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.