the countdown

This is it...as I write this; it’s less than 24 hours to go for the Delhi Half Marathon!

Reached the capital yesterday in the morning and judging by the chaos at the station, it’s hard to believe this is the city which is going to host a global sporting extravaganza in less than a year’s time. It was good to be back here, the air had a pronounced nip in it and the route we took from the station was almost identical to the half marathon route. It felt quite exciting...
We decided to check out the venue so that there no last moment glitches in getting to the start line. The venue was a scene of frenetic activity with the marquees going up and stalls being set up, athletes limbering up, officials scurrying about. The place had energy about it.

The expo presented the usual scene of pandemonium; stalls belting our guitar riffs, amateur volunteers clumsily trying to coax visitors to their stall. The collections of the running bib and timing chip happened efficiently enough, although they could have done without making participants run around the entire compound to collect the entire stuff in instalments. But the buzz sounded attractive...

So this is it...everything will boil down to these last 21 kms, you may have pushed yourself while training, did your sessions regularly and with dedication, ate all the right foods and been on track more often than, but its your surge in the last few miles that will decide whether you finish with elation of just finish.

the home stretch

I managed to get through that terribly frustrating week; I had the exams to keep myself occupied. I was looking forward to the end of this week when I’d travel back to Calcutta with the semester ending. I was hoping that the blister would dry up by then and I could the penultimate week count. I had used the inactive week in reading up further on marathon nutrition. I must say that I can claim to be some sort of an expert on what to eat while preparing for your first marathon. Some of the general misconceptions on which foods are ‘fattening’ is quite astounding!

Although the blister was not completely gone upon my arrival at Calcutta it had subsided quite a bit, sufficient for me to wrap the affected area in bandage and hit the road. I took the Sunday run a little easy doing about 8 kilometres at a trundling effort. The day after I was back in my groove and I ran from my place to the ‘Lakes’ in Calcutta. I must say that I’m glad that I took this route as its one of the most scenic running routes possible. With an early nip in the air this year in Calcutta, running next to the waterbody felt almost an out-of-body-experience for me! It can get a little crowded in the mornings but hey, after four months of dodging rogue auto and marauding bus drivers, I can manage a little bobbing and weaving!

The week turned out better than I expected; I mixed things up well with tempos, four mile stretches at a couple of notches above race pace and a fartleck. The almost week long layoff didn’t seem to have made that much of a difference as I exceeded 60 kilometres for the first time in a week. As the day of the race draws close, I’m invaded by a number of unanswered questions: how prepared I really am? Would I be able to hold my own against what most definitely would be a very competitive field? Only time will tell I guess...

Ouch!!!

Finally came the inevitable hiccup...and this one nearly threatened to derail my entire training effort. This came in the somewhat unexpected form of a blister in an area which made running impossible for almost an entire week. It reared its head a couple of hours after my long run on Sunday the 11th of October. I made the mistake of running in cotton inners, a warning that I had read on numerous a, about not using any apparel made from cotton since it absorbs a lot of sweat and dries very slowly, thus rubbing and chafing the skin it is in contact with. I thought the blister would subside in a day or two and I could resume training, but that was not to be as any attempt to even walk caused it to hurt angrily. As it so happened I missed out on the entire week with the only high point of the week being the 18 km run on Sunday which happens to be my longest run yet.

Despite the frustration of momentarily losing my rhythm, it added an extra dimension to this endeavour of running in a marathon. After I had made impressive strides and come a long way from trundling a couple of kilometres to covering close to 20 kilometres in my long runs, it was difficult for me to digest the fact that something as low as a blister should throw a spanner in the works, but frustrate it did as all I could do was vegetate in my room and dread the pounds that I figured that I was adding back on. I should have known better and taken precautions like applying skin cream as a preventive measure....

the leather hunt

I decided to take it easy this week, it being the week after three weeks of hard, sustained running. The week consisted of the mandatory long run on Sunday, the only difference being I had to do it indoors on the treadmill and did a distance of 10 kms...so it was a long ‘short’ run! I was happy with the effort though; I clocked 61 minutes 20 seconds in covering the 10 k and had touched the 5 k at 27:37. Now that the adhm is just around the corner, the idea is to cover long distances at my targeted race pace. The difficult part is always regarding the kind of goals that you should set for yourself; there is always this pitfall of setting yourself a superhuman target just because you’ve trained your heart out! This being my first half marathon (and my first competitive race for that matter) am setting my sights on a sub two hour finish, which I know will be no cakewalk. For starters, my pace will have to be a notch above 10 kms for almost two hours at a stretch, I have no idea how my body would react to that kind of oxygen debt. The other option is to perhaps really push myself at 12/13 kms for nearly an hour, take a 5 minute breather and then finish off at just above 10 k/hour. Either way, its not an easy choice to make, which just gets compounded by the fact that there is no way to know your exact pace while running outdoors, atleast newbies will never be as good as seasoned runners whose instincts are way better. Truly this is the leather hunt!

the joy of running!

I’m almost in the last throes of my preparation for the Delhi Half Marathon to be held on the 1st of November. My original intention was to start my competitive running career with the Mumbai Marathon in January 2010. That is supposed to be my first marathon, or was but a combination of events ensured that I’m yet to register for my first full marathon, not that 21 kms will be a cakewalk...

I have managed to clock 55 kms last week and 50 kms consecutively in the previous two weeks, so mileage wise am feeling quite confident. My long runs have also been shaping up quite well with runs of 14-16 kms every Sunday for the last few Sundays, I can just hope that my body is getting tuned into a nice weekly rhythm and should peak just at the right time. My running stints when I resumed at the beginning of the year was quite random with little thought going into building mileage schedules and ensuring that the tempo is built up gradually. I just went into the gym and drove myself on the treadmill...now when I first went through this site I counted myself lucky that I didn’t pick up an injury! In fact I was surprised that there was so much to learn about running that one wouldn’t be far off the mark by terming it as learning about the ‘art’ of running! One practically learns about how the body functions, metabolizes, the foods that provide energy and does the repair work etc. Initially I started shunning rice in the belief that it would just hold me back in my quest for shedding excess baggage...imagine my surprise when I discovered that its one of the primary source of carbohydrate for people into serious running.

.As promised by numerous running ‘gurus’, once you get into a nice rhythm and habit of running, it becomes a part of you, it becomes addictive. It’s like a daily fix; you itch to get out in the morning and hit the road, crunch those miles and come back after the days run with a glow of satisfaction on your face. If for some reason you miss a day, there is almost a sense of loss (I’m not exaggerating folks but it kinda feels like that!) So once I got the initial weeks out of my way after the resumption, I seriously began to wonder how I existed without it. However its important that one keeps enjoying the very act of getting outdoors and letting oneself go; a competitive edge can very quickly nudge you into a zone where running can become a burden.