After a little over 3 months since I did the posting on ideal racing weight based on some research I had done on the Internet, it is time to take stock. I am pleased to state that for the last 2 weeks my weight is consistently lower by about 5 Lbs moving from a little over 140lbs to around 135 Lbs. The factors responsible for this,in the order of probable impact, are:
Consistent running, cycling and strengthening sessions for the last 6 weeks
Eating heavy brekafast, followed by a lighter lunch with dinner being the lightest meal
Lower calorie lunch during week days due to my taking lunch from home instead of eating the catered food in the office cafetaria
Slight reduction in my consumption of fried foods and desserts
One thing that is highly recommended for weight loss is to eat smaller meals more often.This simply does not work for me. I am usually not able to eat small meals. Either I dont eat or I eat a substantial quantity whether it is a snack or a meal- nothing in-between. I hope to keep the weight at this level now and try and get it as close to 130 Lbs as possible over the next few months. I have not checked the body fat percentage but I assume it is a bit lower now.
P. Venkataraman of Mumbai runners has an interesting and in-depth discussion thread going on weight loss and running. A couple of good resources from this thread:
So far my experience of ultra running is limited to the three 50Km runs at the Bangalore ultra. After reading about the stupendous accomplishments and experiences of Indian runners at Comrades Marathon 2010 I am inspired to run a few ultra marathons around the world. To start with , I have added the Comrades Marathon ,considered arguably the greatest ultramarathon in the world with the tag line of 'the ultimate human race', to my longterm running goals. The first Comrades Marathon took place on 24th May 1921 starting outside the City Hall in Pietermaritzburg with 34 runners. It has continued since then every year with the exception of the war years 1941-1945, with the direction alternating each year between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, the so called up & down runs. Now it attracts thousands of runners from around the world. Here is some amazing statistics from the event in 2010 which as the 85th edition.
Entries: 23568 Entrants who met the qualifying criteria: 17627 Starters: 16480 Finishers: 14343
The Comrades has a qualifying criteria which includes completing a full marathon within 5 hours. Apart from the distance of 89Km an additional challenge is to complete the race within a time limit of 12 hours and also reach interim milestone points within specified time limits failing which runners are taken off the course. Keeping in mind my goal of running Boston marathon in April 2014 I would probably look at doing the Comrades in May 2012.
While the Comrades marathon is one of the best known ultra marathons, there are hundreds of other ultra marathons held in Asia, Europe and Americas. Other very well known and extremely challenging ultras are the Western State endurance run and Badwater ultra. Closer home a popular ultra is the Addidas Sundown marathon which is a 84Km night race held in Singapore. And another spectacular race is The Himalayan 100 mile stage race. Also Globalracers is now organising some interesting and challengin multi-day endurance event sin India.
My 1st ever experience of a duathlon event on 13th June 2010 was great. As is now the norm and expectation the event was organized very well by Runners for Life. The collection of bibs at the Track and Trail store in Koramangla on Saturday(12th June) morning was a smooth affair well managed by A2, Nikhil, Ashwin and other support staff. I had decided to take complete rest the two previous days(Friday and Saturday) before the event. This has been my practice whenever I participate in an event with a timing target. In this case I was even reluctant to cycle down a Km or so on Saturday morning to fill air in my cycle. That is also the reason why I decided not to use the RFL option of transporting the cycle to the venue as it would have meant cycling 6-7 Kms to drop it off and also to pick it up. Besides I wanted to take care of transporting my new Schwinn Searcher Sport bicyle myself.
Five of us(myself, my son Rahul, Satish, Ashok and Neera) left Domlur layout just before5:15 after loading our bicycles on a tempo. We reached the venue Prakruthi resorts a little after 6am. Unloading the cycles we wheeled them to the transition area and parked them in pre-marked areas there after duly registering the cycles. This is the first RFL event with chip timings. Also this being a multi-sport event(with running and cycling of course) A2 explained in detail what to do(and not to do) in order for participants to get accurate and detailed split timings. The route was also explained in detail with the running and cycling happening in opposite directions - the runners going towards the Airport road and the cyclists the other way. After brief speeches by the marketing head of TI cycles (the title sponsor ) and Bhaskar Rao - Bangalore's transport commissioner and an accomplished runner and cyclist himself the latter flagged off the long category run at 7am.
I made a strong start to the 5K run clocking the 1st Km in just over 4 minutes - helped by the pace set by several fast runners and the cool weather. Of course, that was not a pace I could sustain.Nevertheless, I completed the 5Km in 22:55 my fastest ever 5K beating the 24:34 in Urban Stampede 2008 by 91 seconds!!
I managed to grab my cycling helmet and the cycle and start cycling after a transition time of about 1 minute 36 seconds. It took me 52: 40 to complete the two 10Km loops. I think I did each loop in roughly the same time at an average speed of 22Kmph. With both the event category cyclists on the road concurrently, at times the narrow road became fairly congested and one had to ride a bit carefully. Plus the occasional car, bike or truck was also a bit of a pain specially when they honked. It would have been better if the traffic had been blocked for about 2.5 hours but that is easier said than done due to the complex permissions and also the challenges of actual implementation. The faster cyclists specially those with road bikes were cycling at amazingly high speeds. I found the area near the 5K cycling turnaround point very cluttered as the aid station was also at that point. I had to actually get off my cycle at the turn point losing a few seconds in the process. This has to be wider so that the cyclists who do not want to stop at the aid station do not get hampered. Also, the turn around points both for running and cycling could have been marked explicitly with a chalk mark. However, overall it was a good fun experience. While my performance would definitely have been better with a road bike I feel I need to improve my cycling efficiency. And of course it would have been much tougher with a MTB or worse a single gear bike like the one Rahul used. I lost quite a bit of time in the transition area the second time around as my cycle would not stand on its own and kept falling down. This was due to the cycle stand not having a bush and the metal stand sinking into the damp mud. Finally after 5 attempts I pushed the cycle against a tree close by and started to move out of the transition area and towards the start area.
This was my first week with my new Garmin 305 after the previous one had died after nearly 3 users of usage. And of course this was the first event with it. In my enthusiasm of setting up the new unit I discovered the multi-sport mode functionality of the device and decide to use that in the duathlon. However, in my hurry to get going with my 2nd leg of running I pressed the power off button instead of the mode button and so instead of switching back from cycling to running mode the device switched off. I immediately switched it on and rushed to the start area leaving it in the cycling mode. In this process I lost a few more seconds of time.
Therefore, it was not a big surprise to me that the split timings showed that I took 2:29 in the 2nd transition. Most others had transition times below 2 minutes both times. For detailed timings including all splits click here.
I started the 2nd 5Km run with stiff and sore legs. Honda-San (the Japanese super ultra runner) led the way encouraging and cheering me and all the runners we saw along the way. His enthusiasm and energy was incredible. While I struggled to keep up with Honda-San I focused on keeping my pace below 5 minutes per Km. It was specially difficult during the return leg as my hamstrings began to hurt. It was a big relief to turn back into the Prakruthi entrance and finish the race to the cheering of lots of friends with my Garmin showing 1:43:44. The official timings showed that I finished in 1:44:44(the 2nd 5K taking 24:33) - 21st overall and 4rth in my age category. While I was a bit disappointed that I ended up finishing at the higher end of my target timing of between 1:40 and 1:45 and missed the age category 3rd place by less than half a minute, I was overall quite satisfied and enjoyed the experience thoroughly. The top three finishers in the event finished in amazing timings of under 1:19 - completing the 20 Km cycling in under 40 minutes and each 5Km leg well under 20 minutes !!! Neera Katwal who rode with us to the event showed amazing grit and perseverance. Despite falling off her cycle and injuring herself due to a crash between two cyclists in front of her cycle, she won the women's category finishing in 1:47:46. My son Rahul also completed his 1st duathlon in 1:16:41 in the short category - a wonderful achievement to add to his 1st 10K at the SW10K 2010 in May.
With Vikas Grover
As always it was fantastic to cheer and meet and a lot of familiar friends and runners both during the race and in the finish area. And of course, kudos to Honda-San for pacing and cheering the runners on-the-run and Nitin Gupta for enthusiastically cheering everyone at the turning point to the resort. After hanging around for some time and taking a few pictures we re-loaded the cycles on the tempo just as the prize distribution ceremony was underway around 10am and headed back on the long road home reaching Domlur just after 11:30am.
In my previous post I wrote about the clutter and chaos at the start of this race. With the growing number of runners the organisers must seriously think of either wave starts or have runners line up at the starting point in groups based on their past finish times. This practice is followed in many international races with large number of participants. For this to be feasible at the SW10K a longer lead time is required between the time runners move out of the holding area and the start of the race .
However, apart from this issue I must say that from the overall organisation perspective the race was quite satisfactory.There was complete traffic control, there were aid stations every few Kms and also Km markers. I noticed portable toilets in at least one location on the route and there was even a water shower to relieve runners from the heat though I did not run through it. There were water counters right next to the finish point and refreshment counters had streamlined queues, that is, the finish area was well managed.There was a bit of confusion and some errors when the chip timings and photos were first uploaded - even now a few runners are unsatisfied with their timings.
My official chip timing was 49:05 - pretty much what I had expected. I ranked 222 overall and 6th in my age category(50 to 59).RFL and BHUKMP runners Honda-San and Pani finished 1st and 2nd respectively in this category - kudos to these amazing runners! BTW - this is probably the first event that I ran without a cap. I have decided that the cap is more a hindrance rather than an advantage for shorter distance events(5K/10K) where one is trying to complete at an average pace faster than 5 minutes per Km. Rahul's official chip timing was 1:18:42. Official results are available here.
Rahul, Akshay, Chandru in the holding area before the race
