Musings of a maverick Bangalore runner

'Final Countdown' to Mumbai numero 9

2012-01-08T22:48:00.001+04:30

The next 6 days leading up to my Seventh Full marathon at the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon on 15th January(9th run at SCMM including the Half-Marathons in 2004 and 2005) is going to be quite nerve wracking- I can sense the tension building up since Saturday(7th) evening. I was pretty much in the same state last year also. From my 4:42:28 finish in SCMM 2006 to the 3:52:48 in 2010 I have been successful in beating my goal every year specially at Mumbai with significant improvements in the last three years. However, this year's target of 3:45 looks daunting. This is the second Full Marathon that I have trained using the 'Run Less,Run Faster' program from FIRST. As per the race prediction table in the book I should be able to do a FM in 3:43:49 as my best HM time is well below 1:46:36( 1:43:33 at Mysore HM in Oct 2011). Nevertheless, in my previous FM of this season at Hyderabad, which was the previous FM for which I ahd trained using the FIRST program, I struggled to finish in 3:51:48. I ran a very fast first half in this race(1:45:17) which took its toll in the second half given the elevations in the course.

To finish within 3:45 I need to do an average 5:18 per Km pace. I am as yet unsure about the race strategy to adapt this year. That is, whether to try and do almost even splits that I managed last year or to try and do a fast first half and sustain a good pace till 35Km. Given the way my pace has dropped in the last few Kms in the past , one option is to get to 35Km in 3:04 at an average pace of 5:15 per Km. This would leave me about 40 minutes for the last 7.2 Km at an average pace of 5:40 per Km. Last year I got to 29.9Km in under 2:44 at 5:28 per Km. I certainly need to be much faster this year. If I were to aim for even splits then I am looking at 21K in 1.51, 30K in 2:39 and 35K in under 3:06. So my goal will be to get to the half way mark between 1:46 and 1:50, 30K between 2:35 and 2:39 and 35K in as close to 3 hrs as possible. Of course, despite all the hard training of last several weeks(which has mostly gone well) a lot depends on the next few days and the race day itself. One needs to get to the race day adequately rested both mentally and physically. This means very little running and cycling the next four days(I will do one easy 9K and another easy 7K on Tuesday and Thursday this week and nothing after that) and reasonable amount of sleep every day with no undue tensions at work. On the race day itself there is a major dependency on the weather being favourable. One is hoping it will be at least as good as it was last year. The earlier start of 5:40am should help though the weather forecast as of now says it will be 23 Celsius at 6am going up to 27 by 10am! Finally to have a near perfect race one is praying there would be no issues with the stomach on race day , no recurrence of severe cramps and ache in the left glutes and hamstrings and the shoelaces don't come off(well even a few seconds matter!). I may even avoid taking a leak during the race or chewing on a energy bar and depend only on water and Gatorade to shave a few seconds - I will carry the bar with me though and decide during the course of the race. In races where I have a stringent time target I avoid talking to runners and try and stay focused on my pace - something that is tough to do at Mumbai with so many familiar runner friends. Familiarity with the route should help. After some speculation in the press that the route might be changed this year it looks like it is going to remain the same as last year with the sea link round the 25th Km.

I would of course be thrilled to hit my target of 3:45; finishing a minute or so below 3:50 would be satisfying; not bettering my PB of 3:51:48 would be a disappointment. One will know by this time next week. Here's wishing all friends running SCMM 2012 a great race!!

2011 Year End musings (of a runner)

2011-12-31T16:58:00.001+04:30

With just a few more hours of 2011 left it is once again time to reflect on the year gone by and and look ahead at the goals for 2012(see here for 2011 goals and here for revised goals for running season 2011-12) . By and large it was another good year of running - I continued to make some fantastic new runner friends in addition to strengthening the bond with existing friends. It was the 3rd consecutive 2000Km+ year and I participated in all the events that I had targeted for the year doing one 10K, three Full Marathons, one Ultra, two half marathons and 63Km+ at Strides of Hope and achieving PB times for a 10K,HM and FM. I stopped the strengthening at Manipal Hospital since February 2011. However, I continued cycling twice a week for cross-training albeit this year all my cycling was on a stationary bicycle in the gymn - I did not cycle outdoors even once in 2011. Since April 2011 I have been training formally using the FIRST based 'Run Less, Run Faster' program. It has certainly given a structure to training for a specific time goal. However, I have realised that the program is very rigorous and in order to meet my goals it is absolutely essential to supplement the '3Plus2' cardio training with strengthening excercises specially for the glutes, hamstrings and core. I started and end the year with the same weight of just under 60Kgs.

2011 Highs

Going below 3:55 for the first time at SCMM 2011 with a time of 3:52:47

Sub 46 minutes 10K at TCS 10K 2011

The FIRST training retreat in Greenville,SC

The runners party to bid farewell to Richie and Honda-San

2011 Disappointments

Falling well short of my goal of 3:40 at Hyderabad marathon 2011

Stressed left glutes,calf and hamstrings hampering the push to improve my FM timings

'Running Buddy' not progressing as per plan

Having to stop after 63Km at Strides of Hope falling well short of the goal of 120Km+ in 24 hours

2012 Goals

A sub 3:45 at SCMM 2012 (looks very challenging as of now)

Boston Qualification at a fall marathon in the East Coast of the US in Sept-Oct

50Km at the Bangalore Ultra

I have not yet decided whether to do the HM or FM at Auroville 2012 - will probably register for the FM and make a call later after the Mumbai marathon. It is quite amazing to see the proliferation of running events around the country with at least one event happening pretty much every month of the year. There has also been considerable increase in media coverage on running in general and marathoning in particular. Including an(absurd) recent article quoting medical research that says that marathoning is bad for the heart and could actually kill. I do intend to research and post more on this topic in the future. Meanwhile, here is a nice counter from Dr. Rajat - an amazing sports doctor and an even more incredible runner!

On the professional marathoning front the world record for a FM got beaten by over 30 seconds in 2011 as the Kenyans continued to dominate. All five world marathoning majors had new course records this year!

As always I hope to start 2012 with a run on Janaury 1 - this year my goal is to do a 21K at target marathon pace ie 5:18 per Km. This is an important run to gauge the chances of acheiving my goal in SCMM 2012. Also I did very little running in the last week of 2011 - just one interval run- so all the more critical to start 2012 well. Here is wishing all my friends a very Healthy, Injury-Free and Safe 2012! May everyone achieve their goals whether in running or otherwise!!

Training Run at Midnight marathon 2011

2011-12-26T09:07:00.000+04:30

I had planned to do my penultimate long run before SCMM 2012 at the Midnight marathon 2011 on 11th December. I registered for the half-marathon again just as I have done the last two years. Rahul and I went to the KTPO parking lot in Whitefield and collected the bibs around 1030am on 10th morning. Preparations were underway for the event with the various banners going up. My goal was to do 32Km in just under 3 hours at an average of 5:37 per Km. This meant doing at least 7 and not more than 8 loops of 4.2Km each.

After a busy morning I rested most of the afternoon. Rahul and I left home 7PM to pick up my Dream A Dream mentee David and his friend Mahesh. This took some time as they were waiting at a bus stop in IRR instead of at the Domlur bus stop on old airport road. After seeing one of the posts on my runs on Facebook, David informed me that he had started running and wanted to run in an event. He readily took the opportunity to run 5Km at the Midnight marathon. His friend Mahesh who had come with him for company decided on the way to Whitefield that he would also like to run. Fortunately there was an extra 5Km bib available which I was planning to use. At Brookefield we picked up Abhi (my brother's son) and reached the parking area in Whitefield by 745PM. The parking area was huge with volunteers directing vehicles. It was 5 minutes walk from the parking area to the holding area where there were a few food stalls. Also, there was a stage where a band was playing live music and announcements were being made. We took a few pictures here.

Mahesh,David,Myself and Abhi

The 5Km event was flagged off at 830PM. David and Mahesh took off very fast. I ran the first loop of 2.5Km with Abhi who ran a pretty steady pace. I then waited on the course and ran the last 100m of the second loop with Abhi who finished his 1st 5Km in a very creditable under 35 minutes!! David and Mahesh seemed to have run their 5Km very quickly and ended up doing a 3rd loop for a total of 7.5Km in under 30 minutes!! At the end of it they felt they should have run 10Km - I told them they could do that at the TCS 10K in June 2012.

Mahesh, David and myself ate a Dosai each - after which I dropped them and Abhi at Brookefield. I was able to come back and park my car easily at 10PM - just as the 10Km event kicked off. I waited patiently at the turn around point to try and shoot Rahul in action. Though I saw him in each of his loops I was not quick enough to take pictures. There were quite a few other runners standing at the turn around point and it so happened that just before Rahul came by I got distracted by conversation with one or the other runner friend. I did manage to take a photo of the Ethiopian who finished first in men's 10K in about 32 minutes and a few of Rahul when he was quite exhausted at the end of his run. He finished in a very reasonable time of 1:07:46 considering that he had not done even a training run since the TCS 10K in June 2011.

The HM and FM was flagged off at midnight - there seemed to be a few hundred runners. We had to do an out and back loop of 4.2Km , that is 2.1Km out and back. The route had several turns - however overall I liked it better than the route of the previous years. The road was wider and the divider was broad enough for the traffic on the other side to have no impact on the runners. Plus the run did not disturb people in a residential area. Except for the turns the route was not tough despite a couple of long, steady gradients. I did 12.6 Km(3 loops) in 1:09 at an average pace of 5:28 per Km. As always in an out and back course of multiple loops one meets familiar runners multiple times which adds to the comraderie and motivation. I was able to pretty much sustain my pace doing the HM(5 loops) in 1:56:28 at an average of 5:30 per Km. However, after that my pace started to drop rapidly as the left glutes and hamstrings started hurting quite a bit. My stomach also ached on and off. The next 11.2Km took me 69 minutes at an average of 6:10 per Km. Overall I completed 32.3Km in 3:06 - about seven minutes slower than target. The last 3-4 Kms was a real struggle and has me quite worried and disappointed. With this kind of running the target of 3:45 in Mumbai looks quite impossible. Not sure what excuses to make for this. I had been on my feet since 7:30PM well before start of the race and had not eaten a proper dinner . Also, for the first time in a long while I did a 25Km+ run without eating a couple of bananas ; on top of that I had forgotten to get an energy bar. Several runners did very well - Athreya lapped me a couple of times on his way to a FM in his PB time of 3:06 - the first Indian male to complete. Neera was the first Indian woman to complete the FM in 3:52. And Vaishali was the first Indian woman to finish the HM!

Since the midnight run on 11th December I did my last 30Km run in GKVK on 24rth December. Again I had a fairly comfortable run till about 25Km but had to slow down considerably after that struggling to do 35Km in under 3:15. It is clear that I need to take some time off from long distance running and focus on strengthening my glutes and hamstrings. I definitely intend to do this after SCMM 2012 in Janaury.

5th Bangalore Ultra

2011-12-25T19:01:00.000+04:30

As mentioned in my previous post I thoroughly enjoyed the 5th edition of Bangalore Ultra finishing 3rd in the open category in 5:24:17 well behind stalwart runners Athreya and Honda-San. The run went as per plan -I completed the first 25K in 2:24:24 and the second 25K in just under 3 hours. I missed my PB by a couple of minutes - though this is not that relevant as at the Ultra I usually do not push myself and also take longer breaks at the aid stations and chat up with fellow runners. Also, the new route was tougher with several turns and a long stretch that was specially gruelling and quite brutal with stones and roots strewn across. I was lucky not to hurt myself though I tripped a few times in the 3rd and 4rth loops.

Though several runners did not like this route I thought it was quite a good change from the route of last few years. It was harder on the legs for sure and a few runners did hurt themselves. But that's all part of the challenge.

We(myself , Ravi,Rajesh and Satish) left Domlur just before 430am and reached ONV by about 535am despite getting lost a bit on Tumkur road. There were quite a few cars parked already and we had a fairly long walk to the start area. By the time I got changed into my shoes, used the restroom and deposited my bag at the baggage counter it was under 10 minutes for the race to start. A1 and A2 were on the podium talking to the runners. As usual met a number of runners from across the country including Tanvir from Delhi and Bhasker Desai from Mumbai. It was great to have Madhu - the 'originator'/'founder' of Bangalore Ultra flag-off the 50Km event. Kudos to Madhu for bringing the Ultra to Bangalore!! The 50Km run was flagged off at 6am sharp. Right after the first 100m or so the route was different from the past runs. It was quite cold at the start of the race - the sun came out later and it became quite warm. Sampat and I ran most of the 1st loop together. As usual it was a 6.25Km out and back loop. I crossed Sundar Purush, a 75K runner, completing his 1st loop. Sundar a runner from Chennai lapped me in my 4rth loop on the way to completing his 75K in a an incredible time of 8:23 - amazing time specially for such a tough course. As daylight broke I noticed quite a few familiar 75K and 100K runners - over 30 runners were running these distances!!

The trail was quite narrow in parts - towards the end of my 1st loop and again in the middle of the 2nd loop I bumped into the slower 12.5K/25K runners. I had to slow down considerably to squeeze my way through.

After about 34Km towards the end of the 3rd loop my left glutes and calf started hurting and my pace started dropping quite a bit. The last lap was quite slow taking almost 1:37 at an average pace of nearly 7.5 minutes per Km. The cheering announcer and crowds at the turn around point was an encouragement to keep going.

I managed to come 3rd in the 50K open category because many of the better runners(Sid, Bhasker Desai..) did shorter distances. After the race I hung around with friends before having a wash and lunch. The food was once again below par. We left ONV around 1PM and reached back home around 230PM after another 'Ultra experience'!! I realised that I was one of the few runners who has run 50K+ distance each of the 5 years. The two others I could think of are Athreya and Jacob - the winner of this year's 100K!!

Quick Update

2011-12-08T21:07:00.001+04:30

I had a good run at the 5th edition of the Bangalore Ultra on 13th November 2011 - completing the 50K in 5:24:17 well within my target time of 5:30 and finishing 3rd in the open category. The new course was very challenging with roots and stones strewn across in sections ;however thoroughly enjoyed the experience as usual. Hope to post details with lots of pictures soon.

After a week's break I resumed my training for SCMM 2012 in January and so far it is going quite well. I am using the FIRST based 'Run Less,run Faster' program with a target goal of 3:45. I plan to do this weekend's long run at the 5th edition of the Bangalore Midnight Marathon on 11th December 2011. The Bangallore Ultra, SCMM and Bangalore midnight marathon are 3 events where I have so far maintained a streak , that is, I have participated in every edition of the event so far. I was one of the handful of runners to do the FM at the first edition of the midnight marathon in May 2007. The 2008 edition got postponed to January 2009(due to the Mumbai terrorist attacks ) just a week prior to SCMM 2009. So I did 5Km with my son Rahul that year. Subsequently in 2009 and 2010 editions I ran fast half-marathons as training for SCMM. This year I plan to run 32Km+ at my target training pace of 5:37 per Km. This year the route is new though it is still a 2.1Km out and back course. I plan to do 8 loops if possible. Hopefully the organisers will take the feedback from last year's organisation into account and ensure that there is no chaos at the Bib/timing chip collection and also that the route is marked accurately!

5th ultra experience beckons!

2011-11-06T12:17:00.000+04:30

It has been a poor 3 weeks running wise. I managed a 35Km on 22nd Oct and a 30Km on 29th Oct -the only 30Km+ runs since Hyderabad marathon on 28th August. However my left glutes and left calf were stressed at the end of both these long runs though I did not run either of them too fast. Therefore I went through(albeit briefly) the thought process of whether or not to run in this year's Ultra and if so whether to downgrade to below 50Km. I made up mind pretty quickly to take a chance and do 50Km thereby trying to keep the streak of an Ultra run for the 5th consecutive year.

After collecting my bib today and now with less than 36 hours to go before the event I am less nervous than I have been in the past before an event. This is probably because I have decided not to worry about a time target for the race. I anyway have never run the ultra with aggressive time goal - for me the Ultra is a race to enjoy the route and the comraderie and energy of other runners and have a good time.(It is not , in my personal experience, easy to run a very hard race and also have a good time though of course the joy of beating the time target makes up for it at the end!). In the last 4 editions of the event I have run 52Km, 50Km, 50Km and 75Km respectively and have ended up finishing in the top 3 in my age category. In 2008 I completed the 50K in 5:50 and in 2009 I managed it in 5:22:24. Therefore there is some implicit peer pressure towards timing and a podium finish. However, that is not going to be my primary focus. My priority is to enjoy the race,finish strong and ensure the strain in the left glutes and left calf does not get worse so that I can start training for Mumbai 2012 in right earnest a week after the ultra. Having said that ,if all goes well, I do hope to finish between 5hrs 15 minutes and 5hrs 30minutes. I am intending to do the 1st 25Km in about 2:25 at an average pace of 5:45 minutes per Km and then depending on how I feel at that time take it from there.I am not sure what impact the route change is going to have on the pace. In any case I am looking forward to enjoying another ultra experience!!

It is amazing how the event has grown over the last 5 years. With over 200 runners running 50K+ and an incredible 30+ runners doing the 75K and 25+ doing 100K the Bangalore Ultra is on its way to becoming a true ultra event. Personally I hope within the next 3 years there will more than 50% 50K+ runners in the event !!

PB at Celebration Mysore HM

2011-10-09T12:57:00.001+04:30

I had a near perfect race and while I narrowly missed my goal of going below 1:43 I still achieved a PB of 1:43:33 bettering my previous best in a half marathon by over two and a half minutes. Ravi Balasubramanya and I pretty much ran the whole race together. And I got the benefit of a running commentary on the localities we ran through from the local boy. Ravi , who is a much younger and faster runner than I am, was returning from injury and decided to stick with me. With the finish line visible a few hundred meters away Ravi found that extra burst of energy and sprinted to finish 13 seconds before me. Sid ran a very steady race and finished a few seconds ahead while Neera also ran a strong race to finish just after I did. I finished 30th overall out of about 173 timed finishers. See here for complete results.

The day started very early - 2am to be precise when my alarm went off. Though we had planned on driving down to Mysore the previous afternoon we changed our plans once we learnt that bibs would be given out on the morning of the race for outstation runners. I left home at 2:45am and reached Rich's place a little after 3am after picking up Sid on the way. Rich, Sid, Neera, myself, Raj and Sabesan then left Lavalle road at about 3:20am in Rich's Innova. Enroute I was able to doze a bit. We reached the start point outside the Mysore palace at about 5:45am just before day break. The area was buzzing with runners as well the road seemed to have quite a bit of traffic. We collected our bibs in a few minutes(thanks to Nikhil of RFL for helping us out on this) , got into our running gear and headed for the portable potties across the road. At about 6:30am the timing technologies folks were setting up the timing system at the start point and there was some confusion as to where exactly the runners were supposed to assemble for the start of the race. The cricketer Javgal Srinath and actress Nidhi Subbiah appeared soon after. However, the run did not start as scheduled at 6:45am as the chief guest - a minister arrived late. The crowd became very restless and started booing. Finally, after a few speeches which we could not hear anyway the race got underway a little over 20 minutes from the scheduled start time.

Ravi and I ran together from the start. In the 1st Km or so it seemed like the sun would come out; however thankfully it did not and it stayed partly cloudy throughout with little humidity. We went out on Devraj Urs road and continued on Hunsur road where there were a few gradients. Overall the route was quite scenic specially the Mysore university area and the trail around Kukkarahalli lake. There was a downward slope leading up to the entry point of the trail which provided momentum to both Ravi and myself. Ravi hit a curb and stumbled across in front of me - fortunately he was able to regain balance as I managed to grab his elbow - else both of us could have got injured and our race might have ended at that point. We turned around at the end of the trail a little past the half-way mark. At this point I was pretty much on target with my garmin showing a little over 49 minutes. The second half also had a few gradients and my pace strarted to drop a bit. However, I managed to keep the average pace at 4:55 . I could have possibly pushed a bit harder in the last Km - however as both my left glute and calf were hurting a bit I decided not to that. Both of these were sore tilla couple of days after the race. The traffic control was reasonable with the volunteers and cops doing their best to give priority to runners at intersections though there were a few instances when they found it challenging in handling buses. There were not too many Km markers on the route and also the route seemed to have the runners cross the road a few times more than is desirable. Otherwise , overall it was a good experience.

After the run we had a sumptious buffet breakfast at Pai Vihar and started the drive back to Bangalore at about 11am reaching home at 2:30PM. I decided to take a couple of weeks easy and do some light running and also undergo soft tissue therapy before starting on the rigors of the 'Run Less, Run faster' training for Mumbai 2012.

Hyderabad 2011: Disappointing despite a PB

2011-10-02T17:06:00.000+04:30

Though I managed a PB time of 3:51:48 beating my previous PB at SCMM 2011 by exactly a minute and finishing 1st in the senior men's category (all winners here) I was disappointed with the race. I had trained for over 10 weeks using the FIRST 'Run Less,Run Faster' program with a target of going sub 3:40 or at least sub 3:45. Except for the last 2 weeks I had some excellent training runs specially the tempo and long runs - though the interval runs were a struggle. I got to the half-way point on target at 1:46 and the 30K at 2:37 as planned. However, after that things went downhill. Both my glutes started to hurt and around the 34K mark I suffered from cramps in both the quads and feet. However, I hung on despite the average pace dipping rapidly specially between 35K and 39K. It was during this stretch in the Hyderabad University that fellow runenr Kumar who had stopped due to cramps passed by in a pickup vehicle and asked if I wanted to get in. Despite the pain that the thought of givving up never crossed my mind. By the 35K mark I realised that 3:45 was not going to be possible so my focus was to try and do a sub 3:50. However, soon even that slipped away and I had to push hard in the last 2Kms including sprinting into the stadium to go just below my previous PB time ! See the official split timings here and detailed analysis from my Garmin data here.

I am unable to figure out why I cramped in both the legs. I had hydrated well before and during the race, taken adequate rest and was not using a new pair of shoes. Infact the weather was very nice - mostly cloudy and temperature in the low 20s celsius. Perhaps , the couple of Kgs that I had put on since January made a difference or for the type of course I ran too fast in the first 30Kms. That is , my legs (and glutes) did not have the strength to handle the pace across 3 flyovers and numerous fairly steady and long gradients. See here for the route description. An additional challenge was strong headwinds at times. I have not been doing any strengthening since January 2011 when I discontinued the sessions at the Manipal Hospital Department of Sports and Excercise medicine. The niggle in my left glutes and left calf continued to linger on several weeks after the run - so I need to start strengthening excercises soon. That and sustained interval training is probably key to be able to sustain the desired pace for a longer period of time specially towards the end of the race. As always met with several friends and also my brother Mahesh at the end of the race and took a few pictures. Several friends from Bangalore had podium finishes - Ashok, Neera, Vaishali..and the awards were given away by the governor of AP. I myself missed the opportunity to go upto the podium to receive my plaque as the winner of men's veteran category as I was busy catching up with ex-colleagues Nathan(see picture below), Mathivanan and my brother Mahesh.

Overall, the event was well organised. For most part the traffic was well managed - there were a few small stretches where we had to run with traffic. The Km markers and turns could have been marked better. Also, in a few other places the volunteers were not attentive enough and one had to ask for directions. I also heard that the aid stations did not have the spray which many runners required inorder to get temporary relief from their pain and cramps. Apart from this ofcourse the delay in the bib distribution commencement the previous day was an irritant that should be avoided. Nevetheless, on the positive side it gave an opportunity for runners to hang around longer and mingle and catch up each other and take some pictures - see below. The major put-off for most runners was the 24 minutes delay in the start of the race possibly due to the chief guest arriving late. Nevertheless, the overall race experience was very nice and I am sure Hyderabad Runners will ensure that the event improves year after year.

Being interviewed for 92.7 Big FM

With the 12m in 12m gang

With Nari,Sundar and Kumar

On race morning I left Domalguda at 4:20am by cab and reached the start point at people's plaza in about 15 minutes with ample time to check in my bag, warm up and exchange banter with other runners. The 24 minutes delay in the start of the race made the runners quite restless. When the race did begin I had night-marish start - within a minute or two I felt my timing chip come-off my shoe. This was one of the rare times where I had used only the plastic tag and not a shoelace to tie the chip and I seem to have done a shoddy job with the tag(a lesson learnt ofcourse!). As soon as I realised this I stopped and turned around to walk back a few steps and pickup the chip causing a minor panic amongst the runners directly behind me including Neera. I put the chip in my pocket and ran a short distance mulling over what had happened and what I should do next. Fortunately, I got the idea of stopping on the side and tying the tag via a shoelace which I did. Around that time I started to run with Sundar from Chennai Runners. We ran together for about a Km or so after which he took off and finished in an amazing timing of 3:33:04. After that I ran most of the race by myself. At around the 14 Km mark after the Khairatabad flyover in the gradients of Banjara Hills I saw Nitin waiting for Neera to come by. Upto about the half-way mark I was just behind Siddhartha Menon - at this point I was doing quite well- hitting the mark within my target time of 1:47. But soon after he too took off or rather I dropped off as he seems to have run a steady pace to complete in 3:35:55. Though Rajesh Vetcha went by in a crew vehicle shouting that the gradients were all but over that was not all true. I found that even the stretch inside the university, though very green, was not flat. And as mentioned in the first paragraph above the last 7-8 Kms was quite a struggle. After crossing the finish line I took the help of Mahesh and collected my bag - this was my first experience of a point to point race and a baggage bus in India and it worked without a hitch. And then met with fellow runners and other friends.

Finishing..at last

With ex-colleague and good friend SV Nathan

With Mahesh

Less than 12 hours to the Mysore Half Marathon

2011-10-01T20:01:00.001+04:30

After vacillating quite a bit I went ahead and registered for the HM in Mysore couple of weeks ago. I would be leaving for Mysore in a few hours along with Rich, Neera, Sid and a couple of other runners. The evening/night before a race is always a restless one for most runners and certainly so for me. This one is even more so as I know that I should probably not be running this race(My coach and mentor Bill Pierce is quite categorical about it). I have not been unable to train much since the Hyderabad marathon on 28th August. Work schedule has been hectic and also I have not fully recovered from the niggle in my left glutes and calf which I picked up a couple of weeks before that event. So logically I should take some more rest and focus on the training for my next marathon event. However, I did not want to miss the opportunity to run a runner friendly (with RFL handling the organisation) HM event in the vicinity. Moreover, I have not run a daytime HM event since May 2005. My goal is to use this race to get over the disappointment of not meeting my target at Hyderabad and also restart my training using the Run Less,Run Faster program from FIRST for SCMM 2012 which is 15 weeks away.

The 1st target is to beat my HM PB of 1:46:03 from Midnight marathon in December 2009 and if all goes well to go below 1:43. This will depend on how the 1st half goes . If I can manage the 1st half in about 49 minutes at an average pace of 4:52/Km without much stress to my left glute and calf then I will try and do the second half in under 54 minutes. Else I will take the second half easy. Either way am looking forward to the race - the route looks pretty interesting with the start and finish being at the famous Mysore Palace and about 4 Kms of soft path around a lake and also going through Mysore University. Hopefully there will be efficient traffic control and weather wont be too bad - both critical factors for a race starting at 6:45am. This is the first time I have seen the video of the route put up on the website for an event in India.

Hyderabad Marathon 2011..a quick update

2011-08-28T15:00:00.000+04:30

A restless and tense Saturday including a mostly sleepless night, mightmarish race start(with my timing chip falling off the shoe within secords of starting), a great 1st Half (21.1K in 1:47) and a terrible 2nd Half taking close to 2:05! I am quite disappointed to have missed my original target of a sub 3:40 by over 10 minutes - that's what I had trained for the last 12 weeks- nevertheless the sub 3:52 finish (official timings awaited) is my Personal Best and gave me the 1st place in the Men's veteran category.

Overall the race was as well organised as I had expected it to be though I found the course much tougher than I had anticipated . The main lesson for me is that I need to work hard on strengethening specially my gluts. More details in the next post hopefully by the end of the week.

Countdown to Hyderabad Marathon 2011

2011-08-21T19:46:00.001+04:30

The Hyderabad Marathon which will be my first Full Marathon of the season (the last one was at Auroville in February) is less than a week away - in fact by this time next week it will be over. And I will know whether the hard work and training of the past 11 weeks enabled me to achieve my goal of beating my previous PB of 3:52:48 achieved at SCMM 2011 in January by over 10 minutes. Right now it looks extremely challenging - A couple of my recent long runs were below par, my usual left calf niggle seems to have resurfaced and a light cold and sore throat has set in over the weekend. Moreover I realise that the flyovers and gradients on the run route are going to pose quite a challenge !

Whatever the outcome I know that I have trained very hard for the race. While I have generally been following a training regimen of 3 days of running and 2 days of cycling this is the first time that I have trained specifically using the 'Run Less, Run Faster' training program from FIRST. Though the weekly mileage using this training program has never exceeded 55Km the training has been very intense and specific. With each of the 3 training runs each week , that is, the interval run, the tempo run and the long run having quite stringent time goals. I have usually struggled in my interval runs to meet the pace goals - the interval training has varied from 10 x 400m to 3 x 1600m with intervals of 800m,1000m and 1200m in-between. On the other hand the tempo runs varying between 5KM for the short tempo to 16Km at marathon pace were very comfortable. And so were most of the long runs varying from 21Km to 36Km. I have never done as many consecutive weeks of 21K+ runs before.

I did have two below par long runs during this period; the 1st one was on 7th August where I ran a 30K in 2:39 at an average pace of 5:16 versus my goal of 32K in 2:46 at an average pace of 5:14 per Km. The last 5Kms of this run was quite a struggle and I decided to stop at 30Km rather than completing the planned distance. I was probably both mentally and physically tired due to stress at work and also lack of sleep the previous night. Plus it was the 3rd consecutive day of excercise and I seemed to have had a mild stomach upset. The 2nd one on 14th August was in the hilly terrain of Yercaud. I did not find a good run route and managed a 16Km in 1:31 instead of the target of 21Km in 1:46 . In both these runs my left calf hurt towards the end and these dented my confidence a bit - however a good 20K/1:41 run yesterday has had a positive effect. Whatever the outcome next Sunday I am quite satisfied with the progress I have made using the FIRST training program and hope to make further improvements over the next 12 months or so based on valuable detailed feedback from Bill Pierce, Scott Murr and Ray Moss - the authors of the book 'Run Less, Run Faster'. As all experienced marathon runners know there are several factors that all need to come together on race day and many of these are beyond the runners' control.

My strategy next Sunday will be to try and reach the half way mark as close to 1:45 as possible and sustain the pace to get to the 35K mark in around 3 hours. I have very pleasant memories of the 2008 edition of the Hyderabad marathon which was the 1st one in my journey of running 12 marathons in 12 months. I am once again looking forward to a great running experience , meeting fellow runners from around the country and having a fun weekend!!

Revised goals for 2011-12 season

2011-07-03T20:46:00.000+04:30

Building on the momentum of a great 10K run on 5th June I was able to do 30K the following Sunday (12th June) at a much faster than targeted pace. My goal was to run 29K in about 2:45. My running rhythm was excellent that morning and I ended up running 30.1Km in 2:39 at an average pace of 5:19. Based on these two runs and subsequent tempo and long runs at better than target pace for 3:45 marathon finish I revisited the FIRST key workout tables (more about this program in my next post) and decided to set myself a more aggressive goals for the 2011-12 running season compared to what I had set in December 2010.

A sub 3:40 finish at the season's 1st marathon - either Hyderabad marathon on 28th August or sub 3:35 finish at a fall marathon in the US
A sub 4:00 at the Colombo marathon on 2nd October
50Km or 75Km at the 5th edition of the BangaloreUltra
A sub 1:45 Half Marathon at the Midnight Half marathon
A sub 3:45 at SCMM 2012

PB at the TCS Open 10K on June 5th

2011-07-03T19:46:00.000+04:30

Thanks to a fast start, the excellent Bangalore weather,flatter course and support from numerous well-wishers I did my best ever 10Km run at the TCS Open 10K 4 weeks ago shaving over 2 minutes of my previous best time of 48:24 achieved at the Sunfeast 10K in 2009. Like last year Rahul and I (along with Ravi Venkatesam) took the bus to the Kanteerva stadium and reached there by 7:15 am or so just a few minutes after the men's World 10K was flagged off. The intent was to get a position near the gate opening into the stadium so as to start the race early and break away from the crowds. I got to the gate around 7:25am - where I met many familiar friends - Neera, Sid, Praveen, Pani, Ashok etc. I could not empty my bladder before getting nto the gate. I normally like to do that few minutes before starting a race and I thought this might impact my pace - however it completely went off my mind once I started running. The holding area became very crowded by about 7:45am. The women's world 10K started at 7:55am and soon after the gate to the stadium was opened. Like the last couple of years there was a lot of jostling and pushing to get to the start line. This is something that the organisers need to improve - the chance of someone getting hurt even before starting the race is quite high. Perhaps, they could plan for wave starts based on previous 10K finish times.

I started well covering the 1st Km in 4:21. While the pace dropped a bit subsequently I reached the half-way point at an average pace of 4:30 well within my target pace and I felt quite good. Around this time I went past Neera - who was cheered and encouraged by numerous runners. I was completely focused on the race and did not chit-chat with anyone. I also had water only once during the entire race - it helped that the Bangalore weather was fantastic with temperature in the low to mid 20s. I read about the Kenyans complaining of high humidity in next day's newspaper - I did not feel the humidity at all. As I entered the Cubbon Park stretch I knew that a sub 47 was comfortably achievable. I tried to push myself harder but had a minor stomach cramp in the last Km which constrained me. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to finish with a gun time of 46:06 and chip time of 45:57. This gave me a 4rth position in my age category and 144th rank overall among 5000+ finishers. Pani and Sid finished 1st and 3rd respectively. ANS started a See here for the split timings. Most runners improved their 10K timings this year including Chandru,Akshay and Rahul who all completed in very good timings.

Soon after finishing the race I collected the refreshments and my medal - this took me only a couple of minutes. However, later I found that thare was a very long queue for this and also a lot of chaos - this is another area where the event needs to improve significantly!

With Rahul just after getting home

TCS World 10K preview

2011-05-29T16:45:00.000+04:30

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

2011-05-15T20:14:00.000+04:30

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

2011-05-08T19:20:00.000+04:30

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.

Auroville 2011 report..finally

2011-03-26T16:33:00.000+04:30

Six weeks after Auroville marathon 2011 and after my first 25K+ run since that event this morning, I decided it is hightime to post the detailed report that I have been doing usually after an event. This was the fourth edition of the event and my 3rd year of participation. I enjoyed the run, the trail, the volunteer support and overall ambience thoroughly and completed in 4:12 - my best ever finish in a trail marathon. Following is my timings in all the five trail marathons that I have run:

Kaveri Trail Marathon 2008 4:42:19
Auroville Marathon 2009 4:23:25
Auroville Marathon 2010 4:36
Kaveri Trail Marathon 2010 4:32
Auroville Marathon 2011 4:12

The experience was even more enjoyable as this was the first time that my brothers and I participated in a long distance(>10Km) event together. Both Chandru and Mahesh ran the HM. This was also the first 10Km completion for my cousin Raji and my wife Asha - who mostly walked the distance without registering and without any preparation whatsoever.

With Mahesh and Chandru

Asha and Raji

Of course the experience was not without its share of mis-adventures. First of all we left Bangalore aroun 1:15PM almost 2 hours later than originally planned. We stopped at Adyar Ananda Bhavan after Hosur for lunch. After an hour since we restarted from there I realised that I had forgotten my digital video camera there. Though I was able to reach the restaurant manager who confirmed that they had the camera and would keep it for me till Monday evening this was not a good start as it left me feeling a bit low. Thanks to fellow runner Ravi Venkatesam warning me about the bad road from Tiruvanamalai, we decided to take the longer route via Ginjee. We reached the Auroville visitors area at about 8PM - thanks to the confident driving skills of Gopal. The bib collection process took just a couple of minutes and we rushed for the pasta dinner immediately after that. While most of the runners had left after finishing their dinner there were still several familiar faces around - Rajesh Vetcha from Hyderabad, Athreya and then of course the BHUKMP runners Amrita, Rishi, Nari, Chandra etc who came for dinner even after us. The food was much better than last year - there was pasta, lasagne and salad and once could go for the seconds. After dinner we dropped my cousin Raji at her dorm accommodation and went to Ginger Hotel in Pondicherry. After checking in and a quick prep for the run(pinning the bib etc) I went to bed at about 1030 PM.

I slept reasonably well and woke up at 320am , as usual, before my alarm rang. After getting ready I met up with Jugy and others in the lobby a little after 4:10am. As we were about to leave in Jugy's vehicle a bunch of Mumbai FM runners(6-7 of them) who had missed the bus hitched a ride with us to the visitors area of Auroville. The candle lit path from the parking area to the starting point was quite unique and eerie. As I got caught up chatting with other fellow runners I realised, with just 5 minutes, to go for the race start that I had forgotten to collect the torch. In my hurry to get one I bumped into a metal pole - I was fortunate not to get hurt. The race started a couple of minutes after 5am. It looked like there were about 175 FM runners. Over 150 runners running with a torch for the first hour or so is a very unique feature of Auroville. The last two years the route had road surface the first 2 Kms or so going through a village. This year the route was changed with all but about 2Kms of the 21Km loop being trail. The course was mostly flat with the most difficult stretch being the one with the beach sand.

I always tend to run the first hour slowly at Auroville as I am not sure of the surface with all its undulations and risk of injury due to a mis-step. I started the race with Prateek who had to dropout early due to a bad stomach. Then I had the wonderful company of Sridhar and Partha. Around the seventh Km or so my right leg got caught in a thorny branch which brought me to a grinding halt. I carefully removed the branch and re-started my run. Though there was some initial pricking ,I soon forgot about it and covered the first 12Km in 75 minutes or so. From around the 18Km mark I ran with Senthil Anand of Chennai - we run at pretty much the same pace. I crossed the half way mark in about 2:05 - which meant I was well within my goal of finishing between 4:30 and 4:45.

As we started the 2nd loop we caught up with Rishi and Amrita and then the biggest mis-adventure happened. We missed a turn and got to the aid station around 23Km mark with our Garmins showing a lower distance. So the four of us ran back , in the opposite direction, to make for up this distance and then caught up with the regular route around 25Km. During this stretch I saw Asha doing her 10Km walk and stopped to take a couple of picutres with my Blackberry - sadly they did not come out very well. On top of everything else my shoelaces came off a couple of times. Regardless, around the 32Km mark I got a new burst of energy ,picked up pace and pulled ahead. I was able to run a strong pace of around 5:45 per Km finishing the race in 4:12. During this stretch I ran alone completely focused on the run. I felt happy about beating my goal comfortably despite the getting entangled in a thorny branch and losing my way in the 2nd loop.

The breakfast of Idli/Vada and pongal was quite fine. Also caught up with other fellow finishers, my brothers, wife and cousin before leaving the finish area. Ashok's 3:13 finish(faster than even Mumbai) is really amazing. Sustaining such pace with the first hour in darkness and on the uneven surface is something. The volunteers at the aid stations were enthusisastic as usual - continually encouraging all the runners. The only disappointing bit , specially for first time finishers, was the absence of medals for finishers. Anyway, most participants affirmed that they would certainly want to participate in this event in the future years. While walking back to the car I bumped into Amit Seth (of Comrades marathon 'Dare to run' fame) and his wife and chatted briefly with him.

I had a relaxing time the rest of the Sunday - doing some sightseeing. There was hardly any fatigue due to the run - in fact the recovery also was quite quick. Asha and I then drove back to Bangalore on Monday 14th reaching around 7 PM evening.

March 2011 musings

2011-03-20T22:32:00.000+04:30

Even two months after the Auroville marathon this year I have not been able to make the time to write my race report. I have never been this late in detailing my expereince of a running event; however since starting my new job just a few days before this event life has been very very hectic. This has also impacted my weekly mileage. Normally even during the off-season I clock about 35 to 40Km per week. My running mileage the last two weeks has been 30 and 15Km respectively. This week I did higher cycling mileage (on a stationary bicycle) than running which is very rare for me. Also, this week my son who has suddenly (re-)taken to running clocked more mileage than I did. My weekend schedule has also been such that I missed out on two 10K events in the last few weeks: the Science and Technology 10K run at IISc on 6th March and Contours Women's day run on 13th March.

Just like the previous two years I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Auroville - the new route with even less road and more trail was fantastic and the organisation was as good as in the past. Despite not pushing myself I managed to complete in 4:12 well within my goal of between 4:20 and 4:30. This was my best ever FM finish in a trail marathon by a large margin. I hope to write a detailed report on the race within the next couple of weeks.

With the world 10K in Bangalore about 10 weeks away I need to pick up on my training. The plan is to do some tempo and interval training to try and do my fastest ever 10K. I am also expecting a confirmation on the Hyderabad marathon soon so that I can start training using the 16 weeks FIRST program from the beginning of May.

Auroville 2011 preview

2011-02-05T14:08:00.000+04:30

By this time next Saturday I will be on my way to run Auroville marathon for the 3rd consecutive year. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of running at Auroville in 2009 and 2010 and am looking forward to it again. Four weeks after pushing myself at SCMM I generally like to take it easy at Auroville and enjoy the wonderful ambience of nature in all its splendour complimented with friendly volunteers and organisation. My timing has been 4:23 in 2009 and 4:36 in 2010. Ideally, this year I would like to finish between 4:20 and 4:30. However, having done two fast marathons recently- ING Hartford marathon in October 2010 and SCMM in January 2011 and four 50Km+ runs since September 2010 the body seems to be a bit fatugued at the end of the marathon season. Therefore, I wont be surprised if the body decides to take it easy and I end up doing somewhere around 4:45. Additionally, I re-started my strengthening session at Manipal this week after a break of almost 4 weeks and am consequently feeling the soreness in my arms and legs. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to this marathon before I take a break from long distance running for a couple of months.

Strides of Hope 2011

2011-02-05T12:13:00.000+04:30

It is now nearly two weeks since I had the the privilege of being able to do my bit in the 2nd edition of Strides of Hope held from 21st to 23rd Jan. Despite being unemployed since the beginning of the year I have not been able to make the time to update the blog as regularly as I would like to(Besides - there is a long overdue project to revamp the blog and creat a version 2.0 - hopefully will be able to get to it sometime this year!). The event this year was much bigger than last year as seen by the summary stats below:

Total number of participants: 624

Total distance run: 5677.6 Km
Total distance walked: 577.5 Km
Total distance Cycled: 5529 Km
Total overall logged distance: 12255.1 Km
Cities reached out to: Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Austin and New Jersey

The above is in comparison to over 350 runners and over 3000 Kms in the 1st edition of the event in 2010. The event is slated to grow tremendously both in terms of number of particpants and coverage of cities in the years to come. More details are available in the post event report and press release on the SOH website.

My goal this year was to do 5-6 Kms at the flag-off on Friday, run as much as possible starting Saturday night with the goal of exceeding my last year's 81Km and possibly do 120Km+ and also be at the finale in Madhavan Park on Sunday afternoon. I failed miserably in my overall goal - nevertheless I had a great time and felt satisfied to have participated and made a small contribution to this unique event.

On Friday 21st Jan afternoon I reached the Home Guards group in Ulsoor by about 4:45PM for the flag-off. There were a number of Runners High folks as well as other runners and cyclists gathering there for the flag off. Everyone was very enthusiastic - the high energy levels were palpable. Nikhil of RFL arrived with all the stuff required for aid stations. Radha Ganesan was interviewing and filming a few participants - see photo below.

Radha and crew interviewing some of the participants before flag-off

The event was kicked-off just before 530PM with the runners running out of the Home Guards ground into the Ulsoor lake ground and the cyclists heading towards Hebbal flyover , enroute to Hyderabad, soon thereafter. I ran two loops covering 6.34Km in about 49 minutes with Santosh, Sam and Jacob Bhoopalan. Several other runners joined in. While I was tempted to run longer I decided against it in order to conserve my energy for Saturday night.

I pretty much rested most of Saturday and had a 'semiya-upma' dinner around 745PM. By 8PM I had packed my bags(with extra clothese, shoes, energy bars, bsicuits etc) and was ready. On Saturday, 22nd Nari picked me up just before 9PM and in a few minutes we reached the Goldman-Sachs parking lot at EGL where the aid station was being setup by a few volunteers. There were also a few runners waiting there. Around 930PM Santosh, Chandra, Preeti and others arrived. Nari and I started our run around 940PM. We ran the first two loops of 9Km each at an average pace of around 7:45 per Km. There were a couple of dark stretches on the route and it helped that I was carrying a small torch. Though I had thoroughly enjoyed running this stretch at night last year I found it a little more challenging and a bit boring this year. During these two loops there were about 10-12 runners/walkers on the route including Santosh, Sunand etc. As we were returning to complete our 2nd loop Honda-San joined us. The three of us (ie Honda-San, Nari and myself) did the next 3 loops pretty much together. From the 2nd half of the 4rth loop (from about 32Kms or so) we started following a run/walk pattern. I am sure Nari and I slowed Honda-San quite a bit but he stuck with us. By the 3rd loop our eyes got used to the darkness and since htere was also reasonably good moonlight we did not really need the torch. The weather was great -in fact a bit on the chillier side as the night wore on. Also during the course of those 3 loops all of us passed a lot of gas (symphony of f*rts!)- intially I felt a bit embarassed and tried to suppress it but later I just let it go as Nari can testify! Farting while running is quite normal - ofcourse it depends on on the food and the timing of the meal before a run - Here is an interesting post on this subject with a bunch of links.

Between each loop we stopped for a few minutes at the aid station to drink and eat a bit - biscuits, chocolates etc. At the end of our 5th loop Honda-San stopped running- he said he would be abck after a couple of hours of rest. I am amazed at how runners are able to do two long runs with a short break of a few hours in-between. Santosh did this as well. Before coming to EGL at 930PM he had taken a few hours break to get some sleep. At EGL also he took a couple of hours break and started running quite strongly thereafter. Towards the end of the 5th loop my back started hurting and I had to slow down considerably - we crossed the marathon distance in just under 6 hours. We started the 6th loop after a slightly longer break - I changed my socks while Nari changed his attire. In this loopthe back pain increased considerably and I also started to tire mentally. The mind started to say maybe I should not push myself too hard and risk a long term back issue. I have never had an issue with my back during a run and so it was quite worrisome. The pain did not seem to stay in one place- it seemed to traverse across the back. At the end of the 6th loop(54+Kms) I knew that I would not be able to continue too long. The legs hurt for sure but it was not too bad. However, the back pain was quite disconcerting. Preeti also advised that it was better not to take a chance with the back. I decided that the 7th loop was going to be my last one. Nari was determined to do an 8th one- I would have loved to give him company but this was one of those days where I lost the battle both mentally and physically. During the return leg of the 7th loop we met tens of familiar RFL runners. This one took a good 1hr 45 minutes to complete and I stopped at the end of it with my Garmin showing 63.4Km in 9hrs 41 minutes!! I felt disappointed that I was short of my goal but at that time I did not think it realistically possible to do two more loops to cross 81Km!! I did not hang around at EGL for too long - I left for home soon after and lay down on the floor. At the end of 90 minutes of sound sleep my back felt better. The legs also recovered in a few hours and a twinge of regret crept in my mind - maybe I could have pushed on and stayed the course a little longer :). I was able to do 81Kms last year exactly one week after running the Auroville marathon. However, I found it much more difficult this year one week after a fast Mumbai marathon. I guess this is because the body takes much longer to recover after a fast run while recovery is faster and better after a slower run(intend to research and post on this some time in the future). Doing 100Km+ will have to wait till next year now :)

I slept like a log for over 3 hours after an early lunch and thereafter felt too lethargic to go to Madhavan park for the finale!! While the soreness in the back lingered on for a few days I was able to comfortably do a 8Km run on Wednesday 26th Jan. Hats off to Santosh Padmanabhan for doing over 230Kms in 38hrs - his passion and commitment to running and helping under-privieged children through Asha is really amazing!! Several others ran/walked over 100Kms during the event : Jagadish, Sunand and of course Honda-San. Not to forget the 5 cyclists who rode to Hyderabad and back clocking 3007Kms in 48 hours with Samim Rizvi alone doing 1237Kms - again an amazing feat of endurance and commitment!!

More on SCMM 2011

2011-01-22T18:18:00.000+04:30

While the Mumbai marathon on 16th January was my best ever Full marathon run where I comfortably exceeded my goal of 3:59 by clocking 3:52:48, the last couple of days leading up to the race was quite nerve-wrecking. I usually am quite nervous before a big event specially if I am targeting a specific time or a new distance. Even then this time was different - maybe it was the pressure of aiming to do my first sub 4 hr in India. Or the fact that the last time I attempted a sub 4 hr FM in October 2010 I ended up with cramps and missed it by a whisker. I felt extremely hungry in the 48 hours before the race eating much more than normal. I was a bit apprehensive of getting to the start point well in time for the early start time of 06:15am. Specially the last 12 hours from Saturday evening after returning home from WTC was a very nervy and restless period so much so that I started feeling light pain in my tail bone. All of this fortunately had no impact in the end as the race went as perfectly as possible on Sunday morning.

As has been my tradition for the past several years I landed in Mumbai Friday evening and went to WTC to collect the race bib on Saturday morning a little of noon. And as usual I met a number of familiar runners from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi. Also met a few new runners as well. As always the excitement, energy and passion among the runners was great. After lunch at La Flamboyante in WTC I returned to Govandi by about 5PM. One thing I noticed was that Mumbai was less warmer and less humid on pre-race day comapred to the previous years. Was praying that race day weather would be at least s good. I tried to relax as much as I could. The 2nd India-South Africa ODI in SA served a good distraction. I went to bed around 9:45PM soon after India got bowled out for 189 with the intent of waking up around 3:45am. I slept reasonably well and woke up just before the alarm rang.

I got ready by about 430am and informed the security to send me an auto. Within about 7 minutes there was an auto on my doorstep which took me to Chembur station where I caught the 4:45am train and reached VT station by 5:20am. This can only happen in Mumbai in India - very impressive!In the train I chatted with a bunch of runners who got off at Vadala to head to Bandra for their HM start. Given the segregation of the FM and HM start points VT station was not that crowded. I changed into my shoes and headed towards the entry gate in Azad maidan. While wearing my shoes the timing chip came off from the plastic tag and I had to thread it through my shoe lace. I thought this was not a good start - in the end of course it had no impact. En route I met Pani and Sid - two other veteran runners from Bangalore(see photo below taken inside Azad maidan after finishing the race and collecting medal, refreshments etc). In side the maidan of course there were a lot of familiar FM runners. After some warm up, I consumed a half of my fourth banana(had eaten 3 before leaving home) and checked in my bag in the baggage counter and moved to the holding area around 6am.

With Pani and Sid post the race

The gate was opened just before 6:10am and all of us took a brisk walk/slow jog to the starting line. The race started on time at 6:15(flagged off by Deepika and a few other 'celebrities'. Having managed to get myself close to the front of the start line I crossed the start line in 12 seconds. Vasu and I started together and got off to a good start covering the 1st Km in about 5:22. At this point Ravi Balasubramanya joined us - though a much faster runner he decide to run the race with us(probably due to inadequate training). As always in the first few Kms it looked like there were lots of runners ahead of us. In reality we were probably in the first one third of the pack of runners. Around the 5Km mark Priyankar - another very strong runner - joined us and the four of us then pretty much ran together for the next 25Kms. The weather was definitely much much cooler than it has ever been in a race in Mumbai and the 6:15am start was indeed a great help. The point of merger with the Half marathon runners was a bit of a bummer as the slower runners came in the way of FM runners impacting their momentum. The four of us managed to weave our way through the crowd reasonably well all the time hollering out for the slow runners to give way and keep our 5:27 per Km average pace. We had crossed Sid Mallya from Bangalore during this stretch. In the stretch leading up to the sea link Milind Soman and his friends went past us. The Mumbai crowd as was to be expected had special cheers for Milind. (Milind's finish time of 3:49:53 is very impressive and a huge improvement on his time of last 2 years). In the stretch leading up to the sea link a wide patch of shade had been created by putting up a tall side shamiana for a fairly long stretch. This was a pleasant and welcome improvement. At the sea link we were still running at an average pace of 5:27 per Km. One big change from last year was the presence of two water points on the sea link which was huge boon to the runners. Around the middle of the sea link stretch Vasu slowed down while I continued running pretty much with Ravi and Priyankar. I got to the 29.9Km timing point at 2:43:31(5:29 per Km pace) as compared to 2:45:21 at the 29.7Km mark last year. And felt much much stronger compared to last year. Somewhere at the back of my mind I was hoping that my timing chip was registering at all the mats - at the 29.9Km mark this got confirmed.

Of course, as with any FM the last 12Km is the toughest and more so at Mumbai where you hit the Peddar road flyover in this stretch. Also it got warmer though it was not really hot. At the Peddar Road flyover Priyankar took off- I could not quite keep pace. I just focused on keeping the current pace below 6 minutes per Km. At this point it was clear that I would go below 3:59 fairly comfortably. Going below my previous best of 3:56:49 seemed very possible. Now I hung in there from Km marker to the next one. As I turned from Marine drive towards Churchgate station for the last 2Kms I ran at a fairly comfortable pace to get to the finish point with a net chip time of 3:52:48!! I felt much less tired at the end - so much so that I felt maybe I should have pushed harder in the last 5Kms to shave off a few more minutes. However, I am very satisfied specially to have exorcised the ghost of Hartford and achieving the 2nd sub 4 of my career in 26 Full marathons!! Chandra with a time of 3:47:42 was at the finish line. Soon after I met Rajesh Vetcha of Hyderabad runners and also my brother Mahesh and his daughter Divya. Mahesh and Divya had come all the way from New Mumbai to experience the marathon atmosphere and try and take a picture of me finishing. However, he had not expected me to finish in below 3:55(well nor had I expected to do it this year) - so he missed me by a few minutes at the finish line. Below are a couple of pictures taken a few minutes after completing the race.

Two new things were introduced in this year's event:

- there was a 5hr FM pacer and 2hr and 3hr HM pacers; pacers for every few minutes of finish time are common in most international marathons.

- there were a couple of spray showers on the route to help cool down the runners ; this was welcomed by many runners though personally I did not run through any of them

Overall it was a great run for me and for a number of friends. It maybe a tough act to beat this next year unless the weather gods are kind again.

with Rajesh after the run

With Rajesh, Divya and other Hyderabad runners

Cracker of a race at SCMM 2011

2011-01-18T23:26:00.000+04:30

All the stars lined up perfectly this Sunday 16th Jan 2011 in Mumbai for my 26th FM finish(excluding the 4 ultras). The weather was as perfect as it can be in Mumbai, there was water support on the sea link, I had a good start to the race and excellemt pacing with Priyankar and Ravi for over 32Kms(and Vasu till half-way on the sea link), my shoe laces did not come off, there were no cramps and the body felt pretty good throught out the run. All of this resulted in not only my fastest marathon finish at Mumbai but my fastest ever marathon time of 3:52:48. This is over 3 minutes faster than my previous PB of 3:57:56 in Washington DC in March 2009. And over 8 minutes better than my last year's time at SCMM. Thereby continuing my progression of improving my timing at Mumbai. I did a pretty much even split covering the first half in about 1:54 and second half in 1:59. My average per Km pace was between 5:22 and 5:29 through out the race. I felt extremely good and not too tired after the finish(unlike last year when I was very drained and nauseous at the finish) which led me to think that maybe I could have pushed harder and tried to go sub 3:50. Well that will certainly be the target for SCMM 2012!

With Ravi on the sea link

A couple of things that could have been better with the race organisation:

At point that FM runners merged with the HM runners there should have been two clear lanes to separate the two categories; this will help avoid the slower HM runners/walkers impeding the rhythm of the FM runners
The narrow entry/exit back into Azad maidan after the race which had hundreds of ill-tempered runners jostling to get in was very frustrating specially for the FM finishers. As in the past there could have been separate entry point for FM runners or the entry/exit should have been broader.

Overall though it was a well organised event and many many friends had a great run and achieved their PBs. Congratulations to all the participants!! It is incredible how runners are improving with experience - shows that running as a sport maturing in India and many runners are yet to fully tap their potential. Despite finishing 8 minutes faster than last year my ranking in the veteran category is 13 this year compared to 10 last year! Though oddly enough overall ranking has improved from 90 to 49 - looks a bit fishy!!

Run Less, Run Faster ..the 3Plus2 training program from FIRST

2011-01-09T18:02:00.000+04:30

I just completed reading this book and have decided to try this program for my next road marathon in 2011-2012(either Hyderabad marathon in August 2011 or SCMM in January 2012). The weekly mileage advocated by this program is lower compared to most other training programs. The FIRST program suggests running on alternate days 3 times of the week. However, it specifies that each run of the week be of a different type(tempo, interval, long run) and also the intensity of the run in terms of pace. This means though the weekly mileage is lower the intensity of training is higher compared to most other programs. Another critical component of the FIRST training program is two weeks of cross-training which can be cycling,swimming etc. And hence the 3plus2 concept.

In some form I already do the 3plus2 training. I usually run 3 days and cycle 2 days a week. I also do one tempo run and one long run almost every week. However neither of these are usually done with a target goal pace and I have never ever done interval training program. I am looking forward to doing the the 16 weeks FIRST program with a target FM time of 3:55 in the 2011-2012 running season.

The challenge of SCMM 2011 beckons

2011-01-09T17:09:00.000+04:30

By this time next week I should be done with my 8th run of the Mumbai marathon (6th FM)and would have hopefully achieved my goal of a sub 3:59 Full Marathon. While I am reasonably well trained and prepared for the event and can take heart from the fact that I have progressively improved my timings at Mumbai since 2006(see below) shaving over 40 minutes, I am well aware that now going below 4 is going to be very tough. Whatever be the training a lot of factors need to fall in place in order to have a good race specially in Mumbai: race start, heat and humidty, aid station support, sleep and rest in the days leading up to the race, mental and physical state on the morning of the race etc etc.

2006 4:42:28
2007 4:37:16
2008 4:31:09
2009 4:13:16
2010 4:00:56

Of course for the last week or so one has been going through the usual tapering blues that encompass reduced level of excercise with higher level of food intake and imaginary aches and pains couple of weeks before an event. The light fever that I had every evening for several days since 31st December has been worrisome and had an adverse impact on my 35K run on Jan 1st. While the timing of 3:40 was slower than my target time I felt much more fatigued than normal at the end of the run. Anyway, the fever seems to have gone now and my last 15K+ run before SCMM this morning was quite normal.

In order to devise a strategy for my run this year I analysed my split timings from SCMM 2010.

Distance Time Average Pace

14.7 Km 01:21:35 5:33 per Km
17 Km 01:34 5:31 per Km
24 Km 02:12:55 5:32 per Km
29.7 Km 02:45:21 5:34 per Km
42.2 Km 04:00:56 5:42 per Km

To shave two minutes off my finish time I need to increase my average pace by 3 secs per Km ie stay within an average pace of 5:39 per Km. My target is to hit the half way mark in about 1:55 at an average of 5:27 and get to the 30K mark by 2:45 at an average of 5:30. That will leave me about an hour and 14 minutes for the last 12.2Km at an average pace of 6 minutes per Km. This is vis-a-vis over 115 minutes I took for the 12.5Kms at last year's SCMM. More recently at the ING Hartford Marathon I got to the 32Km mark in 2:56:46 at an average pace of 5:32 per Km. and ended up taking 6:11 per Km for the last 10.2Kms.

Looking at these numbers makes me even more nervous - it certainly makes me very conscious of the enormity of the challege ahead of me next Sunday morning. I am going to keep my fingers crossed that all factors fall into place on race day and I am fortunate enough to continue the trend of improving my finish time at the biggest road marathon in India!

Here is wishing all fellow runners a great run at SCMM 2011!!

2010 Year end Musings (of a runner)

2010-12-30T20:49:00.000+04:30

With the last training run and strengthening session of the year 2010 done it is time to reflect on the year gone by and look ahead at the goals for 2011. By and large it has been another good year of running which includes making some fantastic new friends and strengthening bonds with other runner friends. I ran four full marathons, one 75K ultra and 81K at the Strides of Hope. I also invested in a Schwinn Searcher Sport and did a long cycling trip thereby more or less achieving the goals I had set myself for 2010.

2010 Highs

My best marathon timing of 4:00:51 in India at SCMM 2010
75K at the Bangalore Ultra 2010 in course record time of 8:56:04
PB 5K time of 22:55 at the Duathlon 2010
My longest ever distance of 81Km run/walk at Strides Of Hope 2010
Longest ever cycle ride to Nandi Hills covering 133Kms in 8hrs 15 mts

2010 Disappointments

The transition times at the Duathlon 2010 that messed up my overall timing for the event
Not being able to go for Athens marathon due to a personal reason
Quads injury in August possibly due to the long cycle ride
Missing my target times at ING Hartford marathon (FM) and Midnight marathon (HM) by a whisker

2011 Goals

Sub 3:59 at SCMM 2011 - it will be challenge to shave nearly 2 minutes of my last year's timing
Other marathons

Auroville in February
Hyderabad in August (target sub 3:55) - hopefully this will happen in 2011
Kaveri Trail Marathon in September

Bangalore Ultra Marathon in November (50Km or 75Km)
Ambitious goal of sub 48 minutes in Sunfeast World 10K in May
Stay on feet for 24 hrs and cover 120Km+ at Strides of Hope 2011 in January

Of course, with a likely new job in 2011(31st December is my last day of work at my current job and I am starting 2011 with a few weeks off) I am a bit apprehensive as to whether I would be able to keep up my running schedule of the last few years. As usual I hope to start the New Year with a run - I have managed to do this since 2003. This year I am targeting 35K with a bunch of BHUKMP runners - my longest since Ultra 2010 and the last long run before SCMM 2011 two weeks away.

With Midnight Marathon done, the focus shifts to SCMM 2011

2010-12-19T15:26:00.000+04:30

After the Midnight marathon on 18th December , where I ran a 'Half Marathon' , the focus now shifts to the Mumbai Marathon on 16th January 2011. I had a reasonably good run at the MM completing the 22Km Half marathon in 1:52 at an average pace of 5:07 per Km (vis-a-vis an average pace of 5:02 per Km in 2009 and my target pace of 4:58). Yes, the race organisers goofed up badly in calibrating the run loop as a result of which HM runners ended up doing 22Km instead of 21.1Km and the FM runners 44Km instead of 42.2Km! It is ridiculous for such an error to happen in a professionally organised event specially as it was a straightforward road route that could have been easily measured using a Garmin. What made it worse was when the race director from Crossover (Neeraj Varma) initially refused to accept that there was any issue with the distance calibration. When pressed and told that it was more than it should be he dismissed it casually saying as long as it is not short there was no issue - shows complete lack of appreciation of the training and effort required to run these distances.

The incorrect distance was not the only issue with the event this year which was poorly organised compared to last year. When we reached the bib collection counter around 10:30 PM after leaving our car in the parking lot of Ramagondanahalli School a few hundred meters away we were shocked to find that all HM Bibs were over. It looks like the organisers did not keep asid bibs for runners who had resgistered online in advance. After a long wait and lot of confusion runners were given bibs of other events such as the relay with HM scribbled on the bib. Soon even these bibs were over. And several HM runners ran without bibs - they were apparently given the timing chip free of charge. Collection of the timing chip was another big chaos with a long, slow moving line. Apparently these got over as well and several runners were left to run without one. I, like many othe runner friends, had decided not to take the chip - given that the timings were anyway not accurate last year. I collected my finishers medal and certificate(with time inserted as per my wish) soon after completing the run. Thirty minutes later there was a huge queue for this as well. And (what a surprise!) the organisers ran out of these well and have promised that they would be couriered to the runners. I understand non of the FM finsihers received either the medal or the certificate. With such a pathetically organised event I need to think hard whether to do this again next year. The only positive is the race itself cannot be easily screwed up since the run route is very short and this serves as a good tempo run towards my training fro Mumbai which follows a few weeks later.

The HM and FM were flagged off at about 12:14am after some announcements and speeches from the organisers and a local politician. I managed to pull myself away from the crowds after a few minutes and keep an average pace of 5:03 minutes per Km for the first two and half laps(11Km). The route was on one side of the divided road so there was complete traffic control. There were frequent water stations and thankfully the volunteers wanting to ink the bib at the turnaround point were missing. It was nice to see many familiar runners on the course multiple times - many doing the HM and several the FM. Chandra, Athreya and Manoj were running quite a blistering pace. My pace dropped to 5:11 in the second half and I finished in 1:52:53. Though I missed my target by 3+ minutes(assuming about 1:48 for 21.1Km) I am satisfied. I was not feeling great either physically or mentally throughout the Saturday before the run and started the run lacking confidence that I would be able to hit my target. In any case I find it difficult to push hard in shorter distance runs compared to maintaining a reasonably steady pace in a longer run. Congratulations to fellow runners Meher and Amrita for finishing 1st and 2nd in women's FM and Arundhati and Neera for the 2nd and 3rd positions in women's HM - all of them have won decent prize money which is great!

My training has been below par the first two weeks of December - due to travel to Chennai in the 1st week of December for a wedding and short holiday(during which I ran only once) followed by travel to Tirunelveli where I had an upset stomach. However, with the 32.2Km run in 3:22 at GKVK this morning my training for Mumbai is back on track. The next two weeks are extremely critical in order to be in shape for a sub 3:59 on 16th January. I plan to do a tempo 10K run this week and next week with a fastish 20-25K in the weekend. And finally a 36Km run on the 1st of January after which the tapering will start. Also need to ensure that one stays away from sickness and injury which ofcourse is never under one's control.

48 hours to Midnight marathon 2010

2010-12-09T21:23:00.000+04:30

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!

Ultra(2010) experience

2010-11-24T18:59:00.000+04:30

As mentioned in my previous post I had a great 75Km run at Bangalore Ultra 2010. However, the last few hours leading up to the start of the race was not that good. As usual I was quite restless the previous evening/night. (Thankfully I had a pretty good night's sleep the previous two nights which is important as most runners end up being tense and restless the night before the actual event). Though I had dinner around 8PM and went to bed just after 9PM I kept getting up to check that I had packed everything: towel, extra shoes, socks, T-shirt, cap, the energy bars etc etc. Eventually went to sleep around 1030PM and woke up before my alarm went off at 2:20 am. Praveen Singh picked me up around 3:15. With a roadblock on MG road due to the metro cosntruction work we got delayed a bit getting to the parking area outside Bowring Institute on St. Marks Road. Meanwhile Dharam had reached Cubbon Park and called a couple of times. When we finally got dropped off at Cubbon Park by Jugy at about 3:40am and I got into Dharam's car I suddenly realised that a plastic bag with my running shoes and the timing chip was missing. I was extremely flustered at this discovery and quite unsure as to what to do next when , much to my relief, a runner waiting for the RFL transport came by and gave the bag with the shoes . I was still quite disturbed and forgot to thank the good samaritan properly. Dharam and I set off in his car with the Vasu, Nari, Praveen and Sumanth following in Vasu's car. It was several minutes before I calmed down. Fortunately, our drive was quite quick and we were able to get to Our Native Village in Hessaraghatta by 4:30am. The large flourescent sign boards providing directions to ONV placed thoughtfully by RFL along the way were useful specially those driving to the Ultra for the first time.

On the podium before start of the race

Starting the race

Of course, the starting area was buzzing with the energy of runners - a lot of familiar ones plus many new faces from Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and outside India. At the beginning of the path inside ONV leading up to the start area was a 'on-the-runner' baggage counter where runners could store small items that they may need at a later stage during their run such as sunglasses, cap, gels, energy bars etc. This was a useful innovation from RFL. I stored one energy bar and cap here while I carried another 1.5 energy bars with me. Next to the stage was a second baggage counter where I stored my bag with extra shoes, socks, shirt and towel. Runners were busy taking pictures, checking on each others' training, timing goals etc while waiting for the start of the race. LED torches were given out to runners starting at 5am as it was pitch dark at this point. After a few announcements from A1 and A2 including the course records for the various distances the run was flagged off at 5am sharp. Running in the dark with a torch was quite an experience. Though I have done this at Auroville marathon a couple of times. I felt quite unsure of myself and started off much slower than planned. By the time we approached the 2nd Aid Station I had to take my first of several comfort breaks. By this time Nari and I were together. We pretty much stayed together for 2 and a half loops. It was great to see Santosh Padmanabhan running comfortably despite having run over 100Km since 5PM on Saturday(13th) along with Kavitha pacing him on her bicycle. It was highly inspiring and every time I saw them I got renewed strength to continue my run. The run route was mostly same as the previous year - vast green fields with sparse trees along the way, damp grass, mostly red mud, stretches of narrow, uneven paths and a couple of gradients - all making it a challenging race. The one difference in the route was the turnaround point. The grove of trees through which we ran after the road section before turning around had unfortunately been destroyed.So the turnaround was on the road section itself. Once it was daylight I was able to pick up pace and maintain it in the second loop. Nari and I completed 25KM in about 2:38 as against our goal of 2:35. By this time I had eaten half an energy bar. Unfortunately, the weather gods were not as kind to us this time unlike the last two years. By the time we started our third loop the sun was out nice and bright. It was clear that runners, specially those doing longer distances, were going to have a tough time in the warm weather.

Though it gets a bit boring to do 6.25Km out and back multiple times the great thing about this loop is that one gets to see the other runners multiple times irrespective of the distance they are doing. The energy and enthusiasm that the comradarie and cheering each other generates is amazing. As we were completing the 1st loop we met numerous familiar 50K runners. And then of course the 37.5K, 25K and eventually the 12.5K runners when doing the 3rd loop. Around the middle of the 3rd loop Nari started to slow down and fall behind. I picked up my 2nd energy bar from the 'on-the-run' counter at the start of the 4rth loop. In this loop a few runner friends who were not participating in the event this year namely Gopal, Prasad and Mac joined me for a short while. Gopal actually ran with me almost the entire 4rth loop and this helped me tremendously Without his company and engaging conversation I would have definitely done a much slower time. I ended up doing the second 25Km in a little over 3 hours nearly 10 minutes faster than my target. Each time one went through the start point Atul or one of the other organisers enthusiastically called out the names of the runners - this was a nice tonic to start the next loop with.

Before starting my 5th loop I walked to the baggage counter and changed my shirt and also my socks and shoes. This of course involved transferring the bib and the chip. While transferring the chip and tying the shoe laces my quads cramped quite severely giving me a bit of a scare. However, I felt OK after I ran slowly to the aid station and refueled myself. Needless to say, the last two loops were very challenging. After about 55Km or so the legs started to hurt all over , specially the Quads, with occasional (mild) cramping. From this point on I stopped at every aid station, drank a lot of water and Lucozade, ate oranges and generously used the Volini spray on my legs. I then stretched for a few seconds and walked briskly for a few minutes before starting to run again. This is something that I had experimented with during my additional 16Km run/walk at KTM 2010. That experience enabled me to cope with the tired legs and body and warm weather in a pre-determined manner and I was able to do close to 7:30 per Km pace when running. I caught up with Chandra at the Aid Station around the 60Km mark in the 5th loop and was able to slowly push ahead. By this time I was certain that I would be able to finish in about 9:15 or so.

Surprisingly for me I felt really great in the 2nd half of the last loop even though it was past 1PM and the few runners on the trail were distributed sparsely. Once I realised that a sub 9 hr timing was within the realm of possibility I picked up pace and almost sprinted the last 2Kms finishing the race in just over 8 hours 56 minutes!! At this point in time I felt strong enough to perhaps turn around and attempt one more loop - however I decided against that. I think I am very fortunate that my body is able to handle heat better than most other runners. Chandra finished a few minutes after me in 9:09. Praveen completed in 9:41 and Nari in 10:22 - the 3 of us doing our 1st 75Km at the Ultra!! I thought the lunch was quite ok this time around though many other runners felt otherwise.

Overall very satisfactory event including great organisation from the RFL team -despite the harsh warm weather runners enjoyed themselves thoroughly! Several runners did their longest ever distance and many achieved their PBs. And hats off to the 100K runners ! Of course I was aching all over for a couple of days. Special mention must be made of the stiff upper back and a new purple toe that I collected . And the fact that the right glut and hamstrings were sore for longer than normal - it is ususally the left side that is weaker and hurts more.

Now on to the last event of the calendar year which will be a Half Marathon for me at the Midnight marathon on 11th December.

Great 75K run at Bangalore Ultra 2010

2010-11-21T10:25:00.000+04:30

A quick post exactly one week after Bangalore Ultra 2010 to say that everything went as per plan on race day and I had an excellent run bettering my goal of 9:30 by a good margin. I finished my 75Km run quite strongly in 8:56:04 - a course record for the distance - this despite the weather being much warmer than it has been the past two years. With an easy paced 11Km run today the recovery has also been quite smooth.

Lots of runners did amazing timings this year specially from BHUKMP. Click here for the list of winners and here for full results. Here are the top timings for some of the distances/categories.

37.5K Men's Open
1. Nitin Gupta 3:14:54    2. Thomas Bobby Philip 3:21:35 3. Abhishek Roy 3:32:39

37.5K Men's Senior
1. Ashok Nath 2:58:26   2. Kothandapani K C 3:17:12    3. Ajith K 4:17:01
37.5K Women's Open
1. Shilpa Deo 4:24:44     2. Vaishali Kasture 5:03:38

50K Men's Open
1. Nigel Armstrong 3:57:04   2. R.Srinivasan 5:06:10   3. Priyankar Mukund 5:19:33

50K Men's Senior
1. Paul Hemson 4:54:24 2. Siddesha 5:07:06 3. Daniel Richarad Vaz 6:14:27

50K Women's Open
1. Meher D'Mello 5:09:12 2. Amrita Mitra 5:37:04 3. Roshni N Rai 7:01:12

75K Men's Open
1. Bhasker Sharma 8:56:04 2. Chandra Sekhar Katuri 9:09:31 3. P Sundar 9:22:09

75K Men's Senior
1. Randeep Singh Arora 11:17:16 2. Jagdish Damania 12:27:34 3. Ravi Raman 13:09:54

75K Women's Open
1. Fumie Terahata 11:07:31 2. Vineeta Singh 11:23:20 3. Sabine Tietge 12:35:53

75K Women's Senior
1. Chandra Gopalan 12:59:39

100K Men's Open
1. Jacob Boopalan 11:09:59 2. Athreya Chidambi 12:06:19 3. Praveen Kumar Vakde 12:39:04

100K Women's Open
1. Cath Todd 11:03:00 2. Emma Rogan 11:33:12

Countdown to Bangalore Ultra 2010

2010-11-12T10:19:00.000+04:30

With the Bib and T-shirt collected a couple of days ago, the last training run done and the pre-race ritual of a haircut and nail clipping completed, the 48 hours countdown to the 4rth edition of the Bangalore Ultra on 14th November has commenced. And the excitement and nervousness is building up among the running community in Bangalore. Any RFL event is now highly anticipated by the running community in India and the ultra is ofcourse the most challenging of these events. Personally for me this is going to be the longest run in a race(not counting the 81K run/walk at Strides of Hope in February 2010). After running 52K at the 1st edition of the Ultra in 2007 and 50K in 2008 and 2009 I am targeting the 75K this year. With training runs of 58K and 53K within the last 2 months I am reasonably prepared for this. The lingering mild cold and sore throat is a bit of a concern. And of course the various (hopefully imaginary) aches and pains - which runners experience during the last few days leading up to a race. I know it is eventually going to be a battle of the mind on race day. Though the route has changed a bit this year it is still a 6.25Km out and back course. Running 6 laps to complete 75K could get a bit boring (and lonely towards the end) .This will certainly add to the challenge. One will also have to see how it will be to have 800 runners on the trail at the same time. I assume some of the faster 25K and 37.5K runners will be hindered a bit.

With over 50 runners registered to run distances of 75K and 100K this Sunday, the Bangalore Ultra has come a long way in the last 4 years mirroring the growth of long distance running community in the country. There are several good friends from RFL who are among the 27 runners registered to do the 75K this year: Praveen Singh, Dharam, Chandra Gopalan, Sabine, Preeti, Nari, Jugy etc. And ofcourse Chandra Karturi will be doing it for a 3rd year in a row!! He was the winner in the 75K category last year with a time of 9:21:45.

Here is a summary of the top mens performers of the last 3 years for this distance:

2007 (78K)

1 Jacob Boopalan 7:38
2 Mukesh Singh 8:57
3 Madhu Avasarala 9:03

(Note : these are amazingly awesome timings!!)

2008 (75K)
1 Athreya Chidambi 9:05:43
2 Chandrasekhar K 9:30:00
3 Subramanian K 10:39:19

Senior
1 Sunil Chainani 11:20:14

2009 (75K)
1 Chandra Sekhar Katuri 9:21:45
2 Navin Thangiah 10:19:52
3 Nandesh P 11:37:40

Senior
1 Jagannath Raju 11:16:25
2 Rahul Varghese 11:30:30
3 Ajit Oak 14:58:00

My goal is to try and complete the 75K in around 9.5 hours at an overall average pace of 7 minutes 36 seconds per Km. Depending on how it goes I would be thrilled if my timing is close to 9 hours. However, I will be quite satisfied if I am able to complete in under 10 hours and feel strong at the end. Dividing the race into three parts of 25K each my plan is as follows:
- First 25K in about 2 hours 35 minutes at an average pace of 6:15 per Km
- Middle 25K in about 3 hours 10 minutes at an average pace of 7:30 per Km
- Final 25K in about 3 hours 45 minutes at an average pace of 9 minutes per Km

I have set the high pace alert in my Garmin to 5:35 per Km to avoid going too fast(in the first couple fo laps!) and low pace alert to 8:45 to manage the average pace during the last two laps.

Finally I hope the weather is as perfect as it was the last two years with the sun not coming out till after 2PM. Here's wishing the RFL organising team and all the runners a wonderful, enjoyable event!!

Kicking off my Annual fundraising for Dream A Dream

2010-11-05T09:25:00.001+04:30

Like the last few years I am kicking off my annual fundraising campaign for Dream A Dream this Diwali in the middle of the long distance running season in India. The long distance running season started for me with the Kaveri Trail Marathon on September 19th. I then ran the Hartford marathon on 9th October as I happened to be in the area on work. Between now and the end of the running season in February 2011 I plan to do the following events:

75K at the Bangalore ultra on 14th November 2010 (update: completed in 8:57)
Half Marathon at the Midnight marathon on 11th December 2010 (update: completed [22K] in 1:52)
Full Marathon at Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon on 16th Janaury 2011
Auroville Marathon on 13th February 2011

Through the above runs I hope to raise another Rs 2.2 Lakhs to add to the Rs 35,000 that I managed to raise in October as part of the India Giving challenge. As many of my friends and relatives who have been supporting me the last few years are aware I have been involved with Dream A Dream since 2006 as a fund raiser,volunteer in the IT and mentoring programs and more recently as a board member(since August 2009).

Founded in 1999, Dream A Dream empowers children from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life skills while at the same time sensitizing the community through active volunteering leading to a non-discriminatory society where unique differences are appreciated.

Dream A Dream provides children from vulnerable backgrounds with non-traditional educational opportunities designed to allow them to explore, innovate and build important life skills. These life skills are fundamental to child/youth development and to the successful transition into adulthood and becoming fully functioning and productive members of our society. Dream A Dream programs allow children to develop:

· Interpersonal skills including teamwork, communications, negotiation and coping skills
· Cognitive skills such as decision-making, problem solving and critical thinking
· Creativity, confidence, self-awareness and a passion for learning

Contributions can be made in the following ways:

- Via check favouring 'Dream A Dream' - this can be snail mailed to me at 242, Ranka Heights,4th Main,7th Cross, Domlur Layout, Bangalore 560071

- Online in INR via http://www.giveindia.org/give/pledgepage/Bhasker2010
- Online in other currencies via http://www.ammado.com/nonprofit/dream-a-dream or

http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/empowering-vulnerable-children-through-life-skills/

Looking forward to your support again!!!

Boston Marathon 2011 registrations close in record time

2010-11-01T17:26:00.000+04:30

The above blurb is from the Boston Athletics Association website homepage. With the registrations closing in just over 8 hours , several runners who had qualified for the race missed out on registering either due to lack of time or due to snags in accessing the site for on-line registration. Following quotes of Guy Morse the executive director of BAA are from the article Rush to web snags runners.

Asked if there would be changes for 2012 — whether it is expanding the field, toughening qualifying times, narrowing the qualifying window, or holding a lottery — Morse said, “That’s a pretty good bet that we’ll attempt to alleviate the situation one way or another in 2012 and beyond. But it’s too early to predict what that might be, but there are lots of ideas out there.’’

Morse anticipates making an announcement about 2012 qualification shortly before next April. In the interim, ideas from runners denied registration to the 2011 race likely will keep coming. So far, they’ve suggested everything from staggering registration to a system for replacing no-shows.

Boston Marathon was never a race for everyone argues that Boston is not for every runner and the only fair way to limit the field is to tighten qualifying times.

As A struggle to the starting line states I personally hope BAA does not take the path of tightening qualifying times. If they do that then it would be impossible for me to qualify in this life time - even now it looks extremely challenging. Have included details of this article below,

BECAUSE OF improved training techniques and the growing popularity of the sport, the number of runners who qualify for the Boston Marathon is on the rise — so much so that a frenetic dash by thousands to register for the 2011 event overwhelmed race organizers last Monday. In the future, the Boston Athletic Association should adjust by modestly expanding the field, and resist the temptation to toughen its already strict qualifying standards.

Last year, online registration was open for two months before the number of runners reached the cap of 26,800, including charity participants. This year, a combination of forces, including electronic registration reminders from the BAA and a surge in interest by qualified runners, pushed the system to the breaking point. The results: the field filled in less than a day, to the dismay of runners who couldn’t stay at their computers as the BAA dealt with the enormous demands on its website.

Boston doesn’t need to become a mega-marathon, along the lines of New York and Chicago, which host upwards of 40,000 runners. The prestige of Boston, the oldest marathon in the nation, is rooted in its rigorous qualifying times and smaller size. But the physical course and medical supports along the way could likely accommodate a few thousand more runners.

The open question is whether towns along the route would accept longer road closures and other potential disruptions. But accepting a bit more inconvenience is a small price for accommodating an event that contributes so mightily to the state’s image and economy.

The worst option on the table would be to tamp down the potential number of racers by tightening qualifying times. The current times, which vary by age and sex, strike a healthy balance: For a dedicated amateur runner, they’re challenging but not necessarily unreachable. Toughening them could play havoc with some runners’ training plans.

If expanding the field doesn’t satisfy demand, BAA might consider a lottery system to reduce the field of qualified but non-elite runners. Tradition-minded BAA officials don’t relish the idea, but there may not be any fairer way to limit the field at a time when interest in competitive running is so high.

Hartford marathon : further analysis

2010-10-31T22:34:00.000+04:30

The body does not want you to do this. As you run, it tells you to stop but the mind must be strong. You always go too far for your body. You must handle the pain with strategy...It is not age; it is not diet. It is the will to succeed - Jacqueline Gareau , Boston Marathon winner 1980

This quote sums up what I went through at the Hartford marathon on 9th October 2010. With a stronger will to succeed I should have handled the pain better and finished closer to my goal of 3:55. If I had avoided stopping in one less time I would have made it a few seconds under 4 hrs. I was doing quite fine till about 32Km. After that the cramps in lower legs started and I started to slow down quite a bit. The last mile was really terrible. I had to stop multiple times to stretch and walk as a result of which the last mile took me 12 minutes nearly 3 minutes more than my avergae pace of 9:10 per mile. This is the first time ever I had such severe cramps in a run.

Based on write-ups about causes of leg cramps in articles such as Toe cramps cause and What Can be Done About Toe Cramps? it looks like my new pair of shoes was to blame. I had done only a couple of 10Ks and one 25K with this pair before the marathon. All my previous marathons have been run with a Addidas Supernova cushion which has now been discontinued and replaced with Addidas Supernova Glide and this was my first real long un with the Glide. The other possible reason for the cramps, apart from the new pair of shoes, could be fatigue factor. That is my legs had not fully recovered from the 58Km at KTM 2010 that I had run just 20 days before this race. Other useful articles on this subject that I found are How to to prevent foot cramps while running and Help with running cramps.

Two weeks after a slightly disappointing run at Hartford I did a 53K trail run with the same pair of shoes albeit much slower. I did this at a trail in Whitefield completing 42.2Km in 4:49 and an overall time of 6 hrs 15 minutes for another 11Km. Therefore, I have also concluded that running a fast marathon say at an average pace below 6 minutes per Km has a high probability of causing cramps for me. This is also consistent with the struggle I had finishing Mumbai 2010 in 4 hours. I therefore need to train specifically to be able to do a stronger last 10Km while running close to 5:40 per Km average pace. Maybe I need to look at interval training something that I have not done so far and also need to strengthen my calf muscles.

Following is an analysis of the split timings of my four best full marathon timings.

Race	1st Half	20 mi/32K	Finish	Last 10.2K
National Marathon Washington DC (21March09)	1:55:10	2:58:34	3:56:49	59:15
Hartford Marathon(9Oct10)	1:53:59	2:56:46	4:00:03	63:17
SCMM(17Jan10)	2:12:55(24Km)	2:45:21(29.7Km)	4:00:56
Richmond Marathon(10Nov07)	1:59:58	3:05:17	4:04:09	58:52

From the above I feel that I sould have been able to do a sub 3:57 at Hartford if the cramps had not hit me.
In order to achieve this I need to do 32K in 2:57 and the last 10.2K in sub 60 minutes. My training program for a fast FM needs to focus towards achieving this. Though my medium term goal is to improve my FM pace and achieve sub 3:52 in SCMM 2013(3:55 in SCMM 2012 following 3:59 in SCMM 2011) I decided to stay with 75K at the Bangalore Ultra 2010. I felt that the sooner I get the longer one out of the way the better it will be for my focus on improvin my FM pace.

Impromptu marathon at Hartford CT

2010-10-12T07:04:00.000+04:30

My unplanned 25th FM(28th including the 3 ultras) - the ING Hartford Marathon on 9th October was a bit if a disappointment. After the KTM on September 19th my next planned race was the Bangalore ultra on November 14th. However, when a sudden work related trip to NJ happened on 4th Oct and I found out that the Hartford marathon was scheduled the following weekend I was tempted to give it a shot. Considering my recent running form I felt this was a good opportunity to try and leverage the fall weather and see if I could do a sub 3:55 as a milestone towards my target of a 3:45 in a couple of years. Online registration was closed before I left India. I couriered the filled entry form plus the required waiver form and a copy of my photo id to my sister Mrs. Uma Narayanan as soon as I reached NJ. It was due to her efforts that I was even able to register for the event less than 48 hours before the race on 7th Oct afternoon. In fact, this race is dedicated to Uma and her husband Venkat who chauffered me back and forth a few times over the weekend. I felt quite good when Uma dropped me off at the starting point on 9th morning around 7:15am and with the buzz of runners all around I felt a 3:55 might be achievable. My fallback goal was to better my previous PR of 3:56:49 at the National marathon in Washington DC in March 2009 and worst case plan was to do my second sub 4 FM. I missed all the 3 goals finishing in 4:00:02 – my disappointment was not with my absolute timing(it is still my second best ever) but with the fact I did not meet or better the time target I had set myself for the race – something that has not happened for a while now – probably KTM 2008 and London 2006 would fall in this category. Missing my goals also made be introspect as to whether the effort and money spent in registration was really worthwhile. However, now more than 48 hours after the event I feel that this setback was a timely jolt to bring me down to earth and help me train harder and better with clear focus on goals. It clearly made me realise that doing a 3:45 even in US fall weather is going to be very very challenging for me and weill require a lot of hard work in the next couple of years. Perhaps the focus needs to be more on quality rather than quantity , that is, I need to cut down the number of races to run. Also I need to rethink whether to stay with the 75K at the Bangalore ultra or change it to a 50K in order to focus on a 3:59 SCMM 2011. My path to Boston qualification is to do a sub 3:55 SCMM 2012 and a sub 3:52 SCMM 2013 and hope that I can shave 7 minutes off of that in a well planned, well executed run in the US in fall of 2013. Of course, all this is a long way off and subject to staying healthy and injury free for next 3 years. While I got over my disappointment of missing my time target fairly quickly I felt terrible for John Durham whom I met and interacted with in the holding area. John ran this race for the 3rd time - last year he missed the Boston qualifying time by a couple of minutes finishing in 3:38. Yes, John is exactly my age. He was hoping to crack the 3:35 timing this year. Unfortunately, he missed it by less than a minute finishing in 3:36:41!!

I reached Uma’s place from NJ around 6PM on 8th evening, got my race gear ready and went to sleep around 10PM with the alarm set for 5:20am. For the first time ever I changed my Garmin to show distance and pace in miles instead of Km. As usual I ended up waking a few minutes before the alarm rang. We left home around 6:15am as planned and had a fairly smooth ride to Hartford. As soon as we exited the Capital Avenue ramp we saw waves of runners crossing the road. So I got dropped off there and made my way to the holding area where the baggage UPS trucks were parked. That is where I met and chatted up with John. Both of us walked together towards the starting line around 7:40am after I checked in my bag. Given the temperature of 11 degrees Celsius and sunny weather I decided to run in the hallf sleeves dri-shirt rather than full sleeves. A few minutes later I dashed off and joined the queue to use the potty while John went to the starting line. Ofcourse, I did not meet John again as by the time I came to the starting line it was very crowded and I had to squeeze my way to stand between the 3:50 pacer and 4:00 pacer. Unfortunately, this race did not have a 3:55 pacer which is strange as I expected a pacer for every 5 minutes time as was the case in the National marathon at DC.

Finish was just after this arch

The race started from Capitol Avenue in the center of Hartford a couple of minutes past 8am , after a prayer , a couple of speeches from some officials(have not experienced this in any of the other US marathons earlier) and after the wheelchair race and 5K race were kicked off. With both FM and HM runners starting together the start area was very congested. However, once the FM and HM runners separated around the 1.6 miles point things were much better. I started at a good pace covering the 1st mile in a little over 8 minutes – versus my target average pace of 8:58 per mile for a 3:55 finish. I kept a pace of around 8:30/8:35 for the next several miles getting to the 10 mile mark in about 85 minutes at an average of 8:30. Around this point the 3:50 pace leader over took me. The route had more gradients than I expected and took us through the riverfront park of Hartford. In this stretch I met a woman runner who had run this marathon last year when she was pregnant and was now running it again 6 months after delivering her baby( she had also done a 100 mile ultra last year). She just took off and should have finished way before I did. I felt very strong when I hit the halfway mark around 1:54 – I drank a cup of water at every other water station(every other mile) and by now had consumed most of my energy bar. The next 7 miles were definitely tougher but when I hit 20 miles at 2:56 I felt a 3:55 was possible . However, after the 20 mile mark I started to fade pretty rapidly. Both my lower legs started hurting with cramps. At times the feet and the toes froze completely and refused to move. I had started sipping Gatorade at every aid station the last few miles. However, I had to walk for a few minutes after every aid station before being able to run again. On top of that strong headwinds also affected my pace adversely. By the 24 mile mark I knew that I had blown 3:55. And as I stopped to stretch a couple of times in the 25th mile at 3:49 I knew that a sub 3:57 was also gone and the only thing to focus on was a sub 4. But at this time I think the mind pretty much gave up - something that has never ever happened to me before. I could not carry on through the pain and stopped and walked a few times too many. Some spray on both the legs might have helped but I did not find any at the aid stations. As a result when I crossed the finish line after the Bushnell Park arch with gritted teeth my Garmin showed 4 hrs. I was hoping I had managed just under 4 hr finish but of course,later, I found that my official chip time was 4:00:02! A lot of ifs and buts went through my mind. I could not understand the cause of the severe cramps in both my lower legs – calves, feet and toes. Was it because I ran the 1st half too fast?. I had my usual 3 bananas before the race, 1 energy bar in the first 15 miles and kept hydrating myself. It was not very hot and I did not sweat much so I could not have lost excess salt and other minerals. I was tempted to blame the travel and the hectic work week but this is not my first experience of running in such circumstances. I did not like the course that much and that could have had a role. Another thing is I was probably more timing focused in this race than in most other races which also meant I did not enjoy it as much - neither the chit-chat with fellow runners nor the ambience of the route(which anyway was average). One notable positive was live music every couple of miles in the course. Llater in the day at home when I researched some literature on foot cramps(more on this in the next post) I realized that the most probable causes were : 1) new shoes – I had done just one 25K run with this pair of shoes 2) over running – having done a grueling 58K just 3 weeks ago. While I definitely need to replan and rethink my training to improve beyond sub 4 timing , in retrospect, I do now feel much more confident that a sub 4 at least in the US fall or spring weather conditions is definitely doable with better planning and preparation.

The results tent in the finish area was very chaotic. There were print outs of results in no particular order scattered all over the table with runners scrambling to look for their names. There were laptops for online search for results that had glitches. Mine and those of several runners gave an error message for a while. When I went back nearly 45 minutes after finishing the race then I was able to find my results online. The food for the finishers was also not that great – cookie, veg soup, apple, chips etc. I reached back home just before 2 PM determined to refocus my training and efforts to improve my FM finish timings. As part of this I need to make a decision on the distance to run at the Bangalore ultra. I will decide this by the end of the week depending on my recovery as well as a few other factors. Had a decent first run 48 hours after the marathon - a 38 minutes/5Km today(Monday) morning.

The winner of the Hartford marathon , Michael Wardian, won his 6th marathon of the year -finishing this one in 2hrs 24 minutes 38 seconds. See report here.

KTM 2010 experience

2010-09-26T16:31:00.000+04:30

Almost exactly a week since the 2010 edition of KTM I seem to have fully recovered from the run. However, recovery has been much slower than usual. Though I felt fine on the evening of the event my body was very sore for the next couple of days due to which I found it tough to get a good nights sleep. Doing the additional 16Km in that terrain and heat took its toll. Usually I do my first , short recovery run within 48 hrs(Tuesday after the sunday event). This time I did a slow 4K on Wednesday and then a 7K on Friday - I struggled in both these runs. It was only after a decent 13K on Saturday that I felt fully recovered and back to my normal self. Nevertheless, I am very satisfied with my achievement of having managed to run/walk 58Km in tough conditions after a good FM finish. As per the official timings on the Timing India results page for KTM 2010 I completed the FM in 4:32:04 finishing 23rd overall and 2nd in the senior category!

On Saturday 18th September we (Chandru, Ravi, Prateek and myself) left Domlur just before 3PM in my brother Chandru's car. Bangalore traffic being at its Saturday afternoon worst it took as an hour to get out of the city and reach the Raja Rajeshwari flyover. After that it was pretty fast going and after one short break in between we reach the start point of the race next to Ranganathittu bird sanctuary a little after 630PM in fading light. The RFL staff was setting up the podium on the starting line. We walked a few hundred meters on the trail so that Ravi and Chandru(both doing their first HM event) could get a feel of the uneven terrain. We reached Country Club located about 10Kms from the race start point a little after 7PM. The room there was just about average and OK for a nights rest before the race. After an early dinner of dal, roti, and very spicy kadai vegetables we were pretty much asleep by 10PM after deciding to leave by 5:40am in the morning. I slept well - undisturbed by the heavy traffic on the two major roads at the intersection of which Country Club was located. I had my alarm set for 5am and as usual woke up a few minutes before it rang. Chandru was already up and getting ready. Thankfully there was no after effect of the spicy dinner. We left Country Club at 540am as planned in coool(almost cold )weather conditions and reached the race venue in less than 20 minutes. I consumed my customery 3 bananas before we left the room. As I was planning to try and run more than 42.2 Kms I carried two energy abrs with me instead of the one that I carry for long runs of over 30km. At the race venue cars were steadily streaming in and being parked on the side of the highway and runners were pouring out of them. As we walked from the parking area to the start point the whole place was abuzz with runners greeting each other and checking about their travel, time targets etc.

Just before start of FM

The start area was crowded as many of the HM runners had also arrived. It was great to meet and greet a number of familair runners including Dan zico and Amit Joshi from Mumbai. After some brief announcements (as part of which A1 cautioned first timers that though the weather was deceptively cool it would warm up considerably later and one should not be targeting a PB at this event!) the FM started on the dot at 630am. Several runners took off quite quickly - I started with a pace of about 6:10 per Km and then gradually slowed down. In the first leg I chatted with quite a few runners - Jugy, Senthilanand, Srinivas etc.The trail was pretty much as expected - uneven with frequent patches of embedded stones and grass or other shrubs. One had to constantly keep a vigil to ensure the foot was landing correctly apart from watching out for cows, cowdung, bullock carts and an occasional tractor. Nevertheless, one cannot but soak in the beautiful verdant scenery with the Kaveri canal on one side and Paddy and sugarcane fields on the other. The pollution free rural setting makes for a great run ambience. The route was mostly flat except for a gravel strewn gradient around the 9.5Km mark. After about 40 minutes from start time I started getting overtaken by the faster HM runners including Ashok who was running as effortlessly as ever.

I completed the first half as planned in 2:10 averaging under 6:15 per Km and felt quite strong at this stage. I consumed most of my first energy abr by now. The name on the bib was an excellent feature of this year's event. This enabled runners to call out names of runners they did not know personally and encourage them which is always a morale booster for every runner. This also enabled one to put names to several familiar runners. While returning to the start point I encountered the 10K runners some of who were running at a very fast pace. At this time all the 800+ runners were on the trail and it was not as bad as I had thought it would be. I thought that on the narrow sections of the trail one might be impeded by other runners but that was not the case. Yes there were a few points of congestion but for most runners who were not targeting stringent time goals this was not an issue. Pravin Kumar Takde who finished in an amazing course record timing of 3:17:44 looked extremely strong when I saw him returning on his last quarter of the race. I felt very strong till the turn around on the second loop. After that the impact of the heat began to be felt. When I started the race I was targeting around 4:45. around the 30Km mark I felt I could do a 4:30. However, as I still wanted to run as close to 60Km as possible I decided to slow down. Around this point I went past Dan who was struggling due to the effect of the heat. I had consumed my 2nd energy bar by now. The aid stations that were just 2Kms apart were a great boon. This is another learning from the previous editions that RFL had made it a point to implement. Any fewer number of aid stations would have made it even more gruelling for the runners and they would not have enjoyed the experience as much. I hydrated myself constantly with water and Lucozade. After the 30Km mark I carried a bottle of Lucozade with me sipping it every few hundred meters. I completed the FM fairly comfortably in 4:32:04 to cheering runners and RFL crew. I had the energy to pick up pace in the last couple of Kms but wisely decided against it. I handed my medal to Ashok for safe-keeping, filled my water bottle and started on the third loop.

By now (past 11am) the heat had picked up considerably. Of course, while it was warm and humid and many first time KTM'ers felt the conditions were less than ideal for marathon running upto this point I had I felt that it was less hot and humid compared to my previous FM experience here in 2008. I also heard the same from runners who had participated last year. Nevertheless, from here on it got extremely tough - not only was the heat overbearing - the legs were hurting and it was a hard battle of the mind over body to continue. I decided to slow down considerably to a 7:15 per Km pace. I also resorted to run/walk which I normally do not adopt . Even in the 3 Bangalore ultras that I have completed I have not walked much. But sensing the gruelling conditions and with the intention of at least covering a 55Km distance I changed my tactic. At about 3Kms mark I met Nari returning from his 3rd loop. He joined me and we ran/walked together for a bit.However, he soon gave up and took the motorbike back. I would not be honest if I said I did not contemplate doing the same. The mind kept reminding me that I had done a decent FM and all this additional effort was quite unnecessary. However, I proceeded by setting small, manageable goals in my mind - of running upto the tree a few hundred meters away or till I overtook another runner and then walking a bit before running again. I stretched the goal from the 4Km water point to the 5Km turnaround point, then the 7Km water point. I finally turned around at the 8Km mark as I realised that it might take me close to 8 hours to do 63Km. With the food counter scheduled to close at 2PM I decided to try and be back at the start point by 1:30PM. I crossed 50Km with my Garmin showing 5:46 - taking 24 minutes for the same distance compared to my performance in Bangalore Ultra 2009. My pace slowed down considerably and with the legs fully fatigued I tripped on the stones embedded in the trail several times. This was my lucky day as despite tripping at least 8 times(5 of them in the last 16 Kms) I managed to regain my balance each time . On another day I could very easily have fallen down and hurt myself. Every time I tripped I paused to drink some water and walked for a few meters before jogging again. The volunteers at the aid stations were very helpful. I got my water bottle filled a couple of times.I also experimented by eating a few Parle-G biscuits and peanut butter jelly sandwiches which I have never done before. I paused and stretched at many of the aid stations. My hamstrings and quads were completely shot by the time I touched 55Km so when a volunteer at the first/last aid station offered to use the spray on my legs I gladly accepted it. This gave renewed strength to my legs and I was able to run the next 2 Kms at a decent pace. I was expecting to complete 58Kms in a little over 7 hours but thanks to this I managed it in 6:57 finishing in peak heat at 1:27PM!! Besides 2 energy bars, some bsicuits and sandwiches I had consumed 2 500ml bottles of Lucozade and at least the same quantity of water during the run. Though I was tired and hurting I realised that the left Quads that had been stressed a few weeks earlier did not bother me during the run which was a great relief for the season ahead.

Chandru and I had lunch around 2PM at Young Island and then along with Hiren and Anuradha we drove back to Bangalore reaching home by 6PM. I celebrated my run in the evening with a couple of glasses of red wine. Though I had run 58Kms in challenging conditions I did not lose any weight - by next morning my weight was back to 60Kgs/132 lbs. In fact, for 2-3 days after the run I felt ravenous and ate more than usual. While I had achieved my goal of training for a ultra I have decided to give this year's GR 100 Bhati Lakes 2010 a miss and have registered for the 75Km event at the Bangalore Ultra on 14th November.

Nearing the end of 1st loop

Finishing the FM

KTM 2010 : My Second longest ever run..in tough conditions

2010-09-20T19:42:00.000+04:30

A quick post to report that I had an excellent run at the 4th edition of Kaveri Trail Marathon yesterday(19th September). I completed my 27th marathon(including 3 ultras) quite comfortably in approx 4:32(official chip timing awaited) - well within my target time of 4:45 and 10 minutes faster than my timing in KTM 2008. This gave me 2nd position in the senior category behind Sid who finished in about 4:10. As planned, I continued running the third loop which was extremely tough as it had become very hot after 11am. However, I managed to run/walk and complete another 16Km(I turned around at the 8Km mark) minutes thereby clocking a total of 58Km in 6 hrs 57 minutes - again meeting my goal of doing between 55Km and 60Km as training for a longer run within the next 60 days. This is my second longest distance ever after my 81Km in 13+ hours in Strides of Hope in February 2010. Will post more details of the run with some pictures and official timings by end of the week .

Preview of KTM 2010

2010-09-12T11:56:00.000+04:30

I collected my bib for the 4rth edition of the Kaveri Trail Marathon(KTM) (19th September) on the way back from an easy paced 15K/1:37 run today at Cubbon Park/Sankey road followed by breakfast at Konark hotel with a bunch of fellow runners. And am now pretty much set for my 1st Full Marathon of the season after a break of over 6 months - the last Full Marathon + run being the Strides of Hope a week after Auroville 2010. As usual, in the week leading up to a race I plan to run a 9K and a 6K on Tuesday and Thursday respectively.

After today's run following the 35.8K/3:48 last Sunday I feel re-assured that the quads injury is behind me. KTM is one of the most beautiful and at the same time gruelling races in the country. With one of the Kaveri canals on one side and beautiful open fields on the other side of the trail it is very picturesque. However, the uneven terrain, humidity and heat with very little shade cover makes it tough for runners. I have run the FM at KTM only once - in 2008. It was the 3rd of my 12 marathons in 12 months and my slowest finish in that series with a time of 4:42:16. I ran the HM in the 1st edition of KTM in 2007 - having run a FM in Richmond, Virginia just 8 days before the event. Last year(2009) I gave the event a miss - as I took a couple of months break from distance running after completing the 12 in 12 in July 2009.

In my current form and fitness level I should be able to do better than my 2008 timing at KTM. However, I am thinking of being on the trail for the 6.5 hours that Runners for Life is planning to support runners on the course. If I manage to do that successfully I should be able to do between 55Km and 60Km - this will enable me to test whether I am ready to take on the 50 miler at the Globeracer event Bhati Lakes 100 miler on 19th October. Therefore, I am looking at maintaining an average pace of between 6:40 and 7 minutes per Km which should still enable me to complete the FM in about 4:45. Of course, a lot is going to depend on the weather that morning and how the first loop(21Km) goes. And I will need to strongly resist the temptation to make a fast start with the other FM runners. Also, with a participation of nearly 1000 runners across the 3 event categories(FM, HM, 10K) the route will be crowded after 8am and this could affect the average pace for some period time. One good thing is that the FM is scheduled to start at 630am this year.Also, I will be having the company of ultra runner Santosh who is also doing 60Km+ plus at KTM as part of his training for the 100 miler at the GR event. Any which way I am looking forward to enjoying the ambience and the race and do the best I can!!

Due to the slightly earlier start most runners(including myself) are driving to the Srirangapatnam/Mysore area the previous afternoon so that they can get a good night's rest before the race. It is great see to an event that started out in 2007 as a training run for the 1st Bangalore Ultra grow in stature to be such a popular event by itself. This year more than 50% of the participants are doing the HM. About 140 runners have registered for the FM and the remaining 300+ will be doing the 10Km. Once again, looking forward to the fun next Sunday!

Month end musings August 2010

2010-08-29T16:17:00.000+04:30

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

2010-08-29T16:15:00.000+04:30

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

2010-08-22T19:24:00.000+04:30

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

2010-08-04T22:06:00.000+04:30

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.

Random July end musings

2010-07-31T22:08:00.000+04:30

It has been over a month since my last post. I have been meaning to write every weekend but have not been able to make the time to do so. Finally I decided that I cannot let the whole month of July go by without a single post and decided to combine a number of thoughts into a signle post.

The running has been going well. In preparation for the upcoming marathon season I have managed to do two good 30Km+ runs on consecutive Sundays. Did a 3:20/32Km on 18th July with Rishi,Nari, Amrita, Chandra etc of the BHUKMP gang at GKVK . Running in GKVK after nearly 8 months was a great experience. And of course the weather was fantastic. This was folllowed by a 3:47/35Km run as part of the RFL long run at EGL on 25th July - just a day before completion of one year since my milestone of twelve marathons in tweleve months . I again had the pleasure of the company of several of the BHUKMP runners who made 26th July 2009 truly memorable. These runners also encouraged me in all my marathons and ran several of them with me. Looking back I am glad I set myself that goal and managed to achieve it. It has certainly made me a better, stronger and confident runner and strengthened my friendship with numerous runners.

My next 35Km+ run will hopefully be the Nandi hills RFL run on 22nd August. Meanwhile I have registered for the 4rth edition of KTM on 19th September which will be my first marathon of this season. Registrations for Mumbai marathon - SCMM 2011 opened on 22nd July. There are a few changes this year including a new website for registration. See the website or the press release from the event launch for details of changes. Thouh I had a few initial hiccups I completed the registration for SCMM 2011 on 22nd July evening itself.

After running the Urban Stampede in 2008 and 2009 I will be missing the event this year as I will be out of town the weekend of 7th/8th August. With over 230 teams already registered the Lucozade Urban Stampede on 8th August will surely be the largest RFL event ever and could see close to a thousand runners. It will definitely be a great occassion - I wish all the participants including the 3 teams from Mformation all the very best!

23rd June was the the 98th birthday of Alan Turing - a poineering mathematician, philosopher and computer scientist of the 20th century. Through an alert on google related to martahon running I learnt that day he was also an accomplished long distance runner who ran a full marathon in 1947 in an amazing 2 hours, 46 minutes, 3 seconds! See this scrapbook page for more details of Turing as a runner. Of course, today we know of several celebrities who are also marathon runners. Among these are : Oprah Winfrey, 1994 Marine Corps Marathon (4:29:15), Sarah Palin, 2005 Humpy's Marathon (3:59:36),George W. Bush, 1993 Houston Marathon (3:44:52) ,Lance Armstrong, 2006 (2:59:36) and 2007 (2:46:43) New York City Marathon and Al Gore, 1997 Marine Corps Marathon (4:54:25)!!

Finally, tomorrow, 1st August 2010 I am planning to go on a cycle ride to Nandi hills as part of the July month end ride of BBC(Bangalore Bikers Club). With over 130 cyclists registered to participate - many of them experienced cyclists this should be good fun. Of course, I am a bit apprehensive as I have not cycled more than 55Km in a day before and that was 3 years ago. I am banking on the strength of my running form and also that I have been cycling 30Kms+ per week regularly. I also hope to get support and tips from the other experienced cyclists!!

Update on progress towards ideal racing weight

2010-06-27T21:22:00.000+04:30

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:

BodyRecomposition - The Home of Lyle McDonald - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/

http://www.racingweight.com/

Another resource I came across recently is http://www.muchomuscle.com/weight_loss_tips.htm

Inspired to run Comrades and other ultras

2010-06-26T21:08:00.000+04:30

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.

BSA Hercules Duathlon 2010 - race report

2010-06-20T16:11:00.000+04:30

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.

SW10K 2010- official timings and some pictures

2010-06-01T21:33:00.001+04:30

'Official' pictures from Marathon-photos.com

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

With Rahul and Akshay after the race

Rahul,Chandru and Akshay after the race

BSA Hercules Duathlon 2010

2010-05-30T17:09:00.000+04:30

I am looking forward to doing my 1st Duathlon event two weeks from now on June 13th 2010. This will be the 2nd edition of the BSA Hercules Duathlon being organised by Runners For Life. I did not participate in the event last year. I felt a bit tired after the Sunfeast 10K 2009 at the end of last May and decided to conserve my energy to complete my 11th and 12th marathons in June and July as part of my 12 marathons in 12 months. Having recently invested in a hybrid bicycle I hope to do fairly well in the duathlon. The winning time in the men's senior category last year was 1:31:11. My goal is to complete between 1:40 and 1:45.

While I have been cycling and running regularly, I have never done both of them back to back on the same day. So the RFL duathlon practice today at EGL was a perfect opportunity for me to experience this. I managed to complete 5Km running+20Km cycling+5Km running in 1 hr 55 mins. The two runs were done in about the same time of 27 minutes - though of course the 2nd one was much tougher and I really had to push myself the 1st Km or so when the legs were stiff. I should be able to shave 3-4 minutes off this time in the actual event. The 20Km cycling took me a little over an hour. While the route was not ideal for cycling with the speed bumps, potholes and warts I need to improve significantly. A2 and Ashwani of RFL observed that increasing the seat height on my cycle would result in considerable efficiency. Plus the route of the duathlon would be much better suited for cycling. So my aim is to do the cycling also in about 50 minutes.

Oldest Half Marathoner!!

2010-05-30T15:06:00.000+04:30

Fauja Singh in Addidas 'Nothing is impossible' advertising campaign

His name crops up often in discussions on how runners can push themselves and accomplish anything at any age and why not. Most recently he was in the news for achieving the distinction of being the 'oldest half marathon runner' when he completed the Inter Faith Luxemourg Half marathon in 3:29 on 16th May. While there are many many amazing older long distance runners Fauja Singh certainly stands out. I hope he is able to meet his goal of running London marathon at the age of 100 in 2011.

Fauja Singh moved to London in 1992 from a small village near Jallandhar to live with his son after his wife's death. He took up jogging to beat the boredom of just sitting at home. He shot to fame, when aged 89, he completed his first marathon in 6 hours and 54 minutes in 2000. He holds the marathon record for the 90 plus age group at 5 hrs 40 minutes.

His profile as found in Facebook :

Born: 1st April 1911 in India

Former Occupation: Farmer

Running Career: Rediscovered at age of 81

Diet: Ginger Curry

Marathons: London (5), Toronto (1), New York (1)

Marathon Debut: London, 2000 aged 89

London Marathon Personal Best: 6h 2m

London Flora Marathon 2000 6 Hours 54 m

London Flora Marathon 2001 6 Hours 54 m

London Flora Marathon 2002 6 Hours 45 m

Bupa Great North Run (Half Marathon) 2002 2h 39m

London Flora Marathon 2003 6h 2m

Toronto Waterfront Marathon 2003 5h 40m

New York City Marathon 2003 7h 35m

London Flora Marathon 2004 6h 7m

Glasgow City Half Marathon 2004 2h 33m

Capital Radio Help a London Child 10,000m 2004 68m

Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon 2004 2h 29m 59s

Sunfeast World 10K 2010 Report

2010-05-23T16:32:00.000+04:30

I completed the 3rd edition of this 10K race with my (borrowed) Garmin showing 49:46(gun time). I expect the chip timing,which will come out in the next few days, to be about 20 to 30 seconds faster probably close to my timing of 49:32 in the 2009 Nike Human Race. In any case my timing this year is likely to be about 45 seconds slower than last year. I can think of lots of factors to justify this: the cluttered, chaotic start with hundreds of runners jostling to move from the holding area to the start point, the stomach upset since Friday night, too many U turns in the route, niggle in the left calf and ofcourse the more than expected heat. However, the bottom line is that I am not cut out for running at a fast pace , that is, I have dominance of the 'slow twitch muscle fibers' vis-a-vis 'fast twitch muscle fibers' . Which means I can run at a decent average pace for a longer distance rather than run at a very fast pace for a shorter distance. Therefore I think it will be near impossible for me to better the 10K personal best of 48:24 that I achieved in last year' s race.

The elite men's and women's winners finished in 27:54 and 31:58 respectively. The complete results should be available here in the next day or two.

Rahul and I, along with Adam and Vidhya from our appartment community, took the bus to Kanteerva stadium this morning. We left home around 6:55am , caught a bus around 7:10am and were comfortably in the holding area around 7:30am just a few minutes before the first of the elite men's finishers came into the stadium. The holding area started to fill up quite rapidly and by the time the women's event flagged off at 8am the area was jam packed. When the gate in the fence separating the holding area from the tracks in the stadium was opened at about 8:05am there was a mad rush to get out of the holding area. I was scared that I might get injured while being shoved down the steps. Several runners just climbed over the fence. So before I could even get to the starting line the race was flagged off. The whole arrangement in the holding area was highly disappointing for a race that has the IAAF gold label and is apparently one of the most prestigious 10K races in the world! Another standout was the absence of restrooms in the holding area - at least there should have been signs pointing runners to the nearest restrooms.

I turned on my Garmin as the race started and it was about 20-25 seconds before I crossed the starting line. With an estimated 6000 runners in the open 10K I found the first 1.5 Km to be very crowded and tough to break away. The first few hundred metres was at an average pace of 6:15 per Km - my target average pace today was 4:45 in order to finish below 48 minutes. I was never able to achieve this average pace. After about 2Km I managed to get to about 4:47 per Km and stayed around that past the half way mark. Around the 5Km mark I passed Amrita - a brilliant women's marathoner while Vasu another runner from BHUKMP surged past me soon after. I started to slow down again after the Kamaraj road U turn which BTW was the 4rth U turn in the course and had a upward gradient on the return leg. The heat was also beginning to have an impact. My goal now was to keep my pace around 5 mins per Km and the average below 4:50. I did not stop by at any aid station except once. Nevertheless, the average pace crept upto 4:53 by the time I touched the 8Km mark near Vidhan Soudha. I pushed as hard as I could for the last 2Kms - around this time Neera , a fast women's runner, surged ahead. I managed to complete with my clock showing an average pace of 4:51 and a distance of 10:25Kms in 49:46!! Heartfelt thanks to Meher for loaning me her Garmin - if not for constantly monitoring my pace via this device I would have probably finished 3-4 minutes slower. See here for this year's route.

Of course, I met up with a lot of familiar runners in the finish area. Some like Honda-San seemed to have done extemely well - he finished in about 40 minutes. Many did their PB timings while a few people I met were slower than last year's timing by a minute or two. My brother Chandru completed in 1:04 while Rahul and my brother's son Akshay did their first 10Km race in a very creditable 1:20! While this event is here to stay as a premier road race in Bangalore and the season opener I hope the organizers do better in terms of facilities and infrastructure to cater to the growing number of participants.

Experience of bicycle shopping

2010-05-16T23:16:00.000+04:30

After nearly 3 months of researching on the web, talking to a few friends and visiting a few shops I finally bought a Schwinn Searcher Sport from R and R cycles in Ulsoor. This post is a summary of a few basic concepts that I learnt as well as a few websites, blogposts and discussion threads that discuss the subject of buying a bicycle. One thing I realised very quickly is that there is numerous choice of cycles now available in India - Indian makes and imported ones. The choice of cycle depends on the budget and the purpose of usage : daily commute to/from work, weekend rides, cross-training, long rides, racing etc. The usage also determines the type of cycle:

Mountain Terrain Bike or MTB for off-road riding

Road bike for racing or fast riding on roads

Hybrid bike for a mix of the two - primarily road riding with occassional off-road

Here are a few options in increasing order of budget - this is certainly not an exhaustive list.

1. Single speed bikes would do good for local commuting but not efficient if one wants to cycle for the purpose of 'cycling' (Rs 3K - Rs 5K)
2. Hercules Ryders ACT series start from 7.5K. The latest release is ACT 110 that is more for the purpose of commuting and fun ride with friends! See here for a user's review of this cycle.
3. Hercules Mach is the basic model of a road bike that should cost around 6K - but this does not come near any of the other international brands
4. LA Sovereign is a Taiwan based product that has a series of MTBs starting from 8K. ("Navigator" is a good commute bike and seemed to have been quite popular in Bangalore till recently
5. Firefox has a very good series of MTBs (starting from 13K) and also road bikes at a relatively lower cost
6. Schwinn has number of hybrid bikes starting from 13K range as well as a few MTBs.
7. Decathlon has a series of MTBs branded Btwin/Rockrider starting from Rs 12K. Read here for one user's comparison of Merida with Btwin.
8. Merida is a another brand that has several MTBs and also a hybrid bike.
9. Cannondale starts from 20K and goes upto 2 Lakhs. Cannondale F9 is very popular among cyclists in Bangalore.
10. Bianchi has a couple of Hybrid bikes that are worth for commuting and riding. Starts at 28K.
http://www.trackandtrail.in/
11. Trek is one of the most trusted brands used by many serious cyclists. Trek 7100 is a good hybrid bike for 21 K. There are other series starting from 25 K.

There are a number of bicycling forums in Bangalore/India where various bicycles have been reviewed by users and which have discussion threads on the topic of buying a cycle. Here are a few links that I found useful.
Want to buy a bike? READ THIS FIRST
Bicycle Suggestions
The Bike Affair
Bikeszone-cycle cycle reviews

I chose the Schwinn Searcher Sport as I decided on a hybrid bike which I can use for cross-training and occasional road racing and ocassional long rides. I had started with a budget of Rs 15,000 and was planning to go for Schwinn Searcher. However, at the last minute I switched to the Searcher Sport which has 24 gear combinations instead of 21 and ended up spending Rs 17.5K including a stand, lock and mud-guards. So far I have been using the cycle for cross-training riding a total of about 25Km two days a week - the experience has been quite satisfactory. .

Finally, a couple of general sites that I found with a wealth of information about bicycles.
How to buy a bike
Bicycle tutor

Countdown to the 3rd edition of Sunfeast World 10K

2010-05-16T21:04:00.000+04:30

This year's edition of Sunfeast world 10K on 23rd May which is less than a week away is expected to be bigger than last year's event. It is anyway by far the largest road race event in Bangalore. With more and more Bangaloreans taking up running the popularity of this event is growing. This is the first year of the event after it was recognized as a IAAF Gold label event. There are a couple of changes from the last two years:

the start time for the open 10K event has been advanced to 8:10am compared to 9am the last two years - this will be a big help specially if it turns out to be a warm day
the timing chip is compulsory for all 10K participants and the entry fee has been increased to include its cost

Surprisingly the website does not still have any information on the race route. I assume it is going to be the same as the route of last two years - despite the roads being dug up around the Chinnaswamy stadium/Cubbon road areas.

Though my training has been a mixed bag the last couple of months, after a solo 52minutes 10Km a couple of days I feel reasonably confident of at least a sub 49 minutes finish this year also. This is provided I am able to borrow a Garmin 305 for the race- else I will probably just focus on enjoying the run and be satisfied with sub 53 minutes. My son Rahul who has done the Majja run last two years is looking to complete his first 10K this year.

Interesting posts on 10Km runners' performances

2010-05-08T22:03:00.000+04:30

With the 2010 edition of the Sunfeast world 10K around the corner I found a couple of recent posts on The Science of Sport(which BTW is a great site that I highly recommend to running and cycling enthusiasts for scientific comment and analysis of sporting performance). The first with the headline of An exclusive club of sub-27 minutes10Km runners explains that only 31 runners have done sub-27 minute 10Km and of these 31 only one is non-African. Chris Solinsky became the first American to join this club by finishing a 10Km in 26:59.60 recently. And he is by far the tallest and heaviest runner to do this - his weight being over 8Kgs more than the average weight of the previous 30 sub-27 minute 10Km runners! He is also 3cms taller than the previous tallest runner!

That explains the title of the second post titled Chris Solinsky - "A fatty world record" which gives the height/weight table of all the 31 runners. And as part of the reader comments there is a table of BMI of all the runners which shows that Chris had the 2nd highest BMI at 21.33. Hmm.. with a BMI of around 22, my goal in the forthcoming Sunfeast 10K is to get to within 21 minutes of Chris's timing!

2010 thus so far..

2010-05-08T21:21:00.000+04:30

I had set myself the following goals for the year 2010 as part of my 2009 year end musings:

1. Run at least 5 Full marathons/Ultras

Mumbai Marathon - 17th Jan 2010
Auroville Marathon - 14th Feb 2010
Hyderabad Marathon - August 2010
Athens Marathon - 31st October 2010
Bangalore Ultra - 14th November 2010

2. Sub 4:05 finish at Mumbai marathon 2010 in 2 weeks from now

3. Sub 4 Hr at Hyderabad marathon 2010

4. 75K at Bangalore Ultra? - it is tempting to go beyond 50K

5. Invest in a better cycle and do a few trail rides with Tandem Trails

The year 2010 started off well with a good first week of running , better than targeted performance in SCMM 2010, an immensely enjoyable run at Auroville in February and my longest ever distance as part of the Strides of Hope. Howevever, the 10 weeks or so since the distance running season ended in the 3rd week of February has been a real mixed bag or more like a yo-yo. I have not had two consecutive weeks of solid running since then and have had several periods of not running for more than 3-4 days at a stretch. This has been partly due to frequent bouts of stomach upsets and cold/fever(off-season blues?). My Garmin 305 that I have been using for nearly 3 years going kaput did not help the cause. And then when I went back to Manipal hospital department of sports and excercise medicine to restart strength conditioning sessions after a break of couple of months I was disappointed to learn that the remaining two sports physios with whom I had trained in the past were leaving their jobs. So I had no choice but to sign up for the unassisted (or membership as the department calls it) sessions. Though lower cost than the assisted sessions I am a bit skeptical about their effectiveness for me. As I am now without the benefit of a sports-physio watching to ensure that my technique is right and also push me to do a few more repeats. The natural tendancy is not to push oneself completely and stop a couple of repeats early which is less beneficial. So I am not certain that I will continue with this much longer. On the plus side during the last couple of weeks I have enjoyed a few rides in my new Schwinn Searcher sport bicycle and look forward to doing a couple of long rides in June/July timeframe.

Due to personal/family reasons I have decided not to run Athens marathon this year. Instead I will probably run the KTM in September. I have also pretty much decided to do the 75K at the ultra in November. So my long distance running goals for the rest of the year looks thus:

a sub 4 hour marathon at Hyderabad in August
KTM in September
75K at Bangalore Ultra in November
HM at Bangalore mid-night marathon in December

The new season of events starts in a couple of weeks with the Sunfeast World 10K on 23rd May 2010 followed by the 2nd Bangalore duathalon on 13th June 2010 - am looking forward to maintaining my timing from last year's 10K and also doing my first duathalon.

Dud Week

2010-04-25T22:42:00.000+04:30

An excellent mileage week was followed by a completely dud week - as with life, running is full of its ups and downs. Had travelled out of Bangalore for a couple of days and returned with an upset stomach due to which I was unable to run the whole week - that is - 7 days in which zero run mileage was logged. While I was down with the bad stomach for a couple of days I also realised that the motivation to get up in the morning and get out of the door has reduced considerably after the loss of my Garmin 305. Having got used to one for nearly 3 years , running is not the same without one. I did a 90 minutes run this morning after a break of 7 days and without a Garmin did not enjoy it much. Will be ordering a new unit from Amazon soon. Meanwhile, here is a picture of the dead and broken unit.

The one good achievement of this week is the purchase of Schwinn Searcher Sport - a hybrid cycle. Will be writing about my research on buying a cycle in Bangalore and also experience with this cycle in the enxt few weeks.

Momentum week with a bad ending

2010-04-18T20:11:00.026+04:30

After a long while I managed a 55Km + week with a 20Km run with BHUKMP and Red Dragon runners on Saturday followed by a 18Km solo in EGL. Add to this 12Kms of cycling and two strengthening sessions at Manipal hospital department of sports and excercise medicine. This is the highest mileage in a non marathon week in a long time. While the next event is the Sunfeast world 10K 2010 it was important for me do a high mileage week after a break of nearly two months after the Strides of hope. I also decided to resume strenght training again after a break of 2 months. While I have found it quite comfortable to do a 2 hour 20K run (have even managed a few 50 minutes 10Km solo runs recently) I found strength training to be much more challenging. Even though I re-started the excercises with weights of less than 15-20 pounds it has been a struggle to do sets of 2 minutes on most machines. Hopefully next week should be better from strength training perspective. Of course, next week will be a low mileage week running-wise as I am travelling to Chennai for a couple fo days for a wedding and I do not plan to run there.

A decent week was ruined with my Garmin 305 dying this morning. I have been having trouble with the buttons that change the display pages for the last few weeks. One of the buttons stopped working and the other has gradually worn out completely. As a result I have been unable to change the display to the page with the average pace which is my favourite parameter when I am targeting specific finish times. So I tinkered a bit with it this morning after the run and the power went off on the device and now I am unable to power it on again. Am extremely sad about this as for the last three years I have been so used to running with the Garmin that I felt quite lost whenever I had to run without one. I am going to try and get the device fixed in a local watch repair shop. However, if that does not work out then I will have to order a new device soon. I am not sure what the average life of the Garmin 305 is or should be. I have used my device for over 5400Km of running and 1600Km since July 2007.

2nd Science and Technology Run

2010-04-18T19:50:00.000+04:30

Due to work related travel I could not participate in the 1st edition of the Science and Technology run(http://www.sntrun.org/) at IISc in 2009 though I had registered for it. So I was eagerly looking forward to this year's edition on 11th April - to go back and run a 10Km in the beautiful campus of my alma mater. To relive my early days of running for it is in this campus 30 years ago that I first started jogging. This year my son Rahul also decided to run this. He was prepared to run the fun 5K in this event. However, when we reached the venue around 7am we realised that I had registered him for a 10K instead of 5K. The longest he had run before was 5.7K as part of the Majja run in Sunfeast World 10K 2009. Recently he had done 4Km as start of his training for the Sunfeast World 10K 2010. He decided to run/walk and do as much as possible.

I left home around 620am with Rahul and Adam. Space for four wheeler parking was provided in the gymkhana grounds. Met Athreya and Reena at the parking lot. We took the overbridge to cross the main road and enter the main campus and walked over to the main building area with the statue of JRD Tata to collect our bibs. There were quite a few familiar runners from RFL there. The bib collection process was quite smooth and all runners were also given a cap and a T-shirt. Adam and I decided to warm up by running back to the parking lot to put the T-shirts in the car.

All runners moved to the starting line around 7:35 am and after a wait of nearly 10 minutes there the race was flagged off. There were probably around 500 runners for the 10K. I decided to try and keep a steady pace and target a below 50 minutes run. Ran the first 3 Kms or so with Nari at about 4:45 minutes per Km pace. The route was wonderful with fair amount of green cover. However it was quite a warm morning and soon the pace started to drop. However, I managed to keep the pace just around an average of 5 mins per Km. There were'nt any Km markers along the way. The route seemed to take a criss-cross path and if it were'nt for volunteers at vantage points the chances of taking a wrong turn was quite high.

Most of the route was on the road ; however there was a good trail section as well. There were water points every few Kms. While my intent was not to stop at the water points in the first half of the race the ehat got to me and I had to stop at least at every alternate water station.

When my Garmin showed just about 8Kms and I was looking to sprint after about 1.5Km I suddenly realised that the finish point was a few hundred meters away. Therefore I accelerated and finished in about 43 and a half minutes with my Garmin showing a little over 8.5Km. Athreya and Adam had finished a few minutes earlier. It was quite disappointing that the route fell short by nearly 1.5Km. When I spoke to the organiser he said that the route was marked for 10Kms and I must have missed a turn somewhere. That seemed unlikely as all runners I spoke to concurred that the route was well short of 10Km. See here for a discussion on this.

After cooling off a bit I walked to the T-intersection in order to join Rahul for his finish. After a few minutes he came by and I did a run/walk with him for a little over a Km to help him finish his longest distance ever.

Considering that he was mentally prepared to run only 5Km in this event this was a great achievement. As we were leaving the 5Km run was starting. We returned home by about 10am quite satisfied with the event despite the route being shorter than 10Km.

Thoughts on Ideal racing weight

2010-03-14T19:22:00.000+04:30

One of my key running goals is to continue to improve my full marathon finish time towards my long term objective of qualifying for Boston in a few years. A recent article that I read titled What is your ideal racing weight? written by Matt Fitzgerald (I hope to buy his book 'Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance' soon) for Active.com triggered off some research on the topic. The article says that the optimal weight for a runner also optimises the body fat percentage. To quote from the article:

your (ideal) racing weight is defined as the weight that is associated with the lowest body fat percentage you can attain without overtraining or under-nourishing your body. Because of the strong influence of individual factors, there is no way to accurately predict your lowest healthy body fat percentage, although it is likely to fall in the range of 3 to 9 percent if you're a male under 40, 5 to 12 percent if you're a male over 40, 12 to 17 percent if you're a female under 40, and 15 to 20 percent if you're a female over 40.

Hmm..I guess that's where I need to focus ; however that is going to be challenging. All the distance running over the last 9 years has resulted in a weight reduction of 8-9 pounds but it has now stabilised at 140 pounds(+/- 2 pounds) for the last 4 years or so. I have found it almost impossible to reduce the weight any further - probably beacuse I eat quite a bit and often succumb to temptation wrt to fried foods and desserts(As I have said before what is the point in running so much if one cannot eat and drink as one pleases.

Here are a few more interesting (albeit conflicting) articles I came across on the topic.

Amby Burfoot in an article in Runner's World titled 'What's your ideal weight' says that losing weight almost always helps with running performance. Some excerpts from the article: Lose too much weight, and you become weaker and slower, not stronger and faster. Still, there's no denying that healthy runners will race about two seconds per mile faster for every pound they lose. Weight loss boosts maximal aerobic capacity (VO2 max), an essential contributor to distance-running potential, because the less weight you carry around, the more miles per gallon you get from your oxygen. And because losing a few pounds makes running easier, you should be able to increase your workout distance and speed. So losing weight helps you train harder. The article refers to a 'Flyer Handicap Caclulator' devised by a runner and Physiologist from University of Dayton which "equalises" performances across runners of different weights. As per this calculator, based on my current PB, if I were 25 years old I would complete a FM in about 3 hours 23 minutes!!

Dr. Stillman's height/weight ratio table is discussed in an article on weight and performance in an interesting site called Peak Performance He fixes the non-active man's average weight for height with a simple formula. He allocates 110lbs (56.2kg) for the first five feet (1.524m) in height and 5 1/2lbs (2.296kg) for every inch (0.025m) thereafter. He is harsher with women, giving them 100lbs (45.3kg) for the first five feet and 5lbs (2.268kg) for every inch above this. He then speculates on the ideal weight for athletic performance, as follows:

Sprinters (100-400m): 21/2 per cent lighter than average (6ft/176lbs - 21/2% = 4lbs)
Middle-distance runners (800m - 10K): 12 per cent lighter (or 19lbs)
Long-distance runners (10 miles onwards): 15 per cent lighter (or 251/2lbs)

As per this for my height of 5 ft 6 in. the non-active man's average weight is 143 Lbs and as a long-distance runner my weight should be 121 Lbs!. The article also states that as a runner one should aim to be at least 10% lower than the average weight which in my case is about 130 Lbs. That's definitely not going to be possible in this lifetime!!

Both Stillman's height/Weight ratio and also a BMI table are illustrated in the article Weight: The percentage factor. Peak Performance also has a nice article on Body Fat and Running Performance which explains how excess body fat is a disadvantage for endurance runners - the total amount of fat that is needed for energy supply does not exceed about 200g for the average marathon runner!

The last time I measured my body fat % in the SCMM 2010 expo in Janaury it was 18%. So my goal over the next few years is to try and bring it down to say 12% and perhaps get the weight down to 135 lbs. This is a tough ask based on my past experience -I easily tend to put on a few pounds in the off-season when I am not running long distances . To achieve my goal I need to seriously watch my diet . I am seriously thinking of procuring a body fat monitor scale to help in this objective. I welcome comments and enlightenment from other runners and experts on the physiology of running.

Contours International Adidas Women's day run

2010-03-08T19:46:00.017+04:30

I was pleasantly surprised with the turnout for this run last Sunday organised by Contours International in support of Intenrational Women's day. There seemed to be over 500 runners participating in either 5K or 10K at Ulsoor Lake. Probably the convenience of the central location was one contributing factor. The run conducted by Runners for Life required 10K participants to do 3 loops around the Ulsoor lake starting and finishing in the Home Guards ground. I rode to the venue in the Red Dragon - we reached there just in the nick of time. The run started a few minutes after 630am before my Garmin could link up with the satellite. It was nice to run around the Ulsoor Lake after a long time specially with traffic blocked on one line. A few years ago RFL used to conduct its long runs quite regularly at this venue and I have actually done 11 laps around the lap ie 39K in preparation for a marathon. This run reminded me of those early days of RFL runs. I ran at a easy pace. My Garmin started working towards the end of Loop 1 after about 2.5Km. I ran a bit with Rishi and quite a lot with Srinivas. En route in the 3rd loop I saw my cousin Raji walking and also ger daughter Indu jogging. I completed the 10 K in approximately 53 minutes without sweating at all - this is 4-5 minutes slower than my performance in the 2009 Sunfeast 10K. Met with a lot of runners in the ground at the finish point and also my cousin and her daughter. It was great to see so many new faces there as well. Congrats to Ravi Shankar, Amrita, Neera and Pani for their podium finishes! Returned home after a hearty and boisterous breakfast at Konark. Overall it was a nice enjoyable morning. Click here for some photographs of the event.

Post run group photo

More thoughts from Strides of Hope experience

2010-03-08T19:38:00.000+04:30

A little over two weeks after the Strides of Hope run here are a few random musings and more pictures from the event(in keeping with my recent habit of two posts related to every major event)

The fact that I was able to do a run/walk for 13.5 hours without any specific training shows that the limits of human endurance can be stretched quite a bit

This has awakened my interest in ultra endurance events specially multi-day events. In the US and other 'running mature' countries there are quite a few such events. Multi-day events are at a nascent stage in India. Globracers is organising a couple of such events that sound quite exciting and challenging. I will look at doing one of these in years to come.

I feel I should have carried a change of shoes for the event. Using the same pair of shoes for over 13 hours was definitely not a good idea. A fresh pair of shoes might have given a new lease of life to my feet and enabled me to carry on a bit longer

I also broke a cardinal principle of mine of 'Not trying anything new during an event' by helping myself to sumptous regular (and very good) food during the dinner break. My digestive system was obviously not used to running after such a meal. If I had stayed with maybe sandwiches, nuts and dry fruits I may not have hit the GI stress at dawn. See here for an excellent post on GI Stress.

Another realisation I had during the run was my addiction to running with a cap. I have rarely done a long run or a run in any event without a cap. The cap of course helps when it is either very warm or cold or even if it drizzles. Apart from that it helps absorb the sweat around my forehead. And now it has become a pyschological requirement for me. During one of the loops at EGL, while changing my running shirt to a full sleeve shirt I forgot to wear back my cap. I felt very conscious of this during the entire lap and was anxious to get back to the aid station point and wear the cap again. Talking of sweat I think I sweat very little compared to many runners I know - not sure the reason for this. But in general I am not a sweating type.

With Vinod and Anjana: Ulsoor to EGL Feb 20th 2010

Ulsoor to EGL escorted by a cycle and a car : 20th Feb 2010

EGL in-between laps: Feb 20th 2010

Returning to the aid station after a lap at EGL :20th Feb 2010

Taking off for a lap at EGL :20th Feb 2010

Break from long distance running

2010-02-27T18:49:00.000+04:30

With the end of the running season in India, I am taking a break from long distance running for a few months. I am also taking a break from strengthening sessions at Manipal hospital after a period of 5 months. I plan to resume this in the beginning of May. This year the break also coincides with the summer in Bangalore. Last year I took the break in August and September since my streak of 12 marathons in 12 months ended in July 2009 .That break definitely helped me get back rejuvanated and finish strongly at the Bangalore Ultra and SCMM 2010. For the next couple of months I plan to run a weekly mileage of about 35K to 40K across 3-4 days a week and cycle 2-3 days with one day of rest. During this time my long run will be either 20Km or 25Km during this period. My next run beyond 25Km is likely to be in late June/early July as I commence preparations for my next full marathon at the end of August in Hyderabad.

81Km run/walk as part of Strides of Hope

2010-02-27T16:34:00.000+04:30

After the finish at Madhavan Park - 21st February 2010

I fell well short of my original, ambitous goal of being on my feet for 24 hours - after over 13.5 hours of being on my feet my stomach and legs were hurting bad and when I paused to consider whether I should go on or not at about 5:30am on 21st morning at EGL, both the body and mind chickened out. Later that afternoon as I comfortably ran the 2Km from Lalbagh to Madhavan park for the finale of Strides of Hope I felt a bit low that I had not pushed myself more and done one or two loops as part of the RFL run that morning and hit 100Km or at least 90Km. Now a few days after the event I have got over this and am satisified that I was able to achieve my longest ever run and along the way contribute my bit to this unique event and help spread awareness about running and the wonderful work being done by Asha for under-privileged children.

Being a passionate running evangelist and also an ardent supporter of helping under-privileged children through my involvement with Dream A Dream it took me just a few minutes to decide to run/walk as much as possible in the Strides of Hope. A light cold and fever a few days before the event did not deter me at all. Since I was not targeting any particular pace I did not feel nervous as I usually do when leading up to a race. On Friday 19th night , I along with my wife, dropped in at EGL around 10:45 PM to check how things were going. There were quite a few runners and volunteers there. I met Sunand Sampath and Murtaza who had undertaken to walk the entire 48 hrs. I felt quite excited about the whole event. Nevertheless, I managed a good 7 and a half hours sleep on Friday night.

On 20th afternoon I reached Cubbon Park a little before 3:30PM. Santosh who had been on his feet for nearly 24 hours had hurt his ankle and was resting. I along with Sam Reddy started a slow run to Ulsoor lake around 3:40PM. Within a few minutes we felt quite warm and started looking for water to buy which we got on Infantry road near Safina Plaza. The traffic along the route was high so the run was not much fun. However, Sam and I were meeting for the first time so we chatted all the way and covered the distance of about 6Kms in 45 minutes or so to reach the Home Guards parking lot opposite the Ulsoor lake.

With Santosh and Shanavas at Ulsoor Feb 20th evening

I then ran the 3.3Km loop inside Ulsoor Lake for a little over 3 hours in the company of various runners at different points in time. This included Sam, Shanavas, a 15 year old (10K/35mts runner) called Puttaraj, Pratibha, Chandra, Gautam and of course Santosh. Sam who has moved back to Bangalore after living in South Africa has completed Comrades an impressive 11 times!Santosh's parents also walked a few rounds. I was running in the ground inside the lake for the first time- it seemed a fairly good place to run. There were quite a few walkers and runners there and also people including a few couples generally hanging around. Running here was a bit tough after sunset due to lack of lights. Gautum and I did a couple of loops with torches. I maintained a steady pace of between 7:30 and 8:15 per Km and did a total of little over 29Km when we ended the run at the lake and took a break for dinner. The aid station there was well stocked with water melon, oranges, bananas, electral, coconut water, lemon juice and biscuits etc. During this period I finished a Power Bar energy bar. Santosh had stopped due to ankle pain about an hour earlier. Sunand and Murtaza were walking strongly and steadily. Also Jagadish and Sindhu completed their amazing 12 hour walk during this period.

We all had dinner in the parking lot of Home guardsI ate a couple of paranthas, Pulodarai and banana chips and curd rice with pickles. The food was quite awesome and I probably ended up eating a bit more than I should have. While eating I kept my Garmin for charging. After dinner I changed my shirt and socks and then along with Vinod and Anjana started our run to EGL. We were accompanied by Biju on the cycle and Gautam and Anjana's husband in their cars. We literally felt like VIPs/celebrities. Of course the traffic enroute was quite bad - specially around the Ulsoor lake and old Madras Road. We covered the 6 Kms in 50 minutes and entered the parking lot of Goldman Sachs in EGL to loud claps. It felt good and energising.

There were quite a few volunteers and runners at EGL. I ended up doing a total of 5 loops of 9.2Km each. In every loop there were 7 or 8 runners with me and at least one cyclist . There were familiar faces like Manoj Bhat, Ambar and Amit Joshi. Plus I met and chatted up with a number of fantastic runners for the first time: Vikram Kamath, Manish, Deepak, Prakash etc. The aid station at EGL was well stocked through out the night and the volunteers and other runners there were extremely enthusiastic and helpful. Their cheering and clapping each time we left and each time we returned was a huge motivator. The route here was very familair to me as I run here during the weekdays as part of my regular training.Running here at night was a bit different but I did not find it much tougher. There was one part of the route that was dug up and quite difficult to navigate in the dark and there were also other parts of the route that were pitch dark - the torches that some of us were carrying were very useful. I tried to do a run/walk routine : 25 minutes of running with 5 minutes of walking. In the second loop I crossed my previous longest distance ie 52Km and entered uncharted territory. It felt a little cooler after midnight so for the 3rd loop onwards I changed to a full-sleeve shirt . Till the end of second loop (approx 53Km)I felt quite comfortable. However, towards the second half of third loop my stomach began to ache -probably the effect of running immediately after dinner - something that I was not used to. I used the rest room at Goldman Sachs - but that did not seem to help. For the 4rth loop I left my Garmin for charging. In this and the next loop I was part of some wonderful conversation with Manish and Prakash on various subjects. The amazing thing about Manish is that he was able to walk very comfortably at a steady pace of about 7Km/hr and he also ensured that I did not speed up. By the end of 4rth loop my stomach discomfort had increased significantly and of course my feet and legs were were also hurting. I sensed the beginning of an ITB issue. Preeti helped me stretch a bit and after a brief break I set off on my 5th loop. However, I could now feel my resolve for going on diminishing quite rapidly. It was both a physical and mental battle. Most of the 5th loop I ended up walking with Manish. I did very little running during this loop. On the return leg, as the day was breaking, we started seeing some early morning walkers along the way. At the end of this loop I took off my shoes and socks and examined my feet. There were no blisters - however the feet were hurting quite badly. And my stomach felt extremely gassy. I pondered for several minutes whether to go on or not. During this period I also checked and rechecked with Rajeev, Preeti etc whether there were sufficient runners to carry on run through the 48 hours period. They had prepared a roster of runners to ensure this. After about 15 minutes or so of ' should I' or ' Should I not' I opted out though I did not feel great about it. At just about 6 am I left for home in Prakash's car - enroute we saw a bunch of RFL runners starting their run .

Lalbagh to Madhavan Park 21st Feb afternoon

I had to rush to the bathroom as soon as I reached home. I felt quite drained out and after eating a few biscuits slept solid for over 3 hours. I woke up feeling quite allright and a few hours later landed up at Lalbagh with Amit Joshi for the finale of the event. A large bunch of us started a slow jog from Lalbagh to Madhavan park at 330PM. Though most of us were quite exhausted and it was a very warm afternoon the energy, excitement and enthusiasm of the group was very high. At Madhavan Park we(by now there were probably over 50 of us) did a few loops on the track and counted down the last few seconds to loud shouts, cheers and Hi-5s bringing down the curtains on a unique event that was planned and executed very well. Happily for the running community in Bangalore this is now planned to be an annual event. I lost about 4 pounds during the run - of course I gained that back within 24 hours. Though there were still a few aches and pains and my cold got a bit worse, I recovered almost completely in a couple of days.

I got over the disappointement of stopping after 81Km quickly and felt good that I was able to run a good 30KM more than I have ever done before in life and that too without specifically training for it. And doing this 1 week after Auroville marathon meant that I had done 42K+ on back to back weekends clocking a mileage of over 130Kms in a space of 8 days! Also, for the first time I ran through the night - I did not find that different from day time running probably due to the wonderful company I had. Doing run/walk at one's own pace without having to worry about timing was a wonderful finale to the long distance running season- thanks to Santosh and Strides of Hope for making this happen. A unique thing about this event is that at no point in time was I alone - I always had company. Participating in this event has reinforced my confidence that I can scale between doing fast full marathons and running slow ultras comfrotably and enjoy doing both!

Strides of Hope..a unique event coming up this weekend

2010-02-18T20:38:00.000+04:30

The Strides of Hope is a unique event- probably the first of its kind. It is a 48 hrs endurance run organized by the running community of Bangalore to encourage more and more of its citizens to take up a healthy and environment friendly lifestyle. The event in itself will be a 48 hour continuous run by various runners around parks and popular roads in Bangalore. This is also an effort to raise awareness about education for the underprivileged children in India by raising money for Asha. The run starts at Ulsoor lake on Friday 19th Feb at 4PM and will end on Sunday 21st Feb at 4PM in Lal Bagh covering EGL(Embassy Golf Link) and Cubbon Park in between. The idea came from Santosh Padmanabhan who plans to run/walk the entire 48 hrs. He has the experience of doing about 156Kms in 24 hours at the 2008 Bangalore Ultra and is now challenging himself to go much beyond! Runners are expected to join in and give him company at various points and/or times which willd efintiely increase the awareness of running in the city. Participants who do not want to run can of course walk or even cycle.

When I first heard of this event a week before the Auroville race I immediately felt I had to participate and impulsively decided to run at EGL through Saturday(20th Feb) night. Later it occurred to me that maybe I can even attempt a 24 hours run/walk from Saturday 4PM and test the limits of my endurance. Crazy thouhght immediately frowned upon by family members but then running like any other addiction can drive one to do crazy stuff. That is another reason why I took it easy at Auroville. Now with just about one and a half days to go before Saturday afternoon things are a bit uncertain. I have come down with a medium severity cold and may be heading for a light fever. However, I am very keen on participating and am doing whatever I can do get better including salt water gargling 2-3 times a day. Depending on how I feel Saturday AM I might end up doing the originally planned 12 hours. However bad I feel healthwise I am certain to be around providing support to the participants of this unique event. I also wish Santosh the very best in this endeavour !

More on Auroville 2010..mostly pictures

2010-02-18T19:19:00.000+04:30

As mentioned in my previous post I did not come across any runner in Auroville who did not enjoy the experience. One of the areas of improvement is the limited portion of pasta dinner the night before the race. The lack of Km markers in the last stretch of the route was another thing. And the third thing is the women's dorm. Apparently it was quite uncomfortable and not very hygenic.The only other point that comes to mind is the red mud soaked socks and shoes.

Due to the relatively slow pace that I did in the race(50 seconds per Km slower than the pace at SCMM 2010) I recovered quite quickly and did a couple of easy runs of 4.5Km and 8Km during the week.

The pictures here were taken by me 'on the run' using my Blackberry 8520. The official timings and pictures are still awaited - perhaps that is another area of improvement. They should be published within 72 hours of the race.

Maitri Mandir on the first loop

Aid station #4 at 39Km

Aid station with volunteer on cycle

Sun just coming out - a little after 6am

Amrita, Rishi, Sunil and Ashok after the race

Ran easy, Ran to the beat of my heart..

2010-02-17T22:46:00.000+04:30

'Run easy,run to the beat of your heart' said the tag line on the bib of the 3rd Auroville marathon held on 14th February and that was exactly what I did! The course, the atmosphere, the ensthusiastic volunteers etc resulted in a wonderful race day experience once again this year - exceeding the high expectations of the event that I and many other runners had. I completed my 26th Full marthon(including 3 ultras) comfortably in under 4:36 within my target time of 4:40 without pushing too hard. Over 24 hours after the run I feel that I am well on the way to recovery - the recovery seems much faster say compared to my Mumbai run 4 weeks ago probably because I run at much slower pace and also because most of the route was not as hard as an asphalted road . When I set my running goals for 2010 I had anyway decided that I will push hard in SCMM 2010 and Hyderabad marathon and take it easy and enjoy the scenery and the runs at Auroville and Bangalore Ultra. In the days leading up to the Auroville run I even toyed with the idea of switching from FM to HM after I heard about the 48 hours run as part of Strides of Hope. As soon as I learnt about this event, on an impulse, I felt that with no pressure of pace and timing I should try and run as much as possible between 12 and 24 hours as part of this event just to test my limits of endurance. However, I finally decided to stay with the FM at Auroville - somehow I am not motivated to travel out of town to run anything less than a FM.

Since the Auroville run was on a long weekend (12th Friday being Maha Shivaratri) I had originally planned to drive to Pondy on 12th morning with my wife and do a bit of sightseeing in the area. I had booked a room in the Center Guesthouse in the centre of Auroville - same place where I stayed last year. However, due to my wife and son falling sick earlier in the week I had to change my plans and ended up take a ride in Pankaj's Red Dragon on Saturday 13th morning. Other than this change of plans I had a pretty cool week in the run up to the race – maybe because I was not targeting any aggressive time target and had decided to take it easy and enjoy the trail and the race I felt less pressure and stress.

Left home at about 6:15 am and joined Pankaj and co in Koramangla. Others in the car were Ashok Nath, Sonit Chadha and Wing Commander Vinod. We had a great time during the drive to Pondy though we ended up driving about 80km more than we should have. The highly energetic and enthusiastic fighter pilot was asked a lot of questions by the rest of us which he answered very patiently. There were several cars full of runners going to Pondy that morning. Some of us stopped at Kamat Uphaar just before Krishnagiri for breakfast and later at Krishna Grand near Vellore for a comfort break and tea/coffee. We reached Hotel Ginger in Pondy just before 3 nearly 8 hours after leaving Koramangla.

After cleaning up whatever food was availabl in the restaurant at Ginger we reached the visitor's center in Auroville to collect the bib. The collection of the bib and bagage tag(no bag or T-shirt/torch up front this time) took less than 5 minutes. Meant a number of runners from Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. While a bunch of Bangalore runners went to the Auroville beach I decided to hand around in the visitor's area talking to other fellow runners. It was really nice - I enjoyed the camraderie and the interactions thoroughly. Runners in T-shirts of Hyderabad runners, Chennai runners, Runners for Life showed the increasing popularity of running in the country. Around 645PM the pasta dinner was served. The food was good but it was not adequate for most runners. The choice was to eat either lasagne or pasta with salad. It would have been nice to have had both. I felt so hungry that I bought and ate two chocolate brownies. A video tape of last year's race was playing on a large screen in the courtyard. After dinner I walked back , in pitch darkness, to the Center guesthouse and located my room after a bit of an anxious time. I shared the room with Jaideep Pegu another Bangalore runner.

I went to bed by 9:45and though the room was comfortable it took me a while to sleep and as always I woke up on my own at 3:15am a few minutes before the alarm went off. Jaideep and I left the room a little after 4:15am and walked the 2 Kms to the start point , that is, Certitude. Along the way we met with Ram Viswanathan - veteran runner and founder of Chennai runners group and Ram Prasad Dasari - also a Chennai runner now living in Bangalore. When we reached the start point at Certitude around 4:40 am it was already buzzing with lots of runners - greeting each other, warming up. I checked in my bag at the baggage counter, signed in the sign-up sheet and collected my torch. Just after we got there an anchor started announcements in a baritone voice egging on the runners to get ready for the race. He kicked off the race a couple of minutes after 5.

Starting off in complete darkness with light bobbing from torches was a fascinating and unique experience. Though I had done it last year still I felt quite apprehensive taking each step cautiously and running at quite a slow pace. Since most of my fellow runners take off quite quickly I was pretty much alone. I saw Ram Viswanathan pull ahead. Apart from the light from runners torchers there were volunteer cyclists with headlights and also some relief from lights in the village that we ran through as the inhabitants were just waking up and starting their day. After about 3Kms on the road we entered the trail area and things became tougher. Negotiating uneven terrain with its ups and downs and bumps was challenging - more than once I almost tripped but luckily for me I managed to hold my balance. I am quite amazed how so many runners are able to keep a fast apce even in this darkness. Several runners from bangalore did a sub 4 hour finish here which is quite incredible. Whenever I glanced at my Garmin and could make out the reading I seemed to be running between 6:30 and 6:40 average pace which was as per my target. The day break around 5:50am is the best part of the Auroville experience, for me. The sun rays slowly streaking through the trees, sound of birds and often running alone - it is an amazing feeling. Around this time I met Ajit - a Bangalore based runner doing his first Full marathon. We ran pretty much together from about 6Km or so till almost 27Km or so. The trail itself was extremely scenic going through various parts of Auroville at times what semed like going past the back yards of people living there. Any Aurovillan we met whether standing, walking or riding their bicycle, scooter or motorbike cheered the runners on. The aid stations were well stocked with water, electral, fruits and energy bars and manned by helpful and enthusiastic volunteers. While the route was shaded by trees most of the way once could feel the heat and humidity quite early on in the run.

The Full marathon consists of 2 loops. The route was same as last year - there were perhaps a few minor changes. I completed the first in about 2:15. At the start of the second loop I met MS Suresh an ex-colleague from Mumbai who I had also met at the start point. He was doing a run-walk routine. And then I passed Prateek. I managed to keep a steady average pace despite stopping for several seconds at each aid station and stopping to take pictures - the only run in which I tend to take pictures. I took pictures of the Maitri Mandir in booth loops - all my photos in the next post. The pictures here are borrowed from others. Around the 35Km mark I met Amrita who was tiring and asked me to go ahead. I reached the 37Km mark after 4 hours of running(while in Mumbai I made it at least 30 minutes earlier). The road stretch after the last aid station at 39Km was challenging due to the heat and fatigue setting here. It was around here that I overtook Ram from Chennai. It is sense of relief to enter th trail again. This part of the route did not have distance markers - having those would definitely motivate tiring runners. I ran this stretch alone and as I made the turn for the final stretch of 400m or so like last year there was a cyclist escorting each runner into the gate of certitude. And from the gate Balaji(one of the organisers of the event and a marathoner himself) took over. He paced each runner to the finish point accompanied by loud cheering from the bystanders - spectators and runners who had completed their run. And not to forget the anchor who was welcoming each finisher with the same energy and enthusiasm with which he had flagged the runners off several hours earlier. I finished with my Garmin showing 4:35:03- average pace of 6:34 - as per my goal. This time a medal was given to each runner at the finish point. Talking to the runners there I concluded that there was'nt a single runner who did not enjoy the trail, the hospitality of the organisers and volunteers and have a great time that day. There are very races in India about which one can say this. And this with no sponsors and very reasonable cost to runners. Kudos to Aurovillans and the organisers. No wonder the event has grown from barely 150 runners in its 1st edition to over 800 this year.

I had pongal and vada breakfast(the queue for Dosas was too long!), collected my T-shirt , chatted with several runners and then went back to my guesthouse. After a quick shower I checked out of the room . Rishi and gang picked me up and we went back to Pondicherry for lunch. We had lunch at a place called Rendezvous. The food was very good but service was pathetic felt more so because we were all extremely hungry. We left for Bangalore around 3PM and amazingly Pankaj drove pretty much non-stop and got us to Koramangla a little after 8PM. I will never be able to run like this after running a full marathon though of course I was significantly less tired compared to the run in Mumbai. I got home by 9PM after a wonderful weekend resolving yet again that I will come back year after year to participate in this event!!

Recently acquired books

2010-02-01T00:14:00.000+04:30

The last couple of years I have been collecting books on running. See the list on LHS. After a haitus of not buying anything in 2009, in a frenzied session, I bought the following books from Amazon in January 2010.
Hope to read them and a few from my existing collection by the end of the year!

50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days -- and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance! by Dean Karnazes and Matt Fitzgerald

I Run, Therefore I Am--Nuts! by Bob Schwartz

Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon: How to Be Your Own Best Coach By Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald

Wired to Run: The Runaholics Anonymous Guide to Living with Running Addiction By Scoop Skupien

Zen and the Art of Running: The Path to Making Peace with Your Pace By Larry Shapiro