 4rth loop with Partha - he joined the run for that loop and ran at a good pace. Trying to keep up with him the 4th loop ended up being faster than what it would otherwise have been. I did not realise when my Garmin hit the 42.2K mark and I continued running towards the start point. Ended up with 43Km - very satisfied with the effort- though my previous FM in December 2008 took 4:29. During the run I hardly thought about my niggles. The two factors that made it all very easy were the constant company of some wonderful runners and the fantastic weather. Only after 930am, in the 2nd half of the fourth loop did the sun come out. The support of the RFL staff was also very helpful.

All in the timing..

No – I have not become a timing freak. Though after several years experience of distance running I am now much more timing conscious and am setting some stretch goals to improve timing. However, the title for this post is the April 2009 Runners World article which discusses the history and challenges of the qualifying times for Boston marathon . Qualifying for the Boston marathon is among the most sought-after and challenging goals for serious marathon runners around the globe including myself.

Two interesting sections from the article are reproduced here.

Below is the history of changes in the qualifying standards over the years.

• April 19, 1897—OPEN-Fifteen men run the first Boston Marathon, open to any male 19 or older.
• 1970—4:00 To control crowds, the first qualifying standard is instituted. "This is not a jogging race," say organizers.
• 1971—3:30 BAA lowers the time restrict field to 1,000; 1,067 enter.
• 1972—3:30 Women, now allowed officially to enter, are kept to same time standards.
• 1977—3:00 New time is instituted for men 39 and under.
• 1980—2:50 Due to record number of entrants, standards tighten for men 19-39, 40+ (3:10), and women (3:20).
• 1981—3:20 New standard for men 50-59; men 60+ and women 40+ get 3:30.1984—3:50 As the ranks of "masters" women rise, new time set for women 60+. (Women 50-59 must run 3:40.)
• 1987—4:00 The BAA eases times for all women (from 3:30 for those under 40 to 4:00 for 60+) and men 18-39 (3:00).
• 1990—4:20 Five-year age groups (from 35 to 70+) are instituted with relaxed standards, including 4:20 for 70+.
• 2003—5:30 New time for women 80+. BAA softens standards for runners age 45 and over, and adds new age groups for those over 70.

And for runners like me hoping to qualify for Boston within the next few years here is a list of US marathons with % of runners qualifying for Boston along with dates for the next edition of the race. Personally, it is heartening to note that the top two races are in the North East region not too far from the area that I travel to a couple of times a year in my current job.

• Bay State, Lowell, Mass. (34.1%), Oct. 18
• Mohawk-Hudson River, Albany, N. Y. (33.4%), Oct. 11
• Inland Trail, Elyria, Oh. (29.7%), Nov. 1 Last Chance for Boston 2010
• Columbus, Oh. (27.8%), Feb. 14, 2010
• California International, Sacramento (26.6%) Dec. 6
• Tucson (26.2%), Dec. 13
• Newport, Ore. (24.8%), June 5, 2010
• Tallahassee, Fla. (24.6%), Feb. 7
• 2010 Run for the Red, Poconos, Penn. (24.5%),
• May 16, 2010 Wineglass
• Corning, N. Y. (24.2%), Oct. 4

Of course the Boston Marathon itself produces the highest number of (re-)qualifiers ie 37.5%.

Balancing the Four dimensions (Warning: This is mostly not about running)

In today's fast paced environment, balancing work and personal life is a challenge for most professionals. In my case this has extended to four dimensions over the last few years as the personal life is broken down into three distinct components all of which I am passionate about: Family, Distance running and Dream A Dream.I have not been able to do much else outside of these four dimensions - in fact there have been times that I have struggled to keep up in one or more of these dimensions. Elaborating on these four:

Work:
I completed 4 years in my current job at Mformation India this week. Building a high calibre technical software delivery team and motivating them to work in a dynamic, rapidly growing environment of a small/mid-size technology company took a lot of time and energy during the waking hours of the last four years. From 4 employees in June 2005 the team has grown to over 150 - this period has not been without numerous instances of high pressure filled long days going well late into the night. Working evening hours mainly due to conference calls to accommodate different timezones is a common bane of the IT industry in India.Working with a East coast company means calls can go late into the night but on the positive side the mornings are usually free. Working with a West coast company as I had done in my previous two jobs can often result in calls both in the evenings and mornings. What has helped me cope is that I have been able to motivate myself to wake up and go out for a run or cycling on most days irrespective of the number of hours of sleep. In fact, the discipline of regular excercise has helped me better manage the stress at work. Also, it has helped that I do not travel too often on work - frequent travel can be disruptive to regular running.

Family:
I would not be able to spend so much time on running and running related activities without the support and understanding of my family members. I have been able to ensure that I make time for any specific school or family engagement. I do not believe that any major event or commitment was missed by me due to my running(though I have missed a few due to work). We have also been taking family vacations at a reasonable frequency. It has helped that my children are both teenagers and have not needed much help from me for their studies. As is typical of teenagers nowadays, they prefer to be left on their own rather than have their parents constantly look over their shoulders and they are not morning people. Many a times when I return home after a long run their day is usually just beginning. The last few months have been more stressful than usual: finishing up the flat in Domlur, College admisisons for my daughter and then the shifting of the home and settling down in the new place. Nevertheless, I was able to run the April and May full marathons after a very hectic day before the run and very little sleep the night before. My compulsive obsession with running is now kind of taken matter of factly in our family and everyone adjusts accordingly.

Running:

Marathon running means a high commitment of time during training and the actual event. In the last four years I have run over 20 marathons including the two ultra marathons in Bangalore organised by RFL. Many of these have involved travelling - I have been to Mumbai every year since 2004. I have also run in NJ, Richmond and Washington DC. I managed to take the family on a holiday to the US in 2006 and UK in 2007 while also running the NJ marathon and London marathon respectively. While for the last couple of years I have been doing long runs of over 25Km/two and a half hours regularly I have usually managed to keep myself free at least one of the the two weekend days. Besides the training and the running in events I have also been taking the time to help out RFL - in the organisation of the 1st ultra in December 2007 and then as an active contributor to the RFL core team. I also spend considerable time and effort on running and marathon related surfing on the web.

Dream A Dream :
I first heard about DAD in May 2006 when registering for the Lipton International marathon in Bangalore . After I met with Vishal and couple of their employees then and learnt about the work they were doing I signed up to raise some money for them. Ever since then I have been involved with Dream A Dream one way or another. And it has enriched my life and given me a tremendous sense of satisfaction. I have raised funds using my Mumbai runs of 2008 and 2009 and more recently as a Care Champion in the Sunfeast 10K at Bangalore. I am overwhelmed with the support that I have received from friends and family members from around the world. Of course, the fact that I have been volunteering with the organisation in the IT program and as a mentor has helped me talk to them with conviction about the tremendous impact they are making on the lives of under privileged children in Bangalore. The passion and sincerity of the employees of Dream A Dream and the various volunteers that I have met is quite amazing. Based on my experiences with DAD so far I am more than happy to contribute my bit to spreading the word on running for a cause specially Dream A dream. The story in Outlook moneyis a result of one such effort. I would highly recommend to all runners that they run for a cause that they like. I intend to stay engaged with Dream A Dream and do what I can to help scale the organisation over the next few years.

Au Revoir CV Raman Nagar

A few weeks ago I bid farewell to the running route where I have been doing my weekday runs for nearly 15 years. I discovered the pleasure of running in the DRDO township area soon after moving to HAL 3rd stage in Bangalore in September 1994. During this period, except for a few brief periods of illness/injury, I have pretty much been running in this area 2-3 times a week. And I have seen the area transform tremendously. When I started running here, it was a sparsely populated area with very little traffic. The shade of trees on both sides of the broad road made it one of the best places to run in at least in Bangalore. I moved home from HAL 3rd stage to the 'remote' area of Bhuvaneswari Nagar in 1998. The landscape of the CV Raman Nagar area changed drastically in the early 2000s with the construction of the first building (TI) in Bagmane Tech park, the gas station and the consequent orders of magnitude increase in traffic. With this the DRDO township authorities starting putting restrictions on 'outsiders'. First they restricted cars from going through the township before 7am given the spurt in houses and flats on Kagadaspura road. And then from 2005 or so, non DRDO related personnel were disallowed from walking or running in the township. And since then I have had a few run-ins with the DRDO security staff. Nevertheless, I was able to continue managing to run in the CV Raman Nagar area by running from Bhuvaneswari Nagar via Byrasandra village into Bagamane Tech Park. By now the Tech Park had grown to host nearly dozen companies. And then a few months later the backdoor entry into the Bagamane Tech Park was also kept locked till 7am. For the last few weeks I had to try a few different routes to get my weekday runs and cycling in. My last run in this area was almost a month ago on 14th May - that is the day we moved home from CV Raman Nagar to Domlur Layout.

Since then I have been running in the RFL EGL route or the Inner Ring road area. While this does not have the hassles of the DRDO township security staff, both these routes are quite crowded with pedestrians and BPO vehicle traffic in the mornings. Also, this area is definitely more polluted and less green compared to CV Raman Nagar - I do miss my weekday runs there. I assume in a few weeks from now I will get used to this route and perhaps find some good company of other runners/cyclists from the Indiranagar/Domlur/Airport road area - I have already bumped into a couple of familar faces - Sunil Chainani and Shanavas. Or maybe I will start running in Cubbon Park more often as this is now half the distance from my home than it used to be.

Marathon numbers 11,12,..and tentative plans for the next season

I am left with 2 more more Full Marathons to complete my goal of 12 marathons in 12 months which started with the Hyderabad marathon in August 2008. I plan to do these runs as part of the RFL organised runs on June 28th and July 26th. There is a possibility of travel to my NJ office on work in late June or some time in July. Unfortunately there is no marathon happening in the vicinity of NJ during that period. The ones I located are at least 4-5 hours flight away - that would be inconvenient and expensive. The only possibility is the 24 hour Around the Lake run in Wakefield, MA on Friday July 24rth. For now I am likely to stay with the RFL long runs. Assuming these two runs go well, I am quite tempted to do my 13th consecutive monthly marathon on 30th August in Hyderabad thereby finishing the series in the city where it started (on the eve of my 50th birthday a year ago). The 1st edition of Hyderabad marathon was very well organised and a wonderful experience. The expectation of the 2nd edition is higher and larger number of runners are planning to participate so it should be good fun. During the 30K training run last Sunday(7th June) I had a bit of a niggle in my left hamstring and calf due to which the run was not as satisfying . The stress is probably caused due to my pushing myself at the Sufeast 10K a week earlier. I have also struggled a bit in the subsequent short runs last week. Due to this and a few other reasons I amd giving the 1st edition of BSA Hercules Duathalon on 14th June a miss (the first RFL event I wont be participating in) and focus on completing my full marathons over the next few months. Post the Hyderabad marathon I plan to take a couple of months off from marathon running - giving KTM 2009 a miss and start my next season with the Ultra in November with plans to run Mumbai and Auroville in 1Q2010. That's the medium term plan and some ways off and a number of factors(work, injury, sickness...) could derail this!

Overdue post on the 10th marathon

It is over 3 weeks since I completed my 10th Full Marathon in 10 months at the RFL run in EGL – it has been quite challenging to make the time to write about in detail. I along with Rishikesh and Vasu managed to complete the run in 4 hours 29 minutes aided by wonderful support from Nari , Amrita and Gopal in the form of a mobile aid station. Considering the warm conditions it was a very satisfying performance. It was really great that six others (the above and the doc turned up early morning and we were able to start the run around 5:25am.

In the first loop during which I ran mostly with doc we did 6.1K instead of 5K - the idea was to then do 3 more loops with other RFL runners. Since we started about 10 minutes later than planned we met the RFL runners when we were about 1.5K from the start point. At this point Udaya Kumar joined me in the run. Met a lot of familiar runners in the out and back second and third loops. Also made friends with Ravi from Domlur during the course of the second loop. Was able to complete 32K in about 3 hours 10 minutes. Due to the high demand for water and some oversight on the part of RFL support staff there was no water at the water station in the starting point and I had to get some water from my car. At this point everyone else except myself, Rishi and Vasu dropped out. Rishi and I started the 4rth loop together and in a few minutes Vasu caught up with us. Both of them are very strong runners and helped me keep a steady pace. With Amrita, Nari and Gopal driving through the route supplying water, lemonade and Gatorade at various points on the course the 4rth loop turned out to be a bit easier than I had anticipated. All three of us managed to finished just under 4:30 without pushing ourselves too much. Due to some misunderstanding, no RFL support staff was around when we completed. We hung around for a few minutes and then headed out to New Shanthisagar in Domlur a pretty satisfied lot!

Sunfeast 10K 2009

I had a great 10K run on 31st May 2009 comfortably meeting my goal of completing under 50 minutes. My finish time of 48 minutes 24 seconds gave me a 4rth place in the age category and 107th overall among those who ran with the timing chip. Details of the results are here. (The Split timings at the 4K and 8.5K mark are incorrect - these timings are actually for the 4.5K and 9K points). We(myself, my son Rahul, my brother Chandru, and his son Akshay) drove in Partha’s car and after parking at the UB city parking lot reached Kanteerva stadium by 730am. After a quick group photo, we got inside just in time to see the top elite runners enter the stadium and make a dash to the finish line. Winning time of 28:13 by Ethiopia’s Deriba Merga was slower than last year’s winning time of 27:51 set by Eritrea’s Zersenay Tadesse. The open 10K runners were let onto the track at about 8:05am. The race started on the dot at 8:10 under fairly cool conditions thanks to the showers of the previous night. I consciously started off quite fast to avoid getting stuck with the crowds. I reached the 2Km mark in just under 9:30 and the 5Km mark in about 24 minutes. Having got off to a good start and a steady rhythm I stayed focused on the run. Of course, with a lot of familiar runners on the course there was a fair bit of waving and calling out of names. But I did not chat for long with anyone. While my pace dropped a bit in the second half I was very confident of a sub 50 finish by the time I got to the 6K mark. I slowed down at water stops only a couple of times. The period between the 6K and 9K marks was the toughest. One got second wind while running through the familiar Cubbon Park territory and made a dash into Kanteerva stadium with the Garmin showing 48:39. Surprisingly, for a race that was well organised , the digital clock at the finish line was not working. My brother Chandru finished in 1:06 - he had to slow down in the last 4K due to a stomach cramp. Partha finished in 58 minutes.

Soon after finishing and exchanging Congratulations and timings with a few RFL runners I went inside the VIP invitee lounge looking for my daughter Ritika. We had nice breakfast there and were also fortunate enough to bump into Maurice Green, Milind Soman and Deepika Padukone – the last one being the brand ambassador for the event.

Rahul and Akshay finished the Majja run comfortably in under 40 minutes – the only sour note of the morning was that it took us nearly an hour to locate each other as the place got overcrowded and chaotic once the colourful and noisy Majja run participants started streaming in droves. Nevertheless, it was nice to see so many Bangaloreans pounding the streets on a Sunday morning. Running as a sport in Bangalore has certainly come a long way in the last few years.