Month end musings August 2010

August has been a mixed bag. Started the month with the 'Mega' cycle ride to Nandi Hills on 1st August that I enjoyed tremendously. The following weekend , that is, 6th through 8th August I spent in Sankarnagar in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu. During this weekend the Lucozade Urban Stampede was held - the 3rd edition of the event was a great success with participaton from 294 teams from 81 companies and 22 non-corporate teams. Once again Toyota bagged the top two positions. See here for all winners of this edition. Three teams from my company Mformation participated in this years and all the runners had a great time with many of them doing their personal best times. Having been involved in conceptualising and sponsoring the 1st edition of Urban Stampede it is a pleasure to see the event grow in size and stature.

Though I had a couple of very enjoyable runs at Sankarnagar soon after return I started suffering from a niggle in my left quads. Despite the pain the left quads I ran a decent 27K on 15th August at EGL. However, towards the end of that week the quads started to hurt quite a bit. Therefore after consulting with sports-physio Preeti, I decided to skip the RFL Nandi hills run on 22nd August. It turned out to be a great run based on reports and pictures from fellow runners who participated. I can imagine how it must have been - having experienced it myself 3 years ago- the only time I have run up and down Nandi hills. Well, it looks like forgoing the Nandi hills run and a forced lay-off from running and cycling is the price I have to pay for the Nandi Hills cycling during which period I ran 70Km and cycled 150Kms in a space of 8 days. At least that is what I think caused the stress in the quads. The only other possiblity is my shoes. I have over-used my current pair and am trying to break into a new pair - this transition could have also caused the stress. I have stayed with Addidas Super Nova cushion ever since I started long distance running 9 years ago. This model has now been replaced by Addidas Glide. Since I have not had any issue with the Super Nova cushion I assume the likelyhood of the shoe being responsible for the quads strain is low. Ofcourse, one can never tell.

Anyway, for 7 days from 20th to 26th August I stayed off running and cycling - my longest involuntary lay-off since the knee injury of 2003. I do consider myself fortunate to have stayed injury free for an extended period of time and hope that I have the good fortunate to stay with similar frequency of injury related lay-off(which is part and parcel of a runners life!). Forced lay-offs are never fun for a runner - it always makes me feel miserable and low on enthusiasm and energy. One gets the feeling during this period that one is likely to put on weight. Even my truncated strengthening sessions at Manipal did not got too well.

After nearly two weeks I ran a slow 21K today - my left leg (quads and toes) did not feel too good towards the end. Feel very worried and apprehensive about the upcoming Kaveri Trail Marathon and the 2010-11 running season. I had planned the following over the next 6 months:

• 
  
  Kaveri Trail Marathon(KTM) on Sept 19th
• Globeracers Bhati Lakes 100 miler on Oct 17th - 50 miles (tentative)
• Bangalore Ultra on November 14th - 50K if I do 50 miles above or else 75K if I skip the above
• Bangalore Midnight marathon Mid-December - probably a fast HM
• Mumbai marathon - January 16th 2011
• Auroville marathon - Feb 20th 2011

Now, I will  tune the above depending on how my left leg takes the full marathon at KTM. As of today it looks like I will have to skip the 50 miles at Bhati Lakes 100 miler and do the usual 50K at the bangalore ultra. Will know by this time in 3 weeks!

Blissful weekend in Sankarnagar

This post is mainly not about running - it is about my visit to Sankarnagar where I got a couple of good runs in and visited a few temples in the vicinity. I took a day (6th August) off from work to accompany my uncle, Mr. Krishnamurthy, to Sankarnagar in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu. The main purpose was to visit Gita Krishnamurthy Vidyalaya (GKV) - a free school for under-privileged children set up by him and meet with the main trustees of Sri Jai Sankara Educational Trust who are helping setup and run GKV besides running the Sri Jayendra Golden higher Secondary School(SJGHSS). Overall it was a fantastic trip with wonderful hospitality from the hosts Mr and Mrs. Raman. We  were received from and dropped off at Kovilpatti station, put up in a well-furnished guesthouse next to the school and ate excellent food - breakfast was from the hostel next door while lunch and dinner was at our hosts house. Mrs. Usha Raman and Mrs Nirmal have built a great school over the last 25 years with a lot of passion and enthusiasm. In fact I was very impressed with their energy and continuing passion. The school , which is one of the best known instituions in the area,  has nearly 1900 students from LKG to 12th with excellent lab facilities including a computer lab with Internet connection housing nearly 50 desktop systems. The school campus is quite pretty with a Vinayakar temple, a small nursary garden and a nice quadrangle with a stage on one side.  The school has a hostel that houses 68 out of state children and also a separate house that accommodates about 16 children of priests who learn the vedas in addition to studying in the school. About 15% of the students in the school are provided free education.

Gita Krishnamurthy Vidyalaya started functioning in a temporary building where SJGHSS started years ago in June 2009 with 150 students over 3 classes. There is much more demand for seats in the school than the capacity of the school - shows the lacuna in facilities for basic education in interior areas of the country. The goal is to add a new class every year for the next 4 years and also create a permanent building and infrastructure for the school. I hope to help both these institutions with my time and effort and whatever little way I can.

On 6th August evening we visited the Nellaiappar Temple in Tirunelveli - one of the famous (Shiva) temples in Tamil Nadu known for its musical pillars as well as other brilliant sculptures. The temple dates back to 700 AD probably built by a Pandya king with inscriptions dating all the way back to 950 AD . There is also a shrine to Vishnu near the sanctum - one of the few temples where one finds shrines of Shiva and Vishnu together. Next to this temple in the same compound is the Kanthimathi Ambal temple housing a shrine of Parvati. It was a great experience to visit such an old and magnificent temple - my first to this temple.

On Saturday 7th August afternoon we drove an hour to the Tiruchandur Murugan temple - one of the 6 major abodes of Lord Muruga  situated on the shores of Bay of Bengal. The temple is situated so close to the sea that waves from the Gulf of Mannar lap at the eastern perimeter wall of the temple. It is an amazing testimony to the architectural ingenuity of our forefathers of centuries ago- the temple has been in existence since 7th century AD. It was another great experience - this temple was much more crowded and given its size with a number of dieties  it took us a good 2 hours plus to see.

I had excellent runs of 16Km and 11Km respectively on 7th and 8th August mornings. The backroads leading from the guesthouse (across the school building) where we stayed was completely pollution and traffic free. I did not see a single 3 or 4 wheeler till I reached the state highway - about 5.5 Kms to the highway going towards Rajapalyam and about 3.5 Kms to the Kovalpatti-Madurai highway. The latter had much denser traffic and not much fun to run on. The area overall was pretty green and in my first run I even saw a couple of peacocks crossing the road. Stretches of the route had uneven roads and a small stretch was a mud road.Of course, could not avoid being barked at (and chased) by a couple of stray dogs.  Nevertheless, I was glad that I had carried my running shoes along with me.

More on the 1st August Nandi Hills Cycle ride

Group photo before leaving Cubbon Park;Courtesy Prabhakar of GGI

I left home in Domlur Layout a few minutes before 530 am and covered the 7.2Km to Cubbon Park in about 31 minutes at an easy speed of 14Km/hour. I met another rider Jayant coming in from Banarghatta road at the St. Marks Road/MG road intersection. When we reached the assembly point at the Seshadhri library circle there were a few cyclists already  there and more cyclists were arriving from differents parts of the city. Around 615 am we started off after a few group pictures. I rode mostly alone (though I chatted with several cyclists along the way including a few from GGI ) covering the 9.1Km to Columbia Asia hospital after the Hebbal flyover in 26 minutes. While having Lucozade from a  bottle  handed out by a volunteer from Tandem trails I noticed messages and missed call from Vasu.  He was a few hundred metres ahead and decided to wait for me to catch up with him which I did in a few minutes. I learnt that Chandra had dropped out at the last minute. We  rode on together  for about 29Kms in just under 90 minutes till the turn off point from Airport Road towards Nandi hills. En route we took a comfort break when we also refueled ouselves. During this stretch Yogesh Rao of BBC - one of the main organisers of this ride - joined us from behind and after checking that we were doing fine took off at a very high speed. We were quite amazed at the power he was able to generate on his hybrid bike. The ride was generally  comfortable with sporadic traffic - we rode on the shoulder most of the time.

A stretch to the base of Nandi Hills

We ran into a large  bunch of cyclists, including Yogesh Rao, at the turn off point from Airport road. Many cyclists were having breakfast here. Vasu and I decided to press on without  breakfast at this time - I had a bite of the energy bar that I was carrying. The next lap of  13.5 Kms to the base of Nandi was covered in about 50 minutes. The weather continued to be fantastic and with very little traffic this was the best stretch of the ride so far. We encountered a short stretch of gradient which gave us taste of the hill climb that awaited us. We passed the 2nd idly point and reached the base of Nandi hills. At the base of Nandi Hills we saw several cyclists including Shreyas eating breakfast after having done the ride up the hill.  Vasu and I refueled ourselves with water and some Kit-Kats and started the climb up around 9:20am - after about 3 hours since I left Cubbon Park. At the first climb Vasu hit a wall(he had run 27Kms the previous day!) and slowed down quite a bit. On his urging I pressed on. It was quite tough and challenging and I quickly shifted the gears to 1 and 2. For the next 50 minutes or so I alternated between 1 and 2 and 1 and 1 going up at the speed up between 5Km/hr and 10 Km/hr. There was a light mist and intermittant drizzle and the scenary looked even better than normal . Saw several cyclists speeding downhill. While car traffic was low there were quite a few motor bikers going in both directions. Though I felt tired and sore I did not stop even once - however at the last steep turn just as the arch was in sight I took a narrow turn, my cycle slowed down too much and I lost balance and fell. Fortunately for me I got a foothold and avoided rolling down and did not get hurt. Picking myself up immediately I crossed the arch to reach the 'lower top' in about 53 minutes of cycling from the bottom. Drank more than half a bottle of Lucozade and on hearing that hot breakfast and tea was being served on the top I started cycling again after a couple of minutes break. Another cyclist,Upendra(?), gave me company during this stretch. We reached the top in about 10 minutes of real hard  cycling as the muscles were quite stiff and sore by now and the seat was also beginning to hurt a bit. We were directed to the government bungalow for breakfast by some volunteers. While heading towards that a couple of people(Deepak and MJV) recognised me and were kind of surprised to see me as they normally associate me with long distance running and not cycling.

Hot upma and lemon rice was being served in a hall which was filled with cyclists who had conquered the hill that morning. Bhaskar Rao , the transport commissioner of Bangalore and an avid cyclist himself was there chatting with cyclists and ensuring that everyone was being served. In the breakfast room Manjula shouted out to me and cheered the fact that I had done it. It is thanks to Manjula's encouragement that I got the confidence to attempt this. After having some excellent upma and chatting briefly with a few cyclists I decided to start the return leg. I tried to check where Vasu was but could not reach his phone.

The ride downhill, ofcourse, was much easier - I was on gears 2 and 6 most of the time. I moderated my pace and did not go down too fast- never went to 3 and 8 as many cyclists did. On the way down I stopped briefly and chatted with Yogesh - checking whether he knew where Vasu was. I did not time myself downhill very accurately - I probably took around 20 minutes to reach the base. When I found that Vasu was just leaving the top I decided to continue my return journey. However, soon I realised that it did not make sense to make the long trip(which usually seems even longer on the return leg) alone. So I decided to stop and wait for Vasu  a few Kms from the base. We then cycled the return leg together till Mekhri circle. Despite the headwinds , high traffic, a couple of voluntary stops to rest and refuel and a few forced stops due to traffic lights we made steady progress at about 17 Kmph. I was extremely glad that we decided to ride back together. It would have been boring and more painful ride if I had ended up doing it alone. Vasu's company was simply fabulous and we chatted about a number of different topics during the 6 hours or so that we cycled together. We split around 2:15 PM when we reached Mekhri circle. I reached home just after 3PM after  stopping at 5 traffic lights enroute - fatigued but happy with the great experience of  having cycled  133Kms in 8 hrs 15 minutes of cycling time in a total of 9 and a half hours of elapsed time door to door!! 

While it took me about 53 minutes to cover the 7.4Kms from the base to the arch several experienced cyclists did this in amazing timings with the top three doing it in less than 25 minutes. Also once cyclist, Prakash S, did the climb three times in incredible timings of 35 m, 42m , and 37m respectively !

Quick update on the 'Mega' Nandi ride on 1st August

Just after a hot breakfast on the top; Photo courtesy Manjula Sridhar

The  longest ever cycle ride that I have done was fantastic. From home-to-home I cycled about 133 Kms in 8 hrs 15 minutes of cycling time on Sunday 1st August including the climb up the hill which took me over 53 minutes. With over 120 cyclists on the road to Nandi ,fantastic support from Brigadier Vijay's army truck as well as folks from Tandem Trails, great encouragement from Yogesh and other cyclists from BBC  and Vasu of BHUKMP for company it was a truly memorable experience! I plan to write more details of the experience in my next post hopefully before the end of next week. Meanwhile, take a look at this post with photos from GGI  - another fantastic cycling group that I got introduced to on Sunday!. Check this for the hill climb timings of some truly amazing cyclists.