Fire, Manoj Bhatt, 7.5k

The alarm was set at 5:30 am and after several snoozes and a shower, I was at Cubbon park by 6:45 am. The run began at 6:55 am and I wanted to bust out a hard 10k. However, after 2.5k, things did not go right. I suspect that the speed was higher than usual and my body heated up faster than expected.

It was great to bump into Manoj Bhatt and we spoke about a few runners in Chennai, the Hyderabad marathon, plans before the marathon etc for about a minute. Then we bid farewell and I took off again. The 5k was done in 23 minutes.

I wanted to just stop. Luckily, I managed to bump into a few athletes from the Karnataka Athletic Association and the video "Why do I run" played in my head. It was great to bust a few 800 meter loops with them. They glided effortlessly while I had to pant and weep through the 4 loops. Finally, it was somewhere between a 7.5 km and 9k run.

The Hyd marathon is going to be clearly be a mental game. There is absolutely no physical strength to run a hard half marathon but the need and the want to do it has set a fire in my belly. I hope this fire gets converted to a good race

A Great Video

This video made me do a 20k last friday evening after work through the busy streets in Bangalore. I started running at 6:00 pm through the main roads of Indiranagar, Coramangala, BTM layout, JP Nagar and Jayanagar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuy1GSYoOr8

A Leg Circuit

Vikram and I were supposed to do a crossfit this morning in Indiranagar. I forgot to confirm the previous night and when I dropped in at his place, he was sleeping peacefully. The initial impulse was to do a 10k run. Stretched and pondered over the idea and started the run. Upon passing Figurine fitness, a idea struck me. A circuit was immediately schemed in my head which involved running 5 1ks intercepted by a complete leg workout. The funny thing is everytime I do a circuit, I remember Sandy pushing through it as though he is fighting a war and thats motivating enough.

The groin is pissing me off. Doc says that I should cut down distance and speed which is what I have been doing over the last six months. The core needs to be strengthened. A part of me wants to train for a marathon but long-term running is more important than running a sub 4 marathon.

The plan is to stay inside for a few days and focus on getting the groin repaired by icing, stretching and strengthening it.

Off Alcohol, Figurine Fitness and Balu

Fortunately or unfortunately, I need to both hit the gym and run this month in order not to get injured. Last evening was my first time in the gym after 4 months and it is really annoying when the trainers tell you to take it easy, and give you a freaking 15 minute workout. I told him that it was not enough which ticked him off and gave me a whole bunch of core exercises. It was fun to go through an intense workout other than running or yoga after a long time. Yoga helps you build strength over a period of time which stays even if you don't work out for a while. Gym helps you build quick strength. However, if you don't continue to work out, you lose it. Both is good - gym is good for me now mainly because I have to build strength in very little time.

This gym is called "Figurine fitness" and the trainer is called Balu. He is okay and for some strange reason his eyes are always red...makes me wonder !!

The plan is to stay out of alcohol for 45 days and work out as hard as I can. Lets see how it goes..there is shit to do in the next 45 days and it will be wise not to drink.

The Tour, Canondale Hybrid and Kaveri

The tour of the nilgiris starts on December 14 and goes on till December 23rd. I am saving all my vacation for that part of the year, where I get done with the ride and then head out to Kookal from there. We have heard some fantastic things about Kookal but we never got a chance to be there when we were in Kodi. Its going to be two weeks of amazing mountains in the western ghats and I just cannot wait for it. The bike has been shortlisted - Canondale hybrid and all I need to do is pick it up from bums on the saddle next week. The plan is to try and get some really cool folks and so if you are reading this and if you are interested, join the tribe.

The half marathon this month is on home ground - Hyderabad. Rajesh Vetcha is trying hard to put up a similar show like last year. Being in Tanjore last year, I was unable to run it but there is no reason not to run it this year. If you are in Hyderabad on August 30, I encourage you to come out and run.The Kaveri trail is coming up on September 15th and my thought is I'll peak there. It will be cool to touch 1:30 this year and it depends on how much work I put in this month. Note the date - SEPTEMBER 15TH Bangalore !!

Hyderabad has been treating me well. We had some good meetings with a equity investor and some beuraucrats. I hope things pan out on the product front over the next few months. The yoga class this morning was great. I have started to feel that a private lesson is so much better than the group lessons in Bangalore. The plan on the yoga front is to continue to do it as regularly as possible at home and Apoorva has been kind enough to draw all the asanas for me to practice at home.Please send out a prayer that I remain injury free this year - injuries mess with your head.

Remember what my boy Jess always says - "Environmentalism is not an ideology, it is a religion that instead of worshipping the Creator, worships the creation". And always spread the love !!

Run Faster and Stronger

Traditionally intervals, fartleks and hill workouts have been mantras to improve your speed. However, a few additional micro changes could help you run faster and stronger.

a) Get atleast 8-10 hours of speed during your training months.

b) Lose weight

c) Try not to wear gadgets, heavy shoes etc.

d) Avoid junk food

e) Avoid smoking and limit drinking (this one is difficult)

10ks, ECR and Booty Ful

First of all, sorry for not updating the blog regularly. Sometimes, you don't really feel like writing and it was one of those weeks of the year.

Well, when I was running yesterday, I thought about this word "freak". When someone is hip, they are named "freak" (in a good way) in Chennai. For example, if Amit goes to a discotheque, the boyz in the hood say "Amit is going to freak. He is going to a discotheque". Chennai - I love the place. To refer to agression (good or bad), the street thugs call it "assault". Assault ??? WTF ???

My runs have been good and have been doing 10ks 4-5 times a week. I plan on running the ECR run this weekend in Chennai and am planning on doing 20k (I think??). The groin is great now but it requires a lot of stretching to keep it intact.

On twitter, I have been following Mallika Sherawat and Gul Panang. Mallika Sherawat calls herself "bootyful" and calls her sleep "booty sleep". Again my expression simply is WTF ???

Alcohol consumption, balancing and a 45 minute run

Yesterday was a highly productive workout (and work) day. I managed to work out for an hour on my core and balancing postures and another hour on shoulders and overall stretching. It was also great to get a fast 45 minute run which was a mix of intervals and fartleks.

However, the night ended up being a little too rough – skipped dinner and pounded a few beers. Obviously, this morning I ended up being dazed and confused. The workout seems almost pointless now.

The lifestyle requires radical change. I am tired of pulling my body in two different directions – intense workout sessions and intense alcohol consumption (read twice a week). My liver and lungs definitely require a break and with less than 2 months for the marathon season to begin, I better get my stuff in place.

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.

Things to Learn from the Japanese

Read this in a Japanese forum and I am really impressed by this post. As my friend Jay says, " the Japanese man...."

"The Japanese keep no secrets about their running. They are not secretive at all about their training.First of all, they are PATIENT. Right now there are about 100 young ladies in Japan who are running under 33 for 10km and about the same number of guys running under 29. They all have coaches, and they are all aiming to run the marathon, but they will only do so when their coaches allow them to.In Japan, yes, they do run for money and there is NO money in track. It's all in Marathons and Ekidens. Their training is carefully planned out and perfectly executed. When a runner is asked to run a 20km run at 3:30 per km, believe me, it's going to happen, no excuses or complaints, and it will be finished almost exactly 70 minutes later. When a training run is supposed to begin at 11:00am, it is not going to start at 10:59 or 11:01. The Japanese are extremely serious about their training. In Japan you find very little in the way of open spaces to run. For example on that 20km pace run I did with Mizuki last week, we did a double out-and-back on a 5km long narrow path along a river with a bunch of tight turns. Not exactly perfect terrain. I've seen athletes in Japan do 30km tempo runs on a track. I've seen middle school girls doing two hour jogs at EXACTLY (and I mean exactly!) 2:00 per lap, with a staff member recording the time of every lap on a notebook.Most importantly, the Japanese, both men and women are TOUGH. I've done workouts with Yoko Shibui, Reiko Tosa, Masako Chiba and Mizuki Noguchi. When they are running hard in training, it sounds like they are in agony or about to give birth. I can't imagine what they will sound like during the last 8km of a marathon."

NewYork Marathon Registration

Registration for the Newyork marathon is $210. They should have special developing country rates in the future. Its probably a great experience but I just cannot afford it.

I'll rather do a marathon in Asia this year and wait for a pay hike to do this race

Bangalore Midnight Marathon

Word on the street is that the run has been preponed to April 4th. Crossover guys are a bunch of dicks. They don't understand that long distance running requires structured training with emphasis on load and tapering.

I don't feel like doing this run but I'll still run it. The plan is to train for this month by putting in about 50 miles a week to make my little cousin Jwala proud. Running with her is a lot of fun. We talk, we walk, and I get to be on national news simply because she is drop dead gorgeous. Not to mention that I get to sit at Pecos all day after the run, listen to some classic junk, sip on beer and eat a lot of popcorn.

Strategies for Breaking the Wall

Runners can be divided into two types on how they choose to deal with the wall while running long distance runs - Associative runners are runners who play close attention to body sensations such as muscle tension and fatigue, breathing rates and stride lengths and disassociated runners are those who break the wall by distracting themselves by looking at the surroundings or thinking about something really pleasurable. The big question is what effect do these different strategies have on your running performance. I use a combination of both these strategies. When I am running by myself and I don't see any girl running next to me, I try and motivate myself , think about running strides and use the associative strategy. I try and act all cool and shit when I find a cute girl running next to me and usually have a smile on my face, think about her and thus use the disassociative approach. Sometimes, I think about the fun feeling of sipping my first pint of beer after a hard week's of work

Since the wall is an inevitable part of every long run, it is important for you to understand what strategy suits you better. When you choose a running partner make sure he also has a similar strategy as yours. A runner using an associative strategy can easily distract a runner who is using the disassociative approach.

Lessons from the Chennai Marathon

Over the last ten days, I have been going through personal issues that have devastated me both physically and mentally. My training sessions have not been upto the mark and runs have not been smooth. I enrolled myself for the Chennai half marathon but did not get a wink of sleep on saturday night. The only reason I pulled myself out of bed to run it was because my parents were more excited than I was to watch me run.

The entire family was there - dad, mom and sister. The run started off pretty strong and I went thorugh the first 10.5k in less than 1 hour despite the heat. After I touched the half way mark, I started making up reasons such as heat, no water etc and decided to drop out. Within minutes after dropping out, the guilt hit me - the real reason was not lack of water or the scroching heat, the real reason was life pushing me down and punching me on my face. I had to get up and and keep getting hit until life got tired of making me bleed.

Abhijit Shome, was running the full marathon. He arrived at the place where I was standing with my head low and almost burst to tears. He did not want to go further. For me, that was simply God yelling out, asking me to go take care of things that need to do be done. I said to Abhijit "do you want to finish the race?... I'll help you finish it". He cheered up. We ran and we ran hard. At the 38th km, he said "I feel like I have broken the wall"...we ran harder after that. Abhijit and I finished the run in 4 hours and 8 minutes. However, it was my half marathon and it was his full marathon though !!! I helped Abhijit finish the race and Abhijit helped me get stuff out of my basement.

A lot of things can pull us down in life - job, kids, girlfriends, education etc. There will always be a huge brick wall that will stop us from going further. There are two things you can do here - keep going and keep hitting the brick wall hard that it will crumble into pieces or you can make up excuses and say that "life got hard and I decided to give up". You decide what you want to do?

Movie, popcorn and half-marathon

Rode down to Sathyam to watch this movie called Fool's Gold last evening. The only highlight of the movie was some good buttery popcorn that Sathyam serves. Two hours of waste and I would not recommend it.

Twenty minutes through the movie, I moved into the running zone and started visualizing the Chennai half on sunday. I was trying to strategize how I would run the race and told myself to sip water every 10 minutes. I started visualizing the morning on race day, my parents dropping me to the race course, the painful first 5 kms, the orgasmic 15 km and the gruesome 20th km. Finally, I visualized the finish and the claps on the finish line. Thats something every runner/athlete looks forward to. It is great to be appreciated. Anyways, I was so lost and watched a movie internally that Fool's Gold did not matter at all.

Local running events

The local marathon season is kicking off with Chennai marathon happening on Feb 10th and Auroville marathon happening on Feb 17th. I am running the half marathon event in both these races but have not decided where I will be competing. If you are in Chennai on Feb 10, please come out there and support.

Maintenance principle

This is an important thing to note when planning a long-term training program. It allows you to shift training emphasis from one system to another system and still maintain original benefits through less frequent attention. The ability to improve a system, maintain it while building another system relies heavily on this principle.

Imagine a case where you are thinking of a marathon which is scheduled 11 months from now. You have done 2 marathons before and you know you can cover the distance. What you are not confident is the speed and you desperately want to improve on your time. The maintenance principle says that you should be confident of keeping up your endurance while spending not more than once a week of long distance running while spending the rest of your training sessions building up speed.

How to choose your training plan?

Questions you should ask yourself before you choose your marathon training plan

1. What is your current level of fitness? What is your readiness for training or competing for a marathon?

Ideally for running a marathon within 4 hours, a runner needs to put in a minimum of 50 miles a week for about 8 weeks, and approximately 40 miles a week for the another 8 weeks. You must have sufficient upper body strength to maintain your posture and this requires about 3 hours/week on your upper body. Are you mentally ready to keep up with the training plan? Can you comply to a minimum of 95% of the training plan is a question you must ask yourself before choosing to run a marathon

2. How much time a week can you devote towards training?

Running 50 miles a week requires you to devote an average of 2 hours a day of running which translates to 14 hours a week.

3. How many weeks can you devote for training?

Typically marathon training programs are for 16 weeks.

4. What are your strengths and weaknesses – in terms of speed, endurance, body reaction to increases in mileage?

Before you start training, measure your 5k speed, 10k speed, calculate your Vo2 max (there are formulas to do that on the internet) and have a fair understanding of how your body reacts to different speeds and mileage.

5. What types of training would you like to do - circuit training, strength plus running?

Personally for me, circuit training works wonders. I come out of every circuit training feeling more powerful than before and these sessions make me fast. However, different people react to different methods of training differently. In other words, know what turns you on.

6. What are the environmental conditions? Are the training conditions similar to race conditions? What are the facilities and opportunities available for training?

If you are training in Chennai, run your race in Singapore. Check local gyms and get assistance of a professional coach if you are running your first marathon. Read up on running as much as you can. Reading not only motivates you but also teaches you a lot about what you should not do.

5 Reasons - Why You Should Not Run a Marathon in India

a) Sufficient notice not given to prepare for the race: They announce the marathon less than 2-3 months before the actual race

b) Too much pollution: Marathons are organized in big cities that are among the top ten polluted cities in the world

c) Lack of Infrastructure: Roads are opened to traffic after the top 10 kenyans finish, no water available after the course is closed. Course is closed in less than 3 hours.

d) Insufficient knowledge of the organizers: Organizers have never run marathons and they do not take the event seriously. I have seen organizers drunk on their job.

e) No respect for runners: We have found people throw stones at runners on one occassion.

5k Dilemma

I timed my 5k yesterday and was pretty bummed by the timing. I finished it in 24 minutes despite a lot of speed training over the last 2 weeks. I am going to timing it again exactly in 15 days.

My problem is that there are a few half marathons happening and I like to do my best in every race. The 5k training conflicts with the half marathon training even though the speed workouts are more intense. I keep looking at 5k training schedules and half marathon training schedules without being able to decide on what to choose.

A classic case of moving goal post but hey, I am still in the game!!