Focus shifts to BQ

Being the only marathon with stringent qualifying times for participation, most marathon runners aspire or even obsess with qualifying and running Boston Marathon. This applies to me as well - my only running goal in 2012-13 is BQ ie Boston Qualification.  The Boston marathon, one of the five world marathon majors,  is the world's oldest annual marathon held on the 3rd Monday of April which is a holiday in MA for Patriots Day. The 1st edition was held in 1897- my goal is to qualify for the 118th edition scheduled for 21st April 2014. Of course, with a reduction in 5 minutes across all age groups for men, the BQ time has become even more challenging from the 2013 edition. I need to complete a FM in under 3:40 after September 2012 to qualify in the 55-59 years age group for the 2014 event (I get into this age group in August 2013).

Personally I feel that if I am unable to hit BQ(sub 3:40)  in the next 12-18 months then it will be impossible for me to qualify - that is this is my last opportunity to achieve this - as age will catch up sooner than later. Therefore, my focus for the next season is BQ - a daunting task considering  I need to shave nearly 10 minutes off my previous best of 3:48:57!

The following is my approach to try and achieve this:

1) Take a break from running and cycling for a few weeks(hopefully max of 4) to recover from the stress in my left glutes and laft calf - this will be my longest break from running since Jan 2004! Will need to be conscious not to put on too much weight - hope to keep it around 62Kgs.

2) Focus on stretching and strengthening - have re-started strength conditioning at Manipal Hospital Department of sports and excercise medicine from Feb 1; have also identified a few glutes strengthening excercises to do.  See here and here.

3) Run very few select races  - will participate in a couple of 10Ks(Contours Womens day run and TCS world 10K)  but do not intend to race in them. Most likely will be skipping Hyderabad marathon and Kaveri trail marathon this year

4) Register to run  a marathon in the US in October 2012 by May. Based on inputs from Marathon Guide and Runners World Jan 2012 list of fastest marathons in North America I am looking at running either the Mohawk Hudson marathon on 7th October or the Baystate marathon on October 21st. Both are considered flat, fast courses which typically have  over 30% of participating runners qualify for Boston!

5) Start training for the October marathon using the 'Run Less,Run Faster' program from FIRST with a target time of sub 3:40 starting June 2012.

There is of course a long and ardous way ahead to achieve my goal - I hope to fully recover from my left glutes and calf stress and give it my best shot!!

A family affair at season ending Auroville 2012

After some hesitation I registered for the HM at Auroville 2012 just before the closing date in early January.

I normally do not travel out of the Bangalore area to run a half marathon -  however did not want to miss the wonderful Auroville experience.  I am glad I participated- my fourth Auroville marathon and the last event of the season 2011-12 was real special – apart from thoroughly enjoying the route, ambience , comraderie of fellow runners and enthusiastic support of the organizers and volunteers this year’s event was a ‘family affair’.  While my two brothers , Mahesh and Chandru, and myself participated in the event in 2011 (I did the FM while my brothers did the Half)  this year  the 3 of us and Mahesh’s wife Lakshmi  all ran the Half marathon.   

I left Domlur in Satish's car along with his wife Vani around 10:30am on Saturday 11th Feb. We were joined by Ashok enroute who was planning to run his first FM. After a lunch break at A2B and a tea break in Tiruvanamalai we reached the visitor's center at Auroville around 5:45PM. As expected the place was buzzing with runners.  Mahesh,Lakshmi and Chandru came soon thereafter and we had a bit of a photo session.

The bib collection barely took a minute. Though we missed the lively session of  ‘Barefoot’ Ted  , the interaction  with runners – mostly from Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad – before and at the pasta dinner  was thoroughly enjoyable. After dinner we reached our hotel Surguru around 9:15PM after buying some bananas on the way. I went to sleep at 10:15PM after discussing our pacing strategy for the HM with Mahesh and reading a few pages of 'Born to run'. Unlike in the case of Hyderabad 2011 and SCMM 2012 I was not nervous at all. This was because I was not targeting an agressive time goal. I woke up at 4:15am while Chandru was already up and about. We left the hotel in Mahesh's car at 5:25am and reached the Auroville visitor's center parking lot by 5:45am. It was still quite dark  - this year there were tubelights along the way from the parking lot to the start point instead of lanterns.  After using the wash room we made our way to the starting point.

Mahesh and Lakshmi at the visitors center before heading to start point

 Mahesh and myself positioned ourselves near the 10KM/hour speed  point . Segregation of runners based on their target speed or pace was a welcome innovation at this year’s race specially with growing participation in the event. There were  over 800 HM runners out of a total of over 2000 runners across all events. My goal was to pace Mahesh to try and help him beat his PB of 2:13 that he achieved  a few years ago. All his recent HMs have been in about 2:19 or so.

It seemed more humid than I expected as we took off at 6:15am at under 6 minutes per Km pace. The route was brand new taking into account the higher participation as well as the havoc Cyclone  Thane had caused in Dec 2011. HM runners this year were to run two loops of  10.15Km each while the FM runners did 3 looks of about 13.8K each. 

Mahesh and myself stuck together and hit the 10Km mark on target in 61 minutes. Except for one stretch the route – almost 100% trail - was quite broad for multiple runners to run together. It was mostly flat – just one gradient of any significance. The aid stations were well spaced out and stocked and the volunteers at these stations were as supportive and encouraging as ever. The route was better marked then last year (I missed a turn during the FM last year – I learnt that a couple of HM runners lost their way this year too) and the drum beats from ‘Swaram’ added to the unique environment. The only flaw was the incorrect calibration of the route with both the HM and FM runners running more than the required distance. It was sad to see fallen trees and broken branches along the way reminding us of the impact of the cyclone a few weeks earlier. Mahesh slowed down quite a bit after the 13Km mark and started to do run/walk more frequently.  I coaxed him on till 18Km trying to keep the average pace below 6:10 per Km but realized that sub 2:10 was not going to happen. At around 18.5Km when Mahesh felt a bit giddy and slowed down considerably I decided to leave Mahesh to complete the run at his comfort pace and sprinted ahead to finish in a  time of just under 2:15. My first two Kms of the race and the last two Kms were the fastest. Though the finish time was much slower than my PB of 1:44 at Mysore in October 2011 I felt quite stressed with my left glutes and calf at the end of the race.  This is the only race that I stop and take pictures in – took nearly a dozen of them during the race this year. The quaint hand crafted doll medal that all finishers got was really cool. Mahesh finished a couple of minutes after me  in 2:17 followed by Chandru and then Lakshmi.  Though Mahesh was a bit disappointed it was a good performance considering we ran about 400m extra - most garmins showed 21.5Km for the half.

Mahesh is in action

Mahesh is in action

Lakshmi sprinting to the finish line

Udaya and Giri in action

We hung around mingling with other runners while having breakfast and taking pictures. Out of the 11 runners who started training in November 2011 using the 'Run Less,Run Faster' program from FIRST 6 particiapted in the event. Of these six met their timing goals - others did not due to either injury or because of not having a great race day. However, uniformly they all enjoyed the structured training program and are likely to be continuing with the same in future also. We returned to our hotel rooms by 11:15am resolving to come back again next year! And this is pretty much true of everyone who has ever run at Auroville – I don’t know of any runner who did not enjoy the experience and did not want to come back again and again to ‘Run for the Joy of Running’ as the last event of the long distance season. On my part I need to take some time off from running and work on strengthening my glutes and calves.

We left Pondicherry after lunch at about 1:30PM and reached home around 8:45PM. Ashok had completed his first full marathon(actually 42.3Km) in under 6 hours - a great achievement for a trail marathon specially considering he had never beyond 25Km before. Vani and Satish (who drove both ways) also had good half marathons .

SCMM 2012 - A missed opportunity

I did manage my PB  in my 29th Full Marathon at SCMM 2012 on 15th January. However, finishing  in  a time of 3:48:57 four minutes slower than my target time was a big disappointment. Considering the early 5:40am start, pleasant weather by Mumbai standards, no glitches in the race  organisation during the run, the fact that I reached the 35Km mark around   3:06  without too much stress on my glutes and calf muscles and that I did not have to take a leak break during the run I should have pushed a bit harder the last 5Kms for a better finish time! Of course, one can rationalise with  ifs and buts - and though weaving through the slow HM runners rather walkers on Marine drive on the return leg did impact my rhythm a bit I think I lost the battle more mentally  than physically.  Given that this was just my 2nd FM race of the season(I do not race at the Bangalore Ultra) and I had trained hard for a sub 3:45 I missed a good opportunity to acheive that.

As has been my usual routine I reached Mumbai on Friday 13th Jan night. I reached WTC for the bib collection on Saturday morning 1130am. At the gate I bumped into a number of runners coming out after picking their bibs - doc Rajat Chauhan, BHUKMP'ers Rishi,Nari, Vasu, Chandra etc and then Sunil Chainani. Met several more in the bib collection queue -   Naina Lal, Asha Arora, Madhumita, BB Patil, Prakhar etc. The bib collection process was smooth - though due to the change in  schedule we outstation runners did not get to see the expo this year.  After collecting the bib I joined Dharam and Sanjay for a pasta lunch at Moshe's before returning to Govandi by 4PM. Dharam was not running his own race and agreed to pace me for a 3:45 finish. He and I discussed our pacing strategy for the race over lunch - 21K in 1:48/1:49, 30K in 2:35 and 35K in 3:03 or so.

Saturday evening was spent with the usual pre-race jitters and nerves.  After a noodles dinner around 830pm I went sleep at 10pm. As usual I woke up just before my alarm rang at 3:10am. The security in the front gate was able to send in an auto at 4am. I caught the 4:17am local train at Chembur to reach VT station at 4:55am. I had 3 small bananas before leaving home and a 4rth one and a few almonds enroute to VT on the train.  Met Latha Narayan and Bhasker Desai there heading towards the start point. After using the rest room and greasing my legs with Vaselin I entered azad maidan at 5:10am.  As expected it was buzzing with the energy of runners getting ready to start the FM. Met lots of  familar runners. Checked in my bag, streteched a bit, took one last leak and headed to the start area at 5:25am. At 5:35am the gate opened and while runners were supposed to line up as per assigned enclosures(something new at SCMM this year)  the volunteers were unable to enforce this. I was assigned enclosure A and managed to get to the front of the pack. 

The race was flagged off at 5:40am and I took off a bit fast completing the first Km in 5:02. Dharam, Neera and I started together - Dharam kept warning me that we had started too fast. We settled into a rhythm of average pace of between 5:05 and 5:15 per Km.  A stray dog ran a bit ahead of us at this pace attracting the attention of the spectators. I felt that in the first half of the race the crowd support was thinner compared to the past years - perhaps due to the earlier start. This time when we reached the sea link at the 15th Km the sun had not come out. We crossed a huge swathe of HM runners in the other lane.  We ran quite steadily and reached the 21K mark pretty much on target in 1:49.  We saw Milind Soman a little ahead of us. At this point in time Dharam took off leaving Neera and me behind. Neera and I continued pretty much together till the Peddar road flyover at the 35th Km going past Milind. We slowed down considerably at the flyover and at this point Neera fell a little bit behind. Between 36K and 37K I managed to pull ahead of Dharam and saw Sid a bit ahead of me. This is where the slower HM runners/walkers took over the entire road impacting my momentum. I realised that 3:45 was definitely not going to happen and was targeting  3:47. Around the 39th Km I caught up with Sid. However, just as he did at Mysore half marathon in Oct 2011 Sid got inspired by seeing me next to me and pushed ahead with renewed energy. This is where I lost the battle mentally. While the legs were tired the left glutes and calf did not bother me much - so I am not sure why I could not push harder. I did feel a bit giddy though - possibly because I did not consume my usual energy bar. The couple of cups of gatorade seems to have been inadequate. I managed the last Km in 5:42 to get across the finish line a few seconds behind Sid(having started the race late Sid actually had a timing 1.5 minutes faster than me) quite exhausted.  For some unknown reason there are no official pictures of mine this year from Marathon-photos. The photos below after the finish are thanks to Madhumita.

A number of my friends did their PB this year - many of them doing sub 4 and also shaving tens of minutes of their previous best. Of course, the whole field seems to have got faster - the weather and the route would have helped apart from better training ofcourse. I finished 78th overall out of 1442 finishers with an age category place of 20.  See here for some interesting  statistics on this year's run.  This year's event was pretty much well organised - except for the chaos to get inside Azad maidan after the finish. There was one narrow entrance and too many tired runners trying to get in. There were more pacers this year - see http://tanvirkazmi.com/ for a detailed write-up of a 5:30 pacer.