The TCS 10K experience

Sometimes, its just the determination that wins! Not practice...

Carrying an injury, I deferred my training till about two weeks to go into the race. Of that I got only one week of quality training.

Despite having such limited training, I just stayed focused on my cross-training. Thanks to my recent interests in cycling, and the urge to learn swimming, I have been consistently on a work-out plan for the last two months. To the extent, that I was doing three workouts a day till about two weeks ago.

And thanks to the charity program for Diya Foundation (www.diyafoundation.com), and the need to motivate a few people at office, I just carried on my cross-training.

The longest distance that I had ran, in the recent past, was 8.3K. And the timing could be forgotten.

With such limited training, I had a clear plan. To stay at 85% of my Max heart-rate till 2km to the finish line, and push. 

The day before Race-day

This one was relaxed with a visit to some relatives, and a dinner at a restaurant. I was conscious about the dinner, and wanted to get some good carbs in for the race. By my standards, the dnner was more-than-half junk.

Before going to bed, I opened the race packet, and got my essentials ready. My race day luggaged consisted of one banana, one bottle of gatorade, racing bib (pinned to the T-shirt), and 200 bucks that went into the race shorts. The timing chip was secured to my Vibrams, which I preferred for racing, just because they are faster. The Garmin and heart-rate belt and default add-ons for every workout now.

Race Day

I woke up at 0600 hrs which was late by my standards, and got ready within half-an-hour, to meet my projected start time of 0630. When I got ready, some tardiness set in, and I had the usual last-minute nervousness, double-checking everything that I needed to carry for the race. 

I walked out of home at 0640, after a couple of calls to Deepak and Senthil. Some nervousness had already set in, as I would have barely enough time to warm up at the race venue. It was a different experience to walk with bib-pinned. I am sure everybody was looking at me on the road, but who cares!

It was a pleasant surprise to see some fellow runners when I reached the bus-stop. (Please note that none of them were wearing the bib, so, I surely was a step ahead). As bus moved on, more and more fellow runners boarded the bus, including one past colleague, whom I havent met in years.

I reached the race venue, with about 30 minutes to spare. Soon, I located the warm up area with my C-holding area marking. For all that hungama, that had been created, the runners were left to themselves to warm up. I assumed that the race was going to start from here. 

Ten minutes to the start, I realized something was wrong. There wasn't enough crowd in the warm up area. I got out of it and found the correct holding area. By this time, there was considerable build-up of crowd, and the entry points were choked. I just pushed through the crowd, and moved as close to the gate as possible. Till this time, I wasn't able to locate any of my colleagues. The only known face that I had seen was Bhasker's brother Chandramouli, and Athreya in the warm-up area.

Just as I reached the holding area, I saw the elite athletes get the gun shot and kick off their race. Within a couple of minutes, the rest of the runners were opened in three batches. To my fortune, I was in the third batch. Once again, I pushed through the crowd to get the starting point. Till this time, I was under the assumption that they were going to give us a start.

It was poor organizing that they just let us continue to run from the elite start. There wasn't any waiting near the start-line, and the customary pre-race wishing. I started my Garmin with a few metres to go for the start-line. At this time, my heart-rate was already at 90%, and my plan to stick to 85% had already gone for a toss. From this moment, I stopped bothering about the heart-rate, and kept pushing through the crowd.

The first kilometre was heavily crowded, and I had to wade through the crowd, maintaining good pace. After the first kilometer, there were sufficient gaps between the runners to weave through comfortably. 

About 150 metres to the turnaround point, I saw the first of the elite runners go forward, and then some familiar faces were there. Athreya, A2, Bhasker, etc. I cheered everybody at the turnaround. I took a walking break at the turnaround to finish my 2nd gulp of the gatorade.

As I continued to run, I recognized Vasu was ahead of me. I called out his name, and continued with him. He mentioned that we are on track for a 47-minute finish. It was great news for me, and I stuck along with him.

As we were reaching JDP circle, I was happy that we were going straight ahead to Kanteerave stadium. And the the detour towards Queens Road came. "How come we can finish a run without passing by Vidhan Soudha", I commented. Both of us were making good pace, and I was at more than 100% Max HR all the time. 

Both of us took a drinks break at the next point, and lemon gatorade I ingested didn't go well. Yet, we carried along at great pace, and entered Cubbon Park.

I had to take another water break with the water stop inside Cubbon Park, while Vasu carried along. He was about 30 metres ahead of me. I still had the chance of making it to the last km sprint with him, only that I had pushed it to the last 500 metres. 

As we exited Cubbon Park, I noticed the 9km mark, and was closing the gap and getting ready to finish. As he entered the stadium gates, I followed him fast, but lost track of him. 

Suddenly, it looked like I had lost my way, and there were people all around. I kept yelling, "Way please", and "Where is the finish line?". One volunteer indicated, that I had already finished. I spotted A2 and he indicated that the stadium entrance was the finish line.

Very much confused, I went to collect my medal and refreshments. After that, I quickly headed back to the finish line to cheer for others. I spotted a lot of familiar faces on the way back, including Bhasker, Deepak, Mani, Atreya, Damian, etc.

After about twenty minutes of cheering at the finish line, and about hundreds of high-fives to finishers, I decided to get back and catch up with the others, and got back to the finish area. Only A2 and Athreya, were around. The crowd was huge. I still hung around for another half-hour before heading back to my daughters swimming classes.

With both the start time and finish time botched up, I dont have exact finish time. However, I am sure that I had finished in less than 50 minutes, which is indeed great, considering that I had pushed myself to the core, and took three and half drinks breaks. 

About the race organization

Organizing a race with such huge number of participants is always going to be a challenge. On the other hand, the Bangalore 10K has been in running for fifth year, and Procam is professionally organizing races for about eight years (atleast as I know), and they have experience running Mumbai marathon with much larger participants.

The overall organization was great! The medal distribution, the refreshments, directions for the runners, etc.

Here are somethings that I'll definitely want to improve upon:

1. Deprivation of a proper start: I never felt like I heard the gun-shot. Though in most large races, its hardly noticed, in this case, we saw the elite runners kick off. And the others just ran from their holding areas. There wasn't a proper start. 

2. 9th Kilometer marking: I am sure the the distance from the 9Km marking to the finish line was less than half-km. This must have been the same marking used for elite runners, who had a different finish line. That makes me wonder, if the distance covered was actually 10k.

3. Finish line: Why deprive runners of a stadium finish! None of us saw the finish line with a 100 metres to spare, depriving us of the sprint to the finish!

4. Insensitive organization: As I was cheering up the finishers, one of the organizers came and told me to move away, saying that cheering from there would cause a pile up. Though he was sensitive not to say anything absurd to me, it was still a joke asking not to cheer runners up.

Overall, it was a good race for me. I felt great after the run, with my timing just in the ballpark I had expected.

Having not done major runs, it was just the determination to stick to cross-training that helped me get to the finish line in great shape!

Edit: My official time is 48:20
Overall Rank is 190
Category Rank is 119.
Just missed my goal to the be in the Top 100 for my category!
http://www.timingindia.com/raceDetails.php?event=tcsopen12&bib=8141

The scales are tipping

I was thrilled to see the reading, when I stepped on the scales this morning. The scales were showing a 200g drop compared to yesterday! And so, is the the case for the last three weeks or so, that I have been trying to conquer Mission 65.

Honestly to say, the last few weeks have been easy. The trouble starts only when you are not at home.
Its easy to manage the breakfast and lunches. There aren't strict guidelines for those.

Dinners, are the real problem. I have been living in a setup where dinner constitutes the heaviest meal of the day. I am still wondering why, we have such a heavy dinner. To top that, we also have it quite late in the night.

As long as I can see have a light dinner, there is steady progress. And when there is something extraordinary, for example, the falafel dinner I had a few days back, had pushed me back almost by a week.

I had committed eight weeks of "food" control, and in the fourth week, I feel like I am halfway through!

For those who are number conscious, the scale read 66.3 kgs.
Is it a coincidence that my height is 66 inches.

1.3 more to go...