Focus shifts to BQ

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

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

The following is my approach to try and achieve this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Kudos to Preventive Strengthening and Conditioning Sessions at Manipal hospital

Strength conditioning is an important requirement for distance runners to stay injury free specially when planning either to run a lot or run at a faster pace. This article from Dr. Stephen Pribut - a renowned podiatrist with special interest in sports medicine and biomechanics provides a good explanation of the three dimensions of overall fitness - endurance, strength and flexibility. It elaborates very well the benefits of strength training specially for older runners like me.

The Manipal Hospital Department of Exercise and Sports Medicine , setup by Dr. Rajat Chauhan in late 2007, in the basement of the hospital offers strengthening sessions as one of its services. The cost of the Preventive Strength Conditioning at this department is Rs 1500/ for 8 sessions if unassisted and Rs 2000/ for 6 sessions if assisted by a sports Physio. The sessions here on strengthening machines from Nautilus . I have been a regular here doing 2 sessions per week for the last 9 months or so(since May 2008) working out 10 excercises on 8 different machines involving hamstrings, hip/quads, leg/calf, back, abdomen, chest and the arms. These sessions have helped me tremendously in finishing strongly in the seven full marathons that I have completed since August 2008. As with the runs, on most days I feel great at the end of the 30 minutes session while on a few days I feel so-so as I struggle to work the machines. The sports physios in the above picture - Anitha, Princy and Sudeep - have been assisting me patiently session after session constantly pushing me to achieve more. Big thanks to them for their significant contribution to my successfully running a marathon every 4 to 5 weeks for the last seven months! They can be reached at the department on 080-25024467 in case anyone wants to learn more about these sessions.