TCS World 10K preview

By this time next Sunday the first event of the running season 2011-12 would be over. This is the 4th edition of the  (TCS) World 10K in Bangalore on 5th of June. While my goal is to do my fastest ever 10K , I am not as well prepared as I should be for this event. With continued hectic work schedule my running has been quite erratic. While I have not been able to put in consistent weekly mileage and have struggled in some of my training runs, I have  got in a couple of very good tempo runs including a solo 9K in about 42 minutes. Therefore, I am still hopeful of completing the 10K in under 48 minutes and possibly close to 47 minutes.Apart from inconsistent mileage my left leg calf niggle is another concern - usually I sense the niggle in the middle of the running season. This year I am alleady feeling it maybe due to the larger number of faster,albeit shorter runs.

In the last 3 editions my performance has been as follows:

2008            50:39

2009            48:24

2010            49:05

The route for this year seems to be the same as that of  last year. The website shows a start time of 8am for the open category 10K race exactly 5 minutes after the start of the Women's World 10K - I am very apprehensive about the chaos this is likely to cause at the starting line. Last year with 10 minutes gap between the Women's World 10K and the open 10K event there was a mad rush to move from the holding area to the starting line in the stadium. I hope this part is managed better this year.As a lot will depend on how smoothly I am able to start the race and breakaway from the high density of slower runners. My target is to try and do an even paced raced at about 4:45 per Km which will be quite challenging - this will give me a 47:30 finish which I will be quite satisfied with!! If the 1st two Kms are done at a slower average pace then it will be tough for me to make up. Towards the end of the race it also gets quite warm. In any case it would be disappointing if I am not able to keep my time below 49 minutes!!

Maiden Interval training

Though I have been running long distances since 2002 and have run 31 marathons including 4 ultra marathons I have never done interval training before. Interval training is considered one of the  key training techniques to help improve running speed(others being tempo run and fartlek). As part of the changes towards improvement  this new running season I decided to take up  interval training and try and do it  once a week. In my first attempt I set myself a goal of doing 4 intervals of 1.2Km each in 5:15 each last Tuesday ie 10th May. However, by the time I warmed up and started the 1st interval run I downgraded this to 1Km intervals at 4:30 pace. It was a struggle to do even this. With great difficulty I managed intervals of 4:24,4:31,4:23 and 4:34 and felt quite exhausted at the end. As a result I realised that attempting 1Km intervals straigh away without doing shorter intervals was a mistake. It is advisable to start with intervals of 400m , then 800m and so on. Anyway, having started with 1Km intervals I hope to continue it for a few weeks and see how it goes.

I complemented the interval training with two decent tempo runs - a 10Km in 49:30 and a 16Km in under 1:19. Specially happy with the latter as I started running late (7:15am) after a dinner party the previous night and still managed to keep an average pace of 4:56 for the run. I felt quite good at the end of the run - almost like I could have continued to do a sub 1:45 HM!!

Off-season Musings

It has been one of the worst couple of off-season months- with barely 30 to 35Km weekly mileage. This has been mainly due to mental and physical lethargy and a very hectic and stressful work schedule. The lowest point was when I was unable to get out of bed for two consecutive weekends. I cannot remember the last time this has happened with me though I did manage some cycling on both those weekend. Almost three months after my last marathon at Auroville I did my longest ever run since then -  I clocked 28.5Km running with the BHUKMP gang yesterday: . Hopefully, this is the turning point for me to get back into the groove. With the first race of the season,TCS World 10K, 4 weeks from now and the Hyderabad marathon at the end of August regular training should be easier - specific events certainly increases the motivation level to go out there and train.  

During the last weeks it has not just been low mileage but also the quality of runs has not been great - I have often struggled to sustain a pace that in the past I have done easily before. I attribute this partly to increased mental stress - the state of mind, as we know,  influences the quality of pretty much anything that that a human does. Which means while running improves both the physical and mental state of a runner ,the reverse is equally true - perhaps another topic for a future post. Another reason for this is a slight increase in my weight due to a fair amount of travel in the last 6 weeks. Being a non-meat eater my consumption of cheese,eggs and chocolate/desserts goes up whenever I travel outside the country on work and this leads to easy weight gain. I was away on a 15 days long trip - the longest trip on work in nearly 16 years. While I did get a decent amount of excercise during this period including a few runs in the treadmill(which I dont much enjoy) and a fabulous trail run(see below) , I nevertheless gained 3 whole Kilos during the trip going from a low of 59Kgs to slightly over 62! A third reason could be that I have been off my weekly strengthening sessions since the end of January. The Manipal Hospital Department of sports medicine where I have been going for strengthening sessions for the last two years or so.

During the above trip I had a very enjoyable run at the Town Lake trail in Austin, Texas. This trail provides loops of distances varying from 3.1 miles to 10.3 miles to runners and also has a separate trail for cyclists. Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake) is a  reservoir on the Colorado River in Downtown Austin. On 2nd April the day I ran this (along with my manager who is a 3:45 marathoner from Belgium) the weather is quite Bangalore like - about 23/24 degrees celsius. Most of the run was through shaded areas and on a trail. We had to cross the highway just once. I managed a comfortable 21.75Km in a little over 2 hours and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was a pleasure to see so many runners and walkers on the trail a number of them running or walking with their dogs. Have never ever before seen so many dogs being walked together.  I did one loop of 16.5Km+ followed by another of a little over 5Km. Couple of photos that I took from my Blackberry do not do full justice to the pretty trail.

A couple of final points in this longish miscellaneous post. Hats off to Dharam - a very close friend who has taken 6 months off from work to train in the US with the objective of quality for Boston 2012. After several months of intense training under a coach he ran a FM last sunday at an astonishing time of 3:09:46- shaving more than 50 minutes off his previous best timing! Kudos to his coach as well and I am extremely happy that Dharam's hard efforts and focus have paid off. However,unfortunately due to the changes in qualification timing and registration process announced recently by BAA this does not guarantee his qualification. In fact this change has reduced my motivation to train specifically for Boston as I would need to complete a FM in 3:30 in 2014 and this is just impossible.  Here's wishing Dharam the very best for his next FM in a few weeks at San Diago. And finally I am also happy for my cousin Mrs. Raji Srikant who is training for the TCS World 10K with Runners High and is now able to comfortably run 10K.  She had run/walked through her first 10Km at Aurovile three months ago without training. Even more importantly she is enjoying the running and feeling great about it! This of course is not surprising at all.