Comrade, Boston and a Podium Finish

Another late day at work and blogging is probably the best guilt free release for me while at work. While mindlessly operating on word documents and looking at screens for minute errors, my brain deviated towards the races that I would like to run during the next few years. Of course, I want to qualify for the Boston marathon and enter it legitimately and I surely want to stand on a podium one day and receive a medal for a killer 10k finish. However, the ultimate aim is the Comrade 90-km Ultra marathon. The cut off time for the race is 12 hours and there are number of cut-offs along the routes that runners must reach within a prescribed time or they will be forced to retire from the race. Its probably the greatest and most celebrated ultra marathon ever and the environment is just too electrifying. I would not even attempt to explain the environment of the race in this post.

Not being able to do any distance over the last two days is definitely disorienting. There is no secret about running a good race. It could be a 5k, 10k, 21k, 100mts, 42k, 100k whatever. It is relentless training. You could be a little bit lucky in the race but if you have not put in the effort, doom is guaranteed. You can drink, smoke and eat junk - you will still live at the end of the marathon if you trained. But attempt, a marathon with no training or feigning to train and you are bound to pay for it. A secret for a great marathon is 16 weeks of 8 hour sleep, training 5 days a week at least, healthy mix of carbs, protein and fat and I'd emphasise minimal abuse of the body.

My next goal is the midnight half marathon on December 13Th. Its going to be a modest goal of running it in less than 2 hours though the flying doc is telling me to do it much much faster. I haven't trained for speed in 3 weeks now and for a fact I'll cramp up. Speed, like endurance is equally challenging and it is important to train your body at different levels of speed.

Iliad, though hard, is good to read. Humans speaking to Gods, Zeus sending nightmares, the Archean eating bulls are all great but my favorite part is when Achilles has something to recite (its all poetic). I like the character a lot but I just don't want his heal.