Somewhere on a hillock without attachments

Running has become a fad in India. In Bangalore, where I live, there are organized every weekend, which in a way is good. It also takes the pleasure away from why you started running in the first place. Runners should seriously consider which and how many races they participate in a year. Quality diminishes with quantity.

Amongst all these races, there are a few that stand out, in all aspects. Be it the course, or the crew support, or the challenge that it offers. Chennai Trekking Club has been organizing races for the last four years (I participated in the inaugural Chennai Trail Marathon in 2012), and have been doing a great job. It wouldn't be justice to this post, without mentioning Peter Van Geit. The name is enough.

I signed up for the 100K distance CTC's Jawadhu Hill Ultra when I didn't get a slot for the 24hr run at the Bangalore Stadium run. Having done the 100K distance a couple of times before, I knew the kind of training that's involved in getting a quality 100K done. Unfortunately for me, I had family and work constraints that that didn't allow me to put in the kind of training that I would have liked. 

I changed my strategy and put in more runs during the weekend. For the last 4 weeks leading to the race, I put in atleast two long runs, irrespective of the time. In one particular weekend, I put in four different training runs covering 67kms. This helped me simulate the fatigue on the legs. I another training run, I did 28kms on empty with just one water break of 300ml. Overall I would say that my training went fairly well, even though it was compromised in the last 2 weeks leading to the race.

On the eve of the race, when I evaluated myself, I was prepared to DNF if there was a risk of injury. Four of us drove together to the venue, which I should say was fairly relaxed. St.Joseph's school in Jamunmarathur doubled up as the expo centre and hotel, while the school grounds served as the venue and campgrounds. With everything taken care of volunteers, the atmosphere was friendly and devoid of any commercial stuff. 

We quickly settled into our beds (two school benches joined together), after dinner and running pep-talk with fellow runners. With the race starting at 3:00 am, I had to wake up at 1:30 am. I barely caught any sleep till 12:30. Later I figured that was the case with most of us in the room.

Being the first one to arrive at the start point, I saw the organizers were getting ready. Sameer (thank you buddy) joined me at the start before heading back to sleep. Surprisingly, there wasn't any food available at the start, and I had to start without a pre-race meal. At the start line, I quickly chatted with a few fellow runners.The course was two loops of 50K each, 25K out and back, with a deviation on the return leg. Those wanting to downgrade to a lesser distance can do so, without any penalty. Eligibile for a medal, but not for podium classification. The organizers did a good job in making the rules clear, and the race was flagged off at 3:08 sharp. 

With the whistle blowing away, I started off quickly, thanking those present at the start line. I quickly settled into the 3rd position after a couple of kms, trodding in the dark. My strategy was clear. Settle into an easy pace, without over-exerting. Save the energy for the run for the second half. That's when the real race starts. Will be happy if I do 52-53k in 6 hours. 

Running in the dark was quite an experience. I carried my cycle torch, which was very powerful. Jawadhu hills doesn't have any major wildlife, and snakes were completely out of my mind when I was running. I caught a glimpse of a few fire flies here and there. It was the most amazing dawn I've ever seen.

The first few kms were quite good. After that we seemed to climb a never-ending hill. Darkness only helped us to hide what was coming ahead. I could climb some of them, while others were walked in the interest of conserving energy. Course support was excellent during this time. There were bikers and a car who treated us royally. I got a spare torch, coconut oil for my chafing issues. Organizers were well prepared. 

With no food available at the start point, I grabbed a quick bite of chocolates, chikki and whatever available at the 1st aid station. This, somehow, didn't go quite well with my stomach. While there was nothing major, there was uneasiness in the stomach. I had to slow down to a walk for a couple of ms to let the food digest. The 25kms was completed in 2:54 (courtesy a bio-breaks). At the next aid station, the realized that the ORS drink was quite dilute, and was barely sweet. With the temperature warming up, I was looking more for the sugars, and it turned to be other way.

I slowly caught up with Arjun, who was in 5th position at this time, and we continued together, chatting away. At the 30th km, we estimated that we could reach the half-way point at 5:40. After this, I tried once more to put something into my stomach, a couple of chikki. That again gave the same uneasiness that I had earlier on the race. I slowed down to a walk and recovered after a couple of kms, 

Ater having run 40km, my race strategy was clear. Go till 75K and continue based on the lead position. With the heat and the stomach slowing me down, I reached half-way mark at 5:54. Surprisingly, all those who were ahead spent quite a bit of time at the half-way point (also same as start point). Ajay and Ramesh who had a 4K lead at 25K, just started off as I arrived at the aid station. I gave feedback to the organizers that the ORS on the course was too dilute to be effective. At the same time, I got a quick meal of curd rice. 

I just hung around the medical aid station for another 10 minutes, getting some stretches. While not planned, I took a quick nap on the chair, and dozed off for half-hour. By the time I woke up, my watch was reading 6:50. With this I was in two minds, whether to continue or call it off for the day. 

It was going to be another 7+ hours on the course, and could be 8 if the temperature soared. While, I was feeling perfectly well, my left hamstring could act up any time. For the 75km mark, I had to get 25K further away, and have to wait for a ride to return. 

While a variety of factors that played out, 

1. I wasn't psychologically prepared to run beyond 14 hours

2. I wasn't sufficienly trained for the heat. 

Having your mind fight out all those factors is part and parcel of the game, and you can't get aways from that.

As I think about it, it could be a wasted opportunity, or that the injury risk was higher. For whatever it is, I will surely comeback, even if it meant I had run through the hottest part of the day. The course and the organizers make it a unique experience that one can get.

This is certainly a world away from all of those commercial races, ones that you fly-in, stay in a star hotel, and fly-out. And by the way, I rediscovered the simple joy of running, one without any attachments: no PBs, no timings. Simply eat, drink and run.

Here's the Garmin Link:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1292863268

Filling water at the aid station. These volunteers camped on-site overnight, such is the commitment

One of the aid-stations

A view from the course

Run till your heart pops out - TCS 10K 2016

To recap my tryst with the TCS 10K. I started seriously running the event in 2012, and the performances are as follows:
2012 - 48:12 (Debut)
2013 - 42:27 (Personal Best)
2014 - 44:xx (Cramped up at 6K)
2015 - Did not run, (41:54 in Bengaluru 10K Challenge)
2016 - 40:35

In my book, the 10K training involves demanding speed work, and didn't work well with the rest of my long run training plan. I like to run a 40K distance every month. My training didn't go very well in 2014, and that resulted in a sub-par peformance for that year. I had an injury in my hip/gluteals later that year, and skipped running the event in 2015. On that note, this year's event was very much looked forward to.

Training:
I started training with the Pacemakers group from the beginning of March (I had been putting in regular miles through February). I joined a training group that was slower to my liking. (The next faster group was beyond my capacity). I managed to stay with the group finding ways to keep myself faster (like running the 2nd track for intervals). About six weeks to the race, myself, Brojen (baba) and Sameer broke away from the group, and set ourselves a slightly faster pace. On any given week, one of us would struggle, but we managed to stick together and pull it through.

Coach also put us through a very demanding phase where very few people in the overall group met coach's target or expectations. I flunked a couple of workouts during this phase, but got the critical mass to keep me together. Otherwise, the three of us were doing fairly well, when we ran as a group.

Peaking:
Three weeks to the race, I started intense build up to the race. This involved extra sessions in the gym, and swimming sessions. I have a pool 5km from my home. It worked very well for me to run to the pool, swim and run back home. On tired days, I would bike to the pool. I could feel the peaking as I was nearing the race.

Preparation:
Being our home course, we did a fair bit of training runs on the race route. We knew the race route like the back our palm, every turn, and every single bit of incline and decline. This helped me to prepare a pacing plan with accurate detail. In the week leading to the race, I was raring to go, and couldn't wait for the race day.

RaceDay:
With the plan on hand, the first stretch was run hard, half the time holding myself back. The next two kms being downhill was also run very well. As I was in the fourth km, I wanted to have the gel. (I usually have one gel, half before the start and half midway for the 10K race.). Having just missed a water stop, I slowed down to a walk to force the gel down. I was too tired by this time, and couldn't have managed the gel otherwise. For some reason, the gel was still sticky and I needed to gulp down water. Thankfully, I got a bottle of water very soon after, but had to force a walk to gulp the water down. I kept it very short this time.

Luckily for me, I had gotten through half the course by this time, and I just had to hold on to my dear self for the rest of the race. I'd remember that I slowed down atleast two times after feeling tired and looking down at HR (in that sequence). I also had a few people ahead of me to zone in on and track.

After a small uphill stretch inside Cubbon Park, that was run easy, I started the final sprint. With this stretch as long as a kilometer and a half, I had to hang on to my dear life, without pushing my elevated heart rate even higher. I was hoping for a sub-40 timing as I sighted the digital clock at the finish. I sprinted as fast I could with time slipping away. As I remember, I passed quite a few people in this sprint.

PC: Saravanakumar / RRS

Looking Back:

 Looking at the splits, the 5th km is an aberration with both the walk breaks thrown in. Adjusting for the gradual incline, I could have covered this in 4:00-4:05 which means I might have lost 20 seconds on the same.

Time lost in 5th km. 9th km was expectedly slow

However, from this point onwards, I held myself to the best pace I could. A pleasant surprise for me is that I ran the finishing sprint quite well pushing HR to 192. I usually peak at 185-186 for the toughest of intervals in training.

Very good finishing sprint, as I held back myself till the library

Given the effort put into peaking, (with all that swimming and strength training), I was feeling fine form till about Friday. I was very confident of a 39ish performance. On Saturday I had a good relaxed swimming session. However, I had to take my daughter to the pool in the evening, and there were a couple of instances that I got dunked into the water (by my lovely little daughter). I was coughing after I returned. Driving towards the race, I wasn't feeling as good as the days earlier. In the raceday euphoria, I forgot all that, and put in my best effort.

My plan was to try and sustain a 3:55 pace holding myself for the first stretch at a slower pace. While I thought I held myself, the 1st km was clocked much faster than I had anticipated. I stuck to my plan for the rest of the race, except for those walk breaks, of course.

The 2nd gel might have been unnecessary, but I had my reasons. I could have lost about 20 seconds in the whole episode. Given the raceday conditions (I didn't see anybody complaining about the heat, though it was warm), my par for the course would have been 40:15. I'd give myself another minute if I was feeling better.

I would have been much happier if I had broken 40 minutes, but that I guess will have to wait for another day. Overall, it was a great race, including the training that I put into it. More importantly, a short lean period at work allowed me to put in all that extra effort.

Did the stars line up this year?

An update on this blog is long overdue, and it is just apt to write about the run at Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon last Sunday (17th January 2016), and also look at how the training went last year.

SCMM 2015 experience
To start with, I was battling stiffness in my left ITB and hamastrings post the 12-hr stadium run in July 2014. This flared up during the Hyderabad Marathon in August. This put me into a recovery mode with minimal training. SCMM 2015 was run with the goal not to induce cramps. I teamed up with MurthyRK (MRK) and Kishore Kumar (President) to run a 5:10 pace. The strategy worked well with me reaching the top of Peddar Road feeling very fresh. I went overboard the next few kms to push myself into tired zone. However the better of cramps caught me after a sudden move at 39K. To summarize, stiffness slowed me down very much in the last few kms, however, I finished at a very respectable 3:42:10. I was very happy because of two factors: 1. Felt fresh after 35K into the race, 2. Pushed cramps to almost the end of the race.

Training in 2015
Time constraints becoming a challenge, I had to drop out of Pacemakers training. However, I continued training on my own with a little bit of deviation. Fortunately, I also found a training partner Vijay (who had done a sub 13:00 4K in his school days). Strong runner, however lacking conditioning and experience. Our training paces coincided so well that training became a pleasure.
The other aspect was that, I was training mostly empty stomach to induce fat burning. Together we had done a few 30K+ runs with 500ml of water and electrolyte between the both of us. Like me, Vijay was also facing stiffness issues and at some point of time, we had to stop training because of that. However, few months of consistent training had improved both aerobic base and fat burn capabilities to a very good degree.
I improved my timing for 10K to 41:58 on a very tough course, even though I was bogged down with cramps during the 2nd half. In Spirit of Wipro Run during September, the cramps was so bad that, I ran with pain from the 4th km. Luckily, I wasn't racing. At this time, I decided to go for treatment (active muscle release) for a longer duration with a physio.
This was a challenge as I didn't know of good physios around my place. Traveling everyday for more than a week everyday wasn't an option. I settled for a sub-optimal solution and convinced the physio about the problems by the third day. The treatment was for a whole 9 days, and every day was more painful than the previous. In the end, the treatment yielded great results, give or take a few days.
Post the treatment, running was totally different. It was like using a different set of muscle everytime I ran, akin to learning running for the first time.

Training for SCMM
Ideally I would like to train about 18 weeks for the marathon distance, and in the worst case atleast thirteen weeks. However, the physio treatment didn't allow me so much time. On top of this, most muscles had to be retrained. It was like re-learning running. Till about mid-November, my long runs were terrible, and anything in excess of 25K proved to be a challenge. I lost about of two weeks of training, courtesy, floods in Chennai and a viral infection post that.
Luckily for me, the next two long runs one for 35K and another for 40K went well, as I had planned. To top this up, I had a week long shutdown at work. I did a couple of long rides on my road bike and a few intense workouts. No work meant that I could catch up on sleep and get good recovery.
Tragedy struck again in the form of a folliculitis threatening to a full blown infection. The 1st picture shows my right leg swollen with the infection, just a week before the race.

Though the swelling subsided in a few days, I was on a weeklong antibiotic course with the last pill on morning before race day. The one last pill was promptly skipped considering the proximity to raceday. However, I completed most of my training with the exception of one long run, the week before raceday.
To summarize, I trained only about 30% of what I would have trained for a normal marathon race.

Prerace Preparations
We arrived in Mumbai the previous morning and stayed in a hotel close to the start. I kept my lunch and dinner light given that I usually have GI problems enroute. Strangely, after all that lost training and the infection, I was feeling good before the raceday. However, I was very skeptical about the outcome on raceday. I was in two minds when coach Pani sir asked me to pace a fellow Pacemaker to a 3:40 finish. Personally, I felt that I might let down given the problems I had in the last week. I didn't want to commit to something that I wasn't sure of.
With Suresh S (running HM) sharing my room, the logistical problem of bathroom was partly solved. Despite the light lunch and dinner, I had bowel movements for a record 4 times with all that pre-race anxiety.
I decided to drop all the extra weight that I would need to carry. No cap, no sunglass and not even a water bottle or changeover clothes to be deposited at the baggage counter. Thanks to that, I could get a fast entry into Azad Maidan, while my friends with bags had to wait for a few more minutes.
Still at crossroads, I carried two pairs of shoes, Nike Flyknit Racers (which have a cramped toebox and you end up with painful feet > 35K) and Vibram Fivefingers (which has less cushioning and hence more pounding on the feet). After Suresh confirmed that the Nikes are lighter, I decided to stick to them. As for carrying the gels and salt caps, I just stuck to my Kalenji waist belt minus the water bottle.

The Race
After we had finished our warm up at Azad Maidan, as we headed to the start line, the A and B corrals were already mixed up. I quickly moved through people to move to the front as much as I can. However, when I got to the start point, it was already a minute after the race had started. Starting so much behind meant that I had to wade through the crowd all along for the next 2 kms. On the positive side, this also helped me warm up slowly. Over these 2kms I would have lost a complete minute.
My strategy was to stick to the 1st 10K for 51 minutes and hit the half time mark at 1:46/1:47. I had to drop down pace if my HR hit 165. Though the minute was lost, I got to the half time mark at around 1:46:30, just as I had planned. I went past coach and gang just around the 9th km mark. They were running steadily. Given the late start, I also met several people en route. Bhasker Sharma, Sandy, Vinit Mehta, Sunil Shetty, Narayan, Sameer, Mani Iyer, Gajendra, Shivnag. This gave a good boost to my confidence.
As I was getting on the sea-link, I was running alongside Roopali Mehta, and I took the winds asking her to stay close and stay behind. I was closing on Neera by this time, and the gap was around 100m.
Both me and Roopali stuck together till the 29th km, with me asking her to move ahead if she wanted as I was stiffening up. At this time, I was feeling great with my HR still in the low 160s, and I was hitting target pace of 5:00 easily.
Just short of the 29th km, I coughed badly because of dry throat and this rippled through my left hamstring resulting in cramp. To add to that, I stopped suddenly. I walked about twenty paces, let the cramp ease up and continued ahead. A quick check on my Garmin, and the pace was 5:15. A back of mind calculation meant that I'll lose about 4 minutes in the remaining distance. By this time, Roopali was ahead by about 150m. Thankfully, this gave me a moving target, as I ran cautiously without aggravating the cramps further.
I would take another 11 km to catch up this 150m distance.
As I reached Peddar road, I was feeling great. I chugged along though the pace dropped to 5:30. As I reached the top, my HR read 168. Phew, this gave me lots of confidence, though I could still feel the cramps. I used the downhill to relax, without pacing up further.
The next thing I remember is that my feet started paining around 36K (as expected), thanks to the cramped shoes. The 39th km and 40th kms never seemed to come, with all that pain.
By this time, I was closing in on both Neera and Roopali. While Roopali had stopped on the route, I quickly gave her a shout, but she was going to take longer. As I passed Neera, I asked her to tag along. In her own style, she asked me to carry on.
The cramps would strike one more time, but I had no room to play with this time. I dropped the pace further and chugged along without stopping.
The usual drama of screaming for the way ahead and weaving through the walkers continued in the last km, till about 500m to go. From here I sprinted all the way to the finish of 3:35:36 (17 seconds better than earlier). Both Neera and Roopali ended up with gold in their respective age categories.

With Roopali Mehta (Picture courtesy: Prasad Naik)

Am I happy?
Dragging me away are ...
1. A week before the race, I wasn't sure if I would race or not, and took antibiotics for a complete week.
2. Most of my training was washed out. I did only about 30% of the required training for the marathon.  My long runs weren't on track till about a month to the race.

On the positive side,
1. My weight has been on a steady decline. During the 1st week of January I tipped 60kg on the scales. This is the least I have weighed in over two decades.
2. I had been regular to the gym, and have been building a good aerobic base.
3. Positive attitude through the race. At about 25th km, I was feeling a bit tired. I reminded myself that this is usually the toughest part of the race, and chugged along.

To look at the last four years, 2013 and 2014 were wasted opportunities with cramps ruining my race post 25km. 2015 was an extremely good finish, given that I was recovering from a serious ITB injury. While 2016 is just another year gone by, I have positives to count on.

1. The long nemesis of cramps is being dealth with (professionally).
2. My fat metabolism has improved and my body composition is getting better.
3. A perfectly executed race on the nutrition front.

Did I give a 100%?
Absolutely. As I am writing this blog (three and a half days after the finish), I can still feel the soreness on my glutes and hips. Even after five gels in the race, I felt tired on the race day and the next. And that makes me happier to have given a whole hearted effort.