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.