run kumaar run..

it's too late to post this but i think it doesn't matter..even four years before if anyone asked me whether i could run the answer would be a definite "NO".i've never been (and never will be) a natural athlete and have struggled to pickup most of the gully cricket i've learned even though i know the technical aspects better than most of the commentators in setmax..even now many don't believe that i ran 10 kms and that too in around 52 mins..taking into consideration that in first twenty one years of my life i've never run beyond 500 metres at a stretch :P

around three years back thanks to the IT industry i started running on treadmill for a different reason..struggling to run one km in around 7.5 mins..it worked for me and an year passed away and i had worked up enough to run 4 kms a day with a break in between in around 25 mins..my second eurotrip helped me to quit the treadmill and run on track and also increase my speed though the distance never increased and also to run without break..in the verge of quitting the IT industry my schedule became vulnerable and sporadic and finally hit a dead end..but only thing i was confident about was that i can touch 5 kms any day if i stretch myself..

circa 2008

along with dheeraj made some futile attempts to run in the campus but it never really took off..i can attribute the failure to laziness and lack of purpose and motivation..

circa 2009 april 2nd week..

TOI started advertising about sunfeast 10k run and three of us (me,sampath and dheeraj) registered for it..we got the training chart which was around 6 weeks perfectly fitting to the schedule and decided to train accordingly..the goal was to complete the race

the place

even though we could've run inside the campus the problem was to measure the distance..so sankey tank was initially chosen to be the place and sampath had claims that one stretch there is around 1.7 kms..but then 1.7 is not a nice number,we wanted something better so that we can measure the distances properly.. then we had two of the grounds in the campus gymkhana..but again we didn't know the distance this following message from dheeraj solved the problem and also increased my motivation..if the question is "how" pls read it and you will know :P its as follows

"Inner track of the further away ground is exactly 400m (athletics just happened there)..nearer ground is 520m by bike(someone who claimed to have accurately measured) and 514m by my measurements with shoes of exactly one foot outer length i.e. i took ..... steps" [fill in the blanks LOL :P]

sad that he trained only upto 5-6 kms and didn't run the actual race due to personal reasons.. we chose the 400m ground so that we have easy measurements i.e. multiples of 0.4km and we are done if we run 25 rounds :P

the schedule

we made few adjustments in the training chart.. finally it was like this
run 3 days week tue,thu,sat increase the distance along a week and saturday run the longest distance of the week and then come down on the next tuesday and again increase.. for e.g.
week 'i' :6 rounds, 8 rounds,11 rounds
week 'i+1':7 rounds,10 rounds,13 rounds
and so on..
we started with 1.6 kms (i.e. 4 rounds) and went on till 8 kms(20 rounds).. and never actually ran 10 kms except on the race day..

meanwhile our basketball season was at its peak :D and saturdays meant that i've to run the longest distance for that week and then play..after i hit the 6km mark i started skipping the basketball sessions but used to sit there and watch the baayz playing it and giving them "moral support" especially during the "protests against americanisation of indian youths" by katri

timing

we set a "realistic goal" of starting our training by 6:15-6:30 am in the morning three days a week and also religiously measure our timings..our goal was to run a round in around 2 mins so that roughly we take 5 mins per km..finally it worked quite well even though during the training it varied very much..

misc

we made it a point to alternate directions(clockwise-anticlockwise around the ground) so that we thought we wouldn't strain the same muscles everytime(no scientific evidence though :P)
stretching before and after the race (definitely worked in our favour)
breathing only through nose not from the mouth (this also worked in our favour)
we also tried to sprint few rounds jog few rounds.. (this didn't work :P)
we never drank water in between (depends but for us it was an irritating break which would unsettle the rythm and hence never did that :P)

the actual race

only thing which bothered us was that we hadn't touched the 10k mark in our training..also given the fact that i'd told almost everyone about the run the last thing i wanted was to twist or sprain something and limp out of the race midway.. luckily nothing of that sort happened :D we actually ran conservatively and even after we touched 10k we had a feeling that we could've continued running :P

the (temporary) end

i "treated" myself with a new pair of running shoes using the discount coupon from nike run club,a couple of icecreams from fresh and naturals,dosas from CTR in no particular order and am yet to get the t-shirt and timing certificate..with further plans to may be run a half-marathon or atleast improve my timing in 10k :D

PS:i know people who can run 10 kms with no training whatsoever and run better..but then there are only few natural athletes.. for rest of us there is a training schedule :D

incognito