Sunfeast World 10K 2010 Report

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

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

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

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..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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