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.