My first 50K

I ran the East Texas Trail 50K earlier today in Tyler TX, which is 2 hrs east of Dallas, as my first run beyond marathon distance aka ultramarathon. I actually tried another 50K few weeks ago at Bandera, but had to DNF(Did Not Finish) due to some problems with my legs on a difficult course and in difficult conditions, due to all the rain it received the days preceeding the race.

The race started at 7am and it was freezing cold, ~30F. I drove to Tyler State Park along with a friend, Brad Garrison from NTTR and reached the start area around 6am. We had to stay in the car to keep us warm. I was also worried about my IT Band of my right knee and cold weather doesn't help it at all. The race is structured into 3 loops, with each loop being ~10.3 miles. The race being a small local race, my car was easily accessible at the end of each loop, which is useful to either pickup or drop off stuff. We started off at 7am and I was towards the back of the pack of runners and wanted to take it easy and be conservative. For the first couple of miles, I was indeed the last guy in the race, out of ~35 people doing 50K. After about 5 miles, I started to feel good and warmed up and picked up the pace a little. I went ahead of a group of runners including a few from my club NTTR. The terrain was very runnable inspite of the rolling hills. I was walking the steeper sections of the uphill an was able to maintain around 13 min pace and finished the first loop around 2:15 and I was quite happy with it.

After a quick pit stop, I started my second loop and I met a seasoned ultrarunner Mr.Tim from New York and we started chatting along the trail, well he was the one who was doing the talking. He was telling some stories about his running and he seemed quite knowledgeble. It turns out that he is the defending national champion for 50K for his age group, and his PR for the distance is 4:44! I found out later that his name is Timothy Kourounis and he is 68. He was pretty inspiring and he got me going at a very good pace for the next 5 miles or so. Later, I went ahead when he took a break and I finished my second loop pretty strong around 2:10 for a cumulative time of 4:25.

At the start of the third loop, I was thinking of a time goal and I thought if I feel strong I can try to shoot for 6:30, which was pretty aggresive. The first 3 miles to the aid station were fast and I was on target. When I started from the aid station after a break of a minute, I felt that my right IT Band was getting stiff and I was terrified. In less than a minute it had gotten pretty stiff and it was so bad that I had a hard time to even walk and the worse news was that I had 7+ miles to go. My first reaction was that I might have to drop the race and I started to feel a little bad. My past experience with IT band issue from couple of years ago was that it would get worse if one doesn't keep movinig. So, I decided to try to keep walking for a little while and see how it goes. After about 5 mins, I started to feel little better and was able to run, thankfully. It is like a positive feedback and once I started running it has gotten more flexible and I was able to even pick up my pace a little. It got little worse at the next aid station when I slowed down but I kept walking and was able to keep going. I started to realize that it is possible for me to break 6:45 if I keep my pace and as soon as I saw the last mile, I did pick up my pace a little a was able to have a strong finish to finish in 6:43. That was an awesome feeling and a PR for me both in terms of distance (50K=31.1mi) and time on feet. In a nutshell, I had a great day and was able to finish my first ultra strongly, inspite of a hiccup. I could not have asked for anything more on my first 50K. It was nice to receive a call from my friend Padma, the first Indian woman 100 miler, soon afer I finished my run. Now, I can't wait for next weekend, when I will be doing Austin Marathon along with Team Asha Austin. See you next week!

RR 100: pacing Padma

My good friend, Padma Subbaraya from Asha SV ran her first 100 miler at Rocky Racoon on Feb 3/4 2007 near Huntsville, TX. She is an accomplished ultrarunner, even before this race and with this one she is going into the Limca book of records as the First Indian woman to have run the 100 mile distance..wow!!

I volunteered at Dam Road aid station which is captained by Deborah Sexton, my friend from NTTR. I reached saturday afternoon and was able to help out for a few hours till early in the night. It was amazing to see most of the runners who seem to fly by even after doing 50+ miles at that point. Also, you get an idea as to how much goes into organizing these events and how important volunteers are in these races. I met Padma at the aid station on her third loop. She has run 47 miles at that point and she was still looking amazing. I also met few guys from Asha Austin, Vinod Viswanath, Santhosh Padmanabhan, Gaurav Agarwal and Ganesh Krishnamoorthy who came along to volunteer and support their coach/RD Joe Prusaitis and also to support/pace Padma. I headed back to the motel to take a nap before I get ready to pace Padma for her final lap, miles 80-100. After a 3 hr nap, all of us were ready to run with Padma and get her home in under 30hrs. She was doing great at the end of loop3 but seemed to have some stomach issues in loop 4 and we were a little worried. She looked little fragile phycially at mile 80 and I was wondering if she can make it in the cutoff limit of 30hrs, for which she had little over 6 hrs for the last loop.

Santhosh and myself were leading the pack, Gaurav and Kiran were running along with Padma. The first hour was slow as it was still dark, but as soon as there was light she picked up pace and never looked back. Initially, we were a little worried about the time cutoffs, but we never had any doubt as to how strong she was mentally. Miles 83-97, she really picked up pace and was probably doing ~4 miles/hour and we were confident that she will make it well under the cutoff. I think in the last few miles she started to feel it and got more confidence that she will finish within cutoff and started to cheer up a little and was able to kid around along with us. Before we knew it, the finish line was visible and it was padma's turn to pace us and she was leading us to the finish. And so she did it, full 100 miles in 29:39:34 and off to the record books! We are proud of you Padma, you are an inspiration to all of us. So, whats next padma? WS?? A more detailed race report can be found on Padma's blog.

We all had nice lunch at a Mexican place in Huntsville named, Margarita. Padma actually, looked in a better state than myself after my first couple of marathons, which tells you either that she really trains well or that I train very poorly. The fact is, both are true :) Now, I cannot wait to do a 100 miler myself, but wait, I have to do a 50 miler first, but wait, I have to do a 50K first. Well, that's this coming weekend, East Texas 50K in Tyler, TX.

Move 2 Dallas & Trail Running

I changed jobs and moved to Dallas from San Diego in Sept'06. It was a tough decision to move out of california as all my friends were there and as I would be missing all the outdoor activities I was doing. In the end, I made the choice to move as I believe it is better for my career, hopefully. On a positive note, I was excited to move to Dallas as my sister lives here and I would get to spend lot of time with my cute lil 2yr old niece. I have started to stay at my sister's place and so I get to spend some quality time with my niece on a daily basis. That is the best part of the day, by far.

A month after my move, I started to think about my fitness and decieded to run again. Initially, I was thinking that I should try to run faster and train for a sub-4 or even a 3:45 marathon. I did The Half in Dallas in first week of November along with my bro-n-law. I did 2:03 in time and I felt that I was totally out of shape as I was able to do 1:53 in 2004 without much training. Ofcourse, I was atleast 10 pounds heavier now than 2004 :) I came across the blogs of Rajeev Patel, Anil Rao and Padma who have been doing ultra-marathons for a while and boy, I was inpsired. I started spending some time on web reading about ultras and I felt like I should try it out for mainly 2 reasons. First, it would be a nice challenge to see if you can do it and secondly, from what I understood, it would improve ones' endurance and make you get faster with time, over time. Also, it should be easy on your knees and would potentially prolong your athletic life. By end of Nov I was pretty sure I wanted to try ultras and started my traning. I joined the local running club NTTR which focusses mainly on trails and most of the people are seasoned ultrarunners. I met couple of people from the club and started running with them now and then. I have enrolled in a tough 50K, Bandera as my first try at ultra in Jan'07

San Diego Rock n Roll Marathon 2006

I did the Rock n Roll marathon in Jun 2006. It was a last minute decision as I had ~5 weeks to train for this one. I was encouraged by my buddy Pavan Singh(the same guy who introduced me to marathons) to do this race. I have not been running ever since I moved to San Diego in April 2005. I actually wanted to run in 2005 soon after I moved, but then I thought I did not have enough time to ramp up for the distance. In 2006, I did train with my friend Raghu and decided to take it easy with the pace and started training ~11-12min miles and was able to do one 19mile long run 2 weeks before the race. I almost missed the race start due to some traffic messup and thanks to Ramya (pavan's wife) who called a cab for me just in time to reach the start line, like 5mins before the gun went off. I really enjoyed the race as I was doing an easy pace even though I did not train my legs enough for the distance. To my surprise, I never had to stop for a walk break even after the 2o mile point and I was able to sprint the last quarter mile of the race to finish in 4:34:20, what a rush! That was the best finish I had in any race so far. It was a great feeling to see some familiar faces in my good friends Kunal and his wife Pallavi, volunteering and handing wet towels at the finish line. All in all, it was a great race and it was the only race where I recovered fully in couple of days from the raceday, primarily due to the easy pace I did.