48 hours to Midnight marathon 2010

With just about 48 hours to go for this year's edition of Bengaluru Midnight marathon I do not feel as prepared and ready as I would like to be. With 2 birthdays, a wedding in Chennai and a small holiday in Mahabalipuram I have done less running than normal and much more eating than normal in the last 2 weeks. This has resulted in my adding about 4 Lbs of weight since this year's ultra . As a consequence I am quite apprehensive about bettering my time of  1:46:03 from last year. My goal is/was to run below 1:45 , that is, at an average pace of 4:58. It is certainly going to be very challenging. In general my body finds it much more difficult to sustain a fast pace for a longer period of time as compared to doing an average, steady pace for longer distances.  My strategy is going to be to try and do the first half  in under 52 minutes and the second in a bit over 53 minutes.

Hopefully the organisation of the race will be at least as good as last year.  The route is going to be the same. With an out and back loop of 2.1 Km traffic control and aid station support should not be an issue. I hope this time there are no volunteers at the turnaround point wanting to mark the bib of runners with ink. This was very annoying last year and  impacted the momentum of runners which anyway is affected by so many turnarounds. The short loops are also a  bit  boring more so for the  runners doing the FM which includes many of my friends from  RFL .  I have decided to run only HM in this event and use it as a tempo run for the FM in Mumbai in January.  While this event is not as well organised as RFL events it is reasonably popular being only one of two road races in Bangalore(the other one is the 10K held in May). Of course running at night, though not palatable to all runners,  is a unique experience!