Mile Markers-III

Phooh phooh oooph, yeah this is just the warmup, the road ahead will be better. On a weekday, 14K is a long distance, that’s why I woke up at 5:00 am and…. Oh wait I am running at 5:55 pace already, so Shantanu you see it is not that bad!

Hmmm boyfriends seeing off their girlfriends at the bus stop, Dads / Moms holding their child’s hand and seeing them off at the bus stop, and here I go my hands clinched, strides significantly improved in the last three weeks, but the road ahead is long very long till Mumbai Marathon. I look into my Garmin and fall in love with the gadget yet again! I have reason this time. The Garmin shows 10K @ 5:43 pace. Wow Shantanu, if the music keeps playing this way the Goal for this year looks achievable!!!!!

Breathing check: Normal, Shin pain ? mmmmmm no I don’t think so, hamstrings and calves ? feels good! Heart ….. LOVES IT!!!!!!!! Wait wasn’t this supposed to be a progression run? Yeah it was, let me try carrying this pace for about 4 more Kilometres.  I can’t wait to message it to my buddies!!!! So I have to reach home earlier than before, I want to tell this to all… lets carry on!

Wait who is this? He is trying to lap me! Not today dude, today is my day….. run Forrest run!!!!!

Phhhhhhhh I guess after an awesome run, when the Garmin shows you 14K @ 5:44 pace you need to cool down, and stretch… let me do that……

This run made my day, the best part was I wasn’t even feeling that I was cruising at 5:44 pace. How easy it is for a runner to start a happy day!!!!!!!!

Mile markers - II

For the first part of this series read here

Oh God! Please don’t stop this music, I am loving it. Another good week for me, ran a total of 66 KM and that too at a decent pace. As my weekday mileage increases so are the techniques to prevent injuries, now I find myself doing a lot of stretches and drills before and after the run. I never saw the importance of doing it, or maybe I was just too lazy to do it. But I guess whenever you are doing great mileages or speed runs or the hill training a good stretch, especially after the run becomes very important. I realized this the hard way, after being down with so many injuries last year, I am not going to make the same foolish mistakes this year.

The coming weekend I will be 30 years old. So I am running a 30 KM on that day to celebrate my birthday, also just saw the training plan and realized that at the end of July I would end up running 300 KM, and happily included that in the celebration plan as well. So the fight still continues, staying injury free is the key part in this training, if I can do that my goal for this year looks achievable.

Like a lot of long distance runners I have stopped enjoying the music during my long runs now, it suddenly has become pretty irritating, instead the long run this weekend (27 KM at 6min 31 sec a kilometer pace) was done without the music, in the first leg we discussed some case studies with Pankaj, and in the last leg of the run a general chit chat with Anjana.

Apart from this I have included a 32 KM run on 24^th July to pace with Anjana on her 32^nd birthday, yes all July babies!!!

Definitely marathon training is more fun than running the actual marathon!

Mile markers - I

The title of this series is shamelessly copied from Kirsten Armstrong’s blog name.

I have been doing some good training over the last 3-4 weeks. Thanks to Meher, she has taken the pains of putting a torturous plan in place, which concentrates on hill workouts and loooots of mileage for our muscles. The key during this training is getting fast in the marathons, the first test would be in Kaveri Trail marathon which will be on 19^th Sept 2010 in Srirangapatnam. Well I would agree that this is not one of the ideal places to test, as it is very hot during that time and since we would be running alongside a canal it gets pretty humid as well. But I guess that would be stress testing

So coming back to the runs, I have been covering an average distance of 40K on the weekend and some 15K on the weekdays, now that is some serious running, I am quite happy with my performance till now, and still keeping my fingers crossed because this torturous plan takes up to a whooping 96Km week. I think the key here would be to stay in good shape and not do anything stupid and get injured. So as an action plan I am not cycling to work these days, but still controlling my carbon footprint with the use of Public Transport (Volvo City buses).

Also while running all these Kilometres I again did a dissection of the Mumbai disaster this year and found out and made some more corrections:

1)     Never forget a cap in Mumbai marathon

2)     If possible wear sunglasses as well

The above two points are very very important, specially having a good cap, I underestimated both of them and then the bright sun hit me at the 27^th KM, which further made the things worse

3)     Always carry your own fuel bottles

4)     Carry common salt

Apart from all these things I am not going to carry my iPod during the marathon this year, it get a little irritating after some time. Will try to listen to Mumbai this year!