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.