Running in the Holy Land: May 2007

I was on a business trip to Israel between May14-23, 2007. I was put up at the Daniel Hotel on the shores of the beautiful Herzliyya Accadia beach. I did not get a chance to do any running for the first 2 days as I returned from work after it is dark around 9pm. On the 17th, a Thursday I returned at 8pm and it was not entirely dark and I decided to go for a run on the beach. It was
an amazing run. I have never run on a beach before, let alone on the shores of Mediterranean. I really like the cool breeze on the beach and there were many people even at that hour walking and running on the beach. I ended up doing a 4 miler that day.

I did not get a chance to run the next day(18th) as I was out visiting Dead sea and also some ancient ruins of Masada, near Dead sea. I was able to float in the Dead sea, was an awesome experience. I was happy to have been to the lowest point on earth, Dead sea at -1371 ft (-411m). The next day, Saturday the 19th, I went on a one day tour of the very historic city of Jerusalem. On my return at 6pm , I could not wait to go for another run on the beach. All in all, I was able to run 5 out of the 9 days I was in Israel for a total of ~26.2miles :)

Big-D Half: My best race to date

I got my PR today and beat my old time by a mile, literally! I shaved off ~8mins from 1:53 to 1:44:40. It was an interesting day with a few ups and downs. The "up" was the fact that I could a few PRs for 5K, 10K and Half. The "down" was all the mess that was created due to the traffic jam at the start and also due to the fact that my car battery died soon after the race. Also, my official race time is ~2:20. as there was no chip timing anymore at the start when we started, approx 35mins late.

It all started when I woke up at 6:06am. I set the alarm but somehow forgot to turn it on, duh! I quickly got ready and went to pick up Avani and Viswanath. We almost reach the Cotton Bowl area at 6:50am and about 1/2 mile from the exit to the race area, there was a big traffic jam and we were stuck. We saw people walking off the freeway and I followed as the Half start is at 7:30. I came to know that many of the other ADR folks and also Asha Austin folks were also stuck in the other direction of I-30. The race was officially delayed by15mins and we waited for all the folks to show up and started finally at 8:20am. We were all disappointed to find out that the chip timing system at the start line was switched off by the time we started, which means that our chip times won't be accurate and will be the same as gun time, which is the official clock. We started Half roughly 35mins behind the official start. I am not sure when the 5Kers started.

There were about 10 of us who started the Half, 3 from Dallas and the rest from Austin. Ramesh and myself started off at a good pace and took off. I was pacing and before I knew it, the first mile marker came by and we were on a blazing pace of 7:45, wow! I felt good but at the same time was worried whether I can sustain that pace. I slowed a little but was still doing roughly 8 min pace. I saw that Ramesh was taking it a little easy, but I did not want to change my pace as I felt a good rhythm. I maintained that pace and 5K went by in 24:50 (which is a PR since I never ran a 5K) and then next up was 10K in 49:52 (another PR by 3 mins!). I still felt good and was decently confident that I can maintain that pace for the second half as well. Then I realized, that if I maintain an even split, I have a shot at 1:45!! (5 mins faster than my stretch goal of 1:50). I was drinking at every aid station and was pouring water on myself which felt so good. Miles 9-11 had the best scenery as we were passing through the multi-million dollar homes of Highland park, which is the most expensive area in Dallas. To my surprise, I was still doing better than 8:00min pace and I was on pace for a 1:45 finish. In mile 13, about quarter mile from the finish I saw ADR folks, including Deepa, Kavitha, Viswanath et al and I just took off and before I knew it the saw the finish line and finished strong which is something I always love in a race. When I stopped my watch at the finish line, it read 1:44:40!! yes, I did it, it was an amazing feeling. I believe this is the first time I not only met my time goal but indeed beat it. I guess it helps to be ~6-7 lbs lighter :)

I got my medal and got some fluids and came back to see others finish. Ramesh had a strong finish and did 1:51, which is the same as his PR. I saw few of the Austin folks finish the next 10-15 mins. Then I met up with other ADR folks and we were cheering and waiting for the rest of folks to showup. Ravi had a strong finish and made it in 2:32. The whole group took some pictures and it was fun. All the 5Kers had a good race and some even did 10K as they were lost on the course:) Many of us decided to have lunch and just when you think the day has gotten better, I realize that my car battery was down and it does not start. Luckily, there was a gentleman in his truck who helped us out and we reached Roti Grill and had good food. It was almost 3pm by the time we reached home. In effect, it was a mixed day for me, but I had a great race, in fact the best race to date! I cannot wait for my next race, which may not happen for another couple of months.

I am off to India for couple of months, on business. I will be working from Bangalore and hopefully I can do couple of races over there. I am hoping that I will have some running experiences in B'lore that I would write here, from time to time. I shall write the next time from India in about a week's time.

Asha Dallas Runners

In Nov'06 after I moved to Dallas, I was looking for running partners and I thought I can meet a few from the Asha Dallas marathon group. I was surprised to find out that Asha Dallas did not have a marathon group yet and I was determined that I should try to change that, especially Dallas being such a big desi community. In Feb'07 few of the volunteers from Asha Dallas had the opportunity to cheer and support Asha Austin at Austin Marathon. There was some good motivation out of that experience and Asha Dallas had its first few runners.

I thought it is a good time to start a running group and start training for 5Km/10Km as a first step. I created a Yahoo group, Asha Dallas Runners. The main objective of this group is to enable runners to train together and also educate them about Asha Marathon program and eventually get some of them, if not all to run a marathon while raising funds for Asha. The group was started in Feb'07 and we have 21 members so far and the interest had been very encouraging. We are planning to run a 5Km on April 1st at Big D Texas Marathon. A few of the us will be doing the half marathon (13.1miles) instead. I will be writing about the progress of the group from time-to-time. If you happen to know someone in Dallas area who might be interested in running, please refer them to our ADR Yahoo Groups. Anyone is welcome to join us and they do not need to be associated with Asha.

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.

Team Asha Portland Marathon

I trained and ran Portland marathon in 2004 with Team Asha and in the process was able to raise funds for an important cause to help out the underprevileged children in India. It was my buddy Pavan Singh who has inspired me to join Asha. I have never been very regular in terms of training and this was no different. I have probably done about 50% of the long runs with the group. It was a great experience to be able to meet all the new people and train together and especially for a noble cause. Over the course of 4-5 months I got to meet good few people and share running experiences and more importantly raised $2620 to help out the under-privileged children, back in India. I am very thankful to all my supporters who have helped me raise these funds and meet my goal.

I could not have asked for a better day to run the marathon. It was overcast in Portland at the race start around 50F and a little chilly. I started my run along with Pavan. We wanted to take it easy the first few miles and we did 10 min miles for about 5-6 miles. I have always felt like I needed to get into my rhythm to feel good about running and I was not in rhythm yet. So, I decided to pick up the pace a little and took off. In a mile or two, I seem to have settled at around 8:30 mile pace and started to feel good. I was consistently doing 8:30min miles and I could hold that pace well into mile 23. I finished 23 miles in 3:30 even and I felt great that I needed to maintain a little under 10min pace to break 4hrs, yeah right! Then, starting at mile 24, I felt a little low on mental energy, in the sense that I felt like walking a little and I yielded to that thought. That was my first mistake. I met another guy who was also struggling a little and we decided to push each other to maintain the pace. But, after half a mile, I was "hitting the wall" mentally and walking a lot more. The other guy took off, or at least was able to maintain his pace. So, pretty soon I gave up on my 4hr time goal and started walking more and soon I was glad to see the last mile. As soon as the finish line was visible, I started to sprint, but unfortunately I started to cramp, first in my left leg and then my right. I started to panic but managed to run through the finish line. I managed to finish in 4:05:19 and it was a PR :) I was very happy with my time, but was limping badly after the run. It took me almost 2 full days to walk normally.

I felt good about my time but at the same time started to respect training lot more as I saw fellow Asha runners who were able to walk and even run after running the marathon. Also, I believe I did not take salt tablet after mile 20 which might have contributed to my cramps. I believe my training was probably enough to do a 4:30 and since I ran much faster I might have hit the wall, as it felt much worse that my first marathon (Big Sur) which was a tougher course. In any case, it is a good leasson learnt, I hope. I met my cousin Sateesh and his wife that afternoon and we chilled out at their place and also had couple of drinks at a local micobrewery. I visited some botanical gardens and other places with my Asha friends the next day before returning back to the bay area. It was a great trip.

My first marathon

I have trained for my first marathon with my good friends Pavan Singh, Girish Ramesh and few other friends from Asha for Education, Anil Rao, Kiran Karadi and Arun Simha. The marathon was on April 25th, 2004 and we started training around end of December. The training had gone fine till I had almost 5 week break just 2 months before the race. I went to India on a long vacation and even though I planned on doing some running, it was impossible to run in India with my schedule there. So, my training was cut short and I was able to do one long run of 20 miles 3 weeks before the race at Rancho SanAntonio hills.

I was really excited and looking forward to the marathon, not only because it was my first one but also as it was supposed to really beautiful course on Hwy1 with rugged mountains on one side and pacific ocean on the other. Pavan and myself have decided to run together as long as we can and we were able to run together till almost 21miles. We were doing pretty consistently 11 min miles and a little slower on uphills. It was a beautiful but tough course with rolling hills through out the whole course. We did hear about the run/walk method from the race director Jeff Galloway, the day before and tried it out till mile 21. At that time, Pavan wanted to take it a little easy and I was by myself and the mind games have started. I just took it easy and was walking at every uphill and slowly counting down the miles. It was tough not only due to the miles but also the temperature was creeping above 80F. Finally, after 4hr43min, I could see the finish line and I somehow managed to race it to the line. I was ecstatic and was still in disbelief that I have indeed finished the marathon, all 26.2 miles of it. We all have celebrated the finish with some nice poses for pictures and some good food!

How I got into running...

It was Jan 2003 and I have realized that I was putting on good few lbs near the middle part of my body which is something I have always dreaded. So, one fine day I started to go to gym and started running on the treadmill. It was so boring to run and especially on a treadmill. I was able to run at the most for 20mins. Then, I have registered for a 10K in Mar’03. I have started the race doubting if I would be able to even finish it, but I have ended up running all 6.25 miles and ran much faster than I have run before and finished the run wanting more. That was when I have realized my love for running. I have been running on and off ever since. After a few races ranging between 10K-15K, me and a couple of my friends started to train for a half marathon. My first half was US Half and it was a amazing run over golden gate bridge. Then, my good friend, Pavan Singh (an accomplished marathoner himself) convinced me to register for a marathon, Big Sur International Marathon on the beautiful Hwy1 near Monterey bay.