40 kms and 4 beers down

It should have been 50 km and 5 beers down but due to work pressure yesterday, I was unable to catch my evening run. So, decided to go for a beer instead and increase the guilt quotient in my body exponentially. I woke up this morning at 6:18 and the run went smoother than I thought. I got the 10 k done in 57 minutes.

I hope to catch a 12 km run with Karthik and Sandy tomorrow morning and a 18 km run with the group on sunday morning. Lets hope I can rise and shine early in the morning.

30 kms and 3 beers down

So, the train ride was not as pleasurable as I imagined it to be. Too mamis (older women) of my own kind - iyengars, switched on the lights at 2:30 am and started gossiping. Classic Iyengars man!!! I told them to shut up but they would not. They just ignored me and acted as though they were dazed and continued speaking again. The punjabi man next to me spoke to his subordinate for a while and then started snoring. Overall, a bad experience !!!

Thats my reason for not waking up and going on a run.

However, I made up by doing a 10 k in the evening which was immediately followed by drinking two beers and eating some thair satham plus a huge masala dosa. I also officially quit drinking water when I am on field trips - I drink only gatorade.

I also realized that my favorite swear word is God F *@#$%^ da%^...not bad, atleast I have God before those words that are not appropriate during marriages, dinner with parents and on your first date.

Third Half Marathon - Auroville Half

(This is before the race and I promise I did not drink 10 beers before this)

I apologize for not posting more often for the last one week. I have been travelling and work is starting to get a little hectic (finally!!).

Auroville half-marathon happened last sunday. Excellent race, great people and some amazing food. Auroville itself is really gorgeous and the race course was similar to a jungle trail. I also happened to meet two extremely pretty women who work in the microfinance and are passionate about running. One of them shares my favorite dish too - thair satham or curd rice. It was such a relief to meet people outside of work finally. Personally, I was unhappy with my timing but I have a reason again. I lost my way on the course and had to do about 3 extra kilometers. The real reason is I did not train hard enough and ended up doing a 2 hour and 14 minute run. Aaah well, the Singapore marathon is far away and a marathon runner only peaks when he is 35.

Thinking about age, my happiest years will possibly be when I am 35 to 37 and ofcourse when I am 42 years and 195 days old. I really hope to do a full marathon in less than 4 hours by then.

The next target is the Bangalore midnight marathon slated for April 19, 2008.

I am off to Bangalore tonight for a concert called Fireflies 2008 which is dubbed as the Indian woodstock.

Auroville Half Mary

The Auroville half mary is coming up on Feb 16 and 37 folks + from Chennai runners are planning to participate in the event.

I have not been training for this event exclusively. The main problem is I cannot motivate myself to wake up early in the morning just to run. Most nights are spent watching oscar nominations from a pirated cd hub that I discovered close to home.

However, I put in 1 hour runs in the evenings after work and spend 20 minutes stretching/strengthening after. So, despite not training exclusively for the event, I am putting in my speed work, lsd's and the required mileage everyday. I also maintain a healthy diet intake with some recessions once a week where I consume about 5 litres of beer in less than 2 and a half hours. I call this living a balanced lifestyle.

The plan this week is to get a two hour run this evening, a 40 minute run tomorrow morning and another 2 hour run on saturday. The boys are coming down on saturday night and i would not recover from that high intensity speed workout with a combination of LSD before sunday evening. Most sunday morning will be spent toggling between espn, star sports, ss music and discovery channel with spurts of passing out on my couch.

Listening to my Body

For the last few days, I have done nothing but to listen to my body. This basically involved complete rest – I would hit the sack by 9:30 pm and wake up only by 8:00 am just in time to get to work. Last week, I played two Frisbee games and made sure that I did not exert myself – played real casually and blamed my bad passes on the wind. This time, luckily, my teammates did not yell at me, mainly because they sucked too.

Running begins again this weekend. However, the plan for the first part of the year is to do shorter distances (5k) around a loop and work on shaving off a few minutes.

Well, the beer count after Bangkok has been one single can of warm beer which was partially wasted. This means that for the last 10 days, I had less than 200 ml of beer – again a personal record. I have given myself 6 beer cards for 2008 – the beer cards will be redeemed for beer of course. The quantity does not matter. Even if I have one beer a card has to be surrendered. The moral hazard is that there will be binge drinking 6 times a year which is still better than wasting 1 training day every week.

Pure Pleasure

This morning's run was just that. I rested on monday and tuesday and wednesday morning, I did a 5.4k speed workout. I mentally calculated the distance required to do a 70k this week and that entailed I do a LSD of atleast 13k this morning. I woke up early at 4:30 am, drank about 300 ml of water, had some museli and set out for a run that would start at 5:30 am. The weather was perfect and we did the entire distance really slow and easy. We caught up with some fellow runners on the way and hit the beach exactly at sunrise. I wanted to add an additional 4k by running a few laps in boat club but none of my fellow runners were willing. I decided to stop at 13k today.

This rest of this week's schedule is going to look like this:

a) Friday: 10k - Home to Marina - start time 4:15 am. Running ABC's on the beach while playing ultimate frisbee
b) Saturday 6.5k - Dimensions gym to Besant nagar beach - start time 5:00 am. Two games of ultimate frisbee on the beach
c) Sunday 34k - Reverse classic route with two laps in boat club followed by a dip in the swimming pool to cool off.

This makes it a total of 70k for the week. This also means that I stay off alcohol on friday and saturday but will gulp down a beer on sunday evening with some romali roti and mutter panneer followed by a few ice-creams

Friday Afternoon at Work

I am sitting here in front of my computer on a friday afternoon thinking about the first sip of beer/wine tonight. I have figured out why I am so addicted to drinking beers on friday evenings. The feeling of beer hitting your parched tongue is simply priceless. However, beer alone does not do the job. The smiles across the table, the silly conversations, the one dude on the table pretending to be intellectual, people hooking up and plans made for after the bar etc is all hilarious and exciting to watch.

I am debating between a run tomorrow morning and beer tonight. It is a difficult choice as both of them give me the same rush of energy. The only difference is you feel good before you start drinking beer and feel like shit after the drink. On the other hand, you feel horrible when you first start running but after the run you are extremely happy for the entire day. Difficult choice right?

Budget Change

I would like to proudly announce that beer has moved from being a fixed cost to a variable cost in my monthly budget. Interesting part is that it is variable and falling exponentially.

I am just too tired before drinking starts and i am always zombie due to waking up early.

My new quote

I have decided that whenever I do someone a small favor, I am going to say " you owe me a beer!!!". This way, I will never have to ever spend on beer. If you copy this quote, then "you owe me a beer"

Bangalore Midnight marathon

I am running the bangalore midnight half marathon on may 19. The race starts at 11:30 and I hope to be done by 1:15. I have been training hard and am going to be giving all that I have for this race.

Leaving bangalore on sunday evening and will be back on monday morning. You guys probably know that I will be at pecos loading up carbs and calories all day sunday.

I ain't no Quitter !!!

Quitting beer drinking is possibly the most boring thing ever. My life has become a drab. I have become the guy who does not loosen up. Some people even feel betrayed and I miss my old friends. I am starting to miss the “guys night out” parties on Thursday nights where we used to know how many beers we had only after the bill arrived. All this built up anger took me to the leather bar last night. A friend prompted that Guiness is available for a reasonable cost and I quickly slammed two of those big daddies. I started to feel brave. The same guy and his wife suggested that we go to bike and barrel – this place where I am denied an entry due to some drama I created there. On the eventful day at bikes, the bouncers were determined to kill me, especially this dude called Vinoth who is nothing less than a 7 foot monster. Nobody fucks around with Vinoth. So, after my newly found courage, I walk into enemy territory staring into my cell phone and avoiding any eye contact with the monster. And there I am in bikes drinking beer, eating pannier and listening to retro music…I don’t know what the point of this post is, but I guess I have learnt a good lesson – it is highly important to drink and nothing like drinking in moderation. Moderation is a very subjective thing though!!!!

Losing my temper !!!

I am not sure why I am writing this crap today. Beer drinking is a passion but of late I am starting to become really cautious about beer drinking. Drinking has been making me swing my emotions from being really happy to being really angry (please note.. angry not sad). I am unable to take no for an answer and I am start hating anything associated with being rich – the bouncers at the bar who follow orders of the rich bar owners, cops, bar managers.

My temper is best controlled when I run and I haven’t been into serious running for about three weeks now. Part of the reason is a shin injury that I need to nurse. I could be working out/ lifting weights etc. but I am just too bored and lazy to do that.

This is my plan of action – I am going to restrict my drinking after the company party this weekend. I will try not to get madly drunk and will start running a lot more. In case the shin injury persists, I will consciously try and pursue things like yoga, sailing or something else that will help me release energy in a positive way and keep fit.

The organizers of the Mumbai marathon are complete morons. The marathon is supposed to be the best marathon in the country but will only start at 8:00 am. It is just impossible to complete it within four hours due to the late start. Why can’t these idiots start at six and finish off at eleven. Or why not start at 5 am…These dudes must be on drugs or something. Anyways, I plan to run it and I will run it hard. This will keep me fit for the next four months atleast and will be my license to drink beer while controlling my temper.

Bakarapet - Part 2

Yo...I just can't get enough of this place...here you go !!

Drinking started Thursday night and I partied till midnight and bullshitted around till three in the morning. Drinking again started on Friday afternoon. I did a ten k run when I saw two hashers taking off for a run and then resumed drinking till Saturday early morning. I had to wake up early to go pick up some folks and after a few errands slept in for two hours, got a ten km uphill run and then started drinking again. Did a few more pints of beer and did another 8 kilometer run. Had a shower, cleaned up and started drinking which did not stop until 4:00 am. Set my alarm for 8:30 am and picked up two beers that were next to me and drank both of them before I got out socializing. People kept feeding me more pints and some kick ass food…so did food and pints and pints and food for a few more hours. Played a few games, had some good conversation over more pints, danced a little bit and headed back home with five more pints.

The consequences:

A good shouting/ moral lecture from mom which was adorable.

Absolutely no hangover.

A lot of love

A huge mail box with emails that I did not check for three days ( I like that !!!)

Messages from fellow hashers asking me if I was okay.

Sore calf muscles because of drunken running. Apparently it is better than drunken sex ( During drunken sex you think you had amazing sex but in reality you sucked. Drunken running you struggle to finish the distance and you smell of beer and a ten km feels like a 30 km. I need a different post on comparing both these fabulous acts another time. )

Bakarapet 2006

Lesson learnt in Bakarapet: When the hashers say you are drunk, you are really drunk

Running and beer happen to be both reward and punishment. You drink beer and punish yourself by giving yourself a hard run. You then give yourself some beer as a reward for the hard run which creates a beautiful circle made of beer and running. And this time, the circle was made of some good royal challenge beer and running in the mountains. The place is just out of the world. Running the route was a great pleasure and I got to train on some good hilly terrain.

Even after eight hours after the trip, I was hallucinating about sipping beer and having a pint in my hand. However, all I can see now is a bottle of water in front of me which tastes very good now. I have never seen cooks more passionate than the men at Bakarapet. These guys choose every ingredient with a lot of care and the food was very well prepared.

Bakarapet is definitely a trip that I can write home about and I will surely have some good stories to tell my kids.