Capital Punishment.

I hate Cricket.

At the risk of being lynched by a mob consisting of almost the entire male population of India, let me repeat those three little words...

I hate Cricket.

I don't play it. I don't watch it. I don't read about it. To me, being confined to a room with cricket on the telly is equivalent to, if not crueler than, capital punishment.

It's not so much the game itself, actually.

What I hate is that how the mindless devotion of the Cricket fanatic is single-handedly responsible for the demise of sporting culture as a whole in the country.

How, nowadays, we don't give a shit about our athletes in Incheon, but every barbershop where I live is full of Champions League T20 chairwarriors going on and on and on...

How the money inflating this one game leaves no breathing room for any other to grow.

In particular, I lament how it effects my sport of choice... distance running.

This sunday, a quarter of the way around the world, forty thousand people will run the 41st BMW Berlin Marathon. I will run the 2nd Dwarka Half Marathon & Charity Run along with maybe a few hundred people. It will seriously be as much fun, if not more, as any more opulent race would have been. We will have great  volunteers and ardent runners, all decidedly friendly people. No frills but adequate support. 

It's cool that there is no shortage of such small, happy events in India, and I try to run as many of them as I can.

But it's strange that we are really far behind in world -class, certified races.

It's especially meh that Delhi, the national capital, doesn't have a big ticket full marathon. We have an exceptional running community, beautiful running spaces, great weather (okay, that was reaching, but the few short weeks we do have great weather, it's really great weather)...and we already have a pretty decent annual half marathon.

Today, we have just three active AIMS ratified races in India besides the Delhi Half... the Mumbai and Pune Marathons and the Bangalore 10k. The Kochi Half is touted as one on the Procam website, but doesn't feature on the AIMS website. The Vadodara Marathon website is a mess. It's not even a full marathon anymore, apparently.

Not a single race anywhere is IAAF Gold/Silver/Bronze labeled. (I believe Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore were all Gold label in 2009-10 according to this article. But not anymore.)

For some reason, the Pune Marathon creates very little buzz. So for marathoners, Mumbai remains the 'go-to' event. Obvious question- what does Mumbai have that Delhi doesn't?

Any one who has run both Delhi and Mumbai will immediately hit upon the answer.

Mumbai has good people.

They throng the roadsides, cheering the fast and the slow alike. They hand out biscuits and chocolates and bananas and water and juices and hi-fives (I bet I could do the whole race without touching an official aid station) They beat drums and clap and dance and wave.

They smile.

In Delhi, the only crowds we runners see are those sullenly waiting at crossings for the traffic cops to re-open the roads. They sneer. They curse. They shout snide, sarcastic remarks. If you're a woman, some of them get creatively obnoxious.

And these are those people who care enough to show up. Most of the city is sleeping in, not giving half a hoot. Away from the crossings, the roads are empty, with a few friends and relatives bravely hugging themselves against the cold.

I'm pretty sure these are the same crowds who would snap awake at 3 AM for getting in line at ticket windows, before going on to display unabashed orgasmic frenzy at Ferozshah Kotla.

I know I'm generalizing here, and that's never fair, but that doesn't mean it's not justified.

The people who actually run Delhi will testify that it isn't a bad race by any standards. The large number of people who are running are mostly awesome. The stadium is pretty festive. The volunteers are effective, if not enthusiastic. It's a flat, fast course. Despite all the ranting above, it is still a race I am looking forward to.

I guess I should be thankful we even have a big half-marathon here, shut up and enjoy the smaller, mellower  races, and stop fantasizing that one day, we'll have a Delhi Marathon in the Majors...

...though we are sure to continue to have those pesky Cricket matches.

Week two of eighteen. That mid-week run was speedwork... intense and satisfying, with me running a couple of sub-6:50 miles... my fastest yet. Also, I'm switching my long run tomorrow for the race in Dwarka on Sunday.

The Goldilocks Effect.

Once there was a little girl.
She sort of strolled into a house which belonged to three bears.
Yadayadayada.
She ate the porridge which was just right.
Right fussy little twerp, she was.

Which brings me to the point... in the words of the Holy Bible (Ecclesiastes 11:4, to be precise...)

"He who watches the wind will not sow and he who looks at the clouds will not reap."

In other terms, if you wait for perfect conditions, you'll never get anything done.

How often are running conditions perfect anyway? A week in March, and another in October, maybe? For the rest of the year where I live, it's either too hot, or too cold. That alone is enough for most people to never run. 

Ah well...to each his own. Me? I'll run all year.

I've read some stuff on the interwebs which says that training through summer will see you through to a good race in the fall. Makes sense to me. I get to test that theory out in the November chill during the ADHM.

But now I'm starting out on something which is quite the opposite. 

For the training cycle that started this week, the weather in the sauna that we affectionately call North India has started taking a slow but sure turn for the better. It feels good to do almost a quarter of my run in pre-dawn darkness, and finish well before the sun shows over the horizon.

And it'll just keep getting better for a while... before it starts getting worse. By the time I get to my last long run in the end of December, the temperature will be an uncomfortably chilly tennish.

Then, we taper and run a marathon in the sharply contrasting warmth of Mumbai.

I suppose whatever advantage the summer training has given me will pretty much have worn off by then. So to compensate for the inevitable slowdown in a race that is going to be in much warmer climes than the training leading up to it, I intend to run my easies about 25 to 30 seconds per km faster than what my plan designates, and my long runs and tempos about 10 seconds or so faster. 

Now I'm not sure if  the body works that way, but I'm pretty certain that the mind does. If I am convinced that I have done something to cater for it, psychologically at least, it should help me meet my goal. 

The way I see it, if Goldilocks hadn't been so damn finicky, she coulda had three times the porridge. Yeah, don't be her. Run whenever.
 
Week one of eighteen is done. I cheated on my recovery from my last marathon a bit. Ran an 8k tempo in the middle of the second week and a full out 10k race. In spite of those travesties, I'm glad to report I was feeling distinctly rested and strong as I began this new training cycle.

Here are my runs...

The Best Laid Plans...

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain…

- Robert Burns, To a Mouse.

So this Scots old-timer who I pretentiously quote above... first he ploughs over a field  mouse’s nest, pretty much ruining its life… and then gets all profound and writes a poem about the futility of planning.

I bet that poor mouse was thrilled to bits…

I used to train almost completely by instinct last year, getting by with anything from two to five runs in a week, never overthinking it.

“Yay! Weekend!" Go Long.

“Bloody hell, It’s chilly today…” Speedwork.

“Ouch. DOMS on my butt…” Crosstrain.

“Weekend, but its cold out and DOMS on my butt…” Sleep in.

It was a nice, laid back, safe way of doing things. If you don't plan and plot too much, you are insulated from disappointment when things don't go as expected. This approach saw me through my first marathon in Gurgaon, and just two months later, my second in Mumbai... both in well over four hours.

Early this year, however, after running a couple of strong half-marathons, I was suddenly overcome with BQ fever. After much agonizing, I set up a realistic long term goal of getting to Boston over a period of two years.

And I knew I wasn't getting there without a plan.

To my mind, a good plan had to have three essential components...

What to do.

When to do it.

How to do it.

I knew for sure that I was neither competent nor capable of designing one for myself. Not enough experience, expertise or insight. The last thing I wanted was to end up investing months of effort into something that, ultimately, didn't work...

So, like all seekers of truth, I dove headfirst into the sea of Google, mucked about thoroughly confused for a goodly bit and finally, at random, almost... fished one out. It had everything I needed. What type of runs to do, what pace to do them at, what distance to cover and when to rest. The best part, it predicted a finishing time for my race.Peachy keen!

I printed it out, and pasted it on the inside of my closet and set about it with the stubbornness of a particularly ornery mule. 71 runs over 18 weeks in peak summers. A total of 950 odd kilometers to be run.

I was determined to not miss a single one. And I didn't. Not one. I actually went for a run at 3 AM once because I had a 6 AM flight to catch. I made a ritual out of coming in and striking through the run on the schedule in my closet with a pen.

I'm aware I'm blowing my own trumpet here, but it's necessary to illustrate that for me, an inflexible, uncompromising training plan worked like a charm (plus I really enjoy blowing my own trumpet...) .I crossed the finish line of my last marathon with effort to spare, more than a minute under my goal time. And if it worked once, what's to say it won't work again?

Now, post-race, I'm almost done with three weeks of low mileages and rest. And it's almost time to kick off the next phase in my BQ journey... break 3:20. Eighteen weeks to go till the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, and my training plan is printed out and pasted on the inside of my closet.

Here it is, if you're curious... 

SCMM 2015 Training Plan (pdf)

And so, despite the cautionary tale of  the homeless mouse, despite the possibility of the metaphorical plough devastating my best efforts, I will be following that schedule with all the OCD that I can muster. 

Stay tuned.

In Pursuit of a PR.

Who doesn't love a new PR?

Come on, all you 'I'm-so-zen-I-don't-care-about-race-times' people...admit it...you know you love your PRs, right?

I went out for a 10k race today, organized by the good people of the Run With Me Foundation (www.runwithme.in).

When I registered, I intended this to be a 'shake-out' run, something to test the progress of my recovery after the exhilarating Airtel Hyderabad Marathon that I ran a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to run this one at somewhere near my current average tempo pace of 4:45 to 4:50, and see if the mild piriformis twinge that I had been feeling until a few days ago was gone for good.

Nothing ambitious...

Until yesterday, when someone casually asked me, "Aiming for a PR?"

I replied with a cautious "Maybe..." But honestly? "Hell, yeah!" would've been more apt. My fastest 10k so far was 46:50, and I told myself I would break 45.

I confess, I'm kinda just writing this to brag about the PR I got. Yay!

But also, in all humility, I'm writing to place on record two things I did today because of which I almost didn't.

First, and most important, is that like a complete moron, I started out too fast. 

I must have read reams of good things about negative splits, about the importance of conserving your best effort for the second half of the race, about starting out at a controlled pace just slightly slower than your goal pace and finishing strong, about how for every minute you bank in the first half of a distance run, you may lose two in the second half... but somehow this is something I just cannot seem to get a grip on.

After an exceptional race in Hyderabad, where I controlled my pace every step of the way, and as a result, crushed my previous best by about 35 minutes, meeting my goal time almost exactly, one would think I had learnt my lesson.

But no. I flew off the start line like a bat out of hell at a sub-4 minute pace... By the km 8, I was paying the price, my pace now dipping to slower than tempo every so often...

...at which point I went and made the second foul-up - a bad mid-race reassessment of goal.

Seriously...with 80% of the race done, I was actually still on track for that goal, but because I was running on empty at this point, this is what was going on in my cranium...

"Screw this, man! No way I'm getting that PR... a time of 50 is what I'll get. That's respectable, right? It's good enough. Can't get a PR in every race...is that a hill? Who put that there? I swear it wasn't there on the way out! Well, whatever...that puts paid to the PR for sure. No way I can run up Mount DLF Golf Course at a pace faster than 5. I'll get a time of 55... if I don't die before km 9, that is...ha ha. 55 is respectable, right?"

It's difficult for me to keep negativity out of my head when I know I'm running a bad pace plan. And that just makes a bad situation worse. I never for a moment had such thoughts over my last Marathon distance, but here they were now, messing up the last two kilometers of a distance that I consider easy-peasy. Since I couldn't generate any positive thoughts, I did the next best thing... stop thinking.

It worked, I suppose, albeit partially. I still missed a sub-45 10k, but managed to get that PR. By less than a minute... but got it all the same.

Well... I have a few races lined up over the next few months before my next Marathon. I resolve to not be greedy for a PR every time I stand at the start line. In the one race that I will be going all out, the Airtel Delhi Half in November, I'm going to unwaveringly implement a pacing plan, and for once in my life, nail that negative-split down.

The Perils of Advice.

As you can probably tell after reading my ramblings, I am a loquacious fella.

If there is anything I enjoy as much as I enjoy running, it's talking about running.

And the field is rich with scope. Races, PRs, training paces, routes, injuries and rehab, nutrition and hydration, gear, psychology, foot anatomy...and shoes. God help me, I love talking about shoes.

And when I'm talking, very often, I end up giving advice.


Runners love giving advice.

Someone I know asked me for a training plan once. I'm not any kind of an expert, but I was stupid enough to consider myself one, just because I had run a couple of marathons and she was just starting out.

She wanted to start from scratch and run a 10k race in ten weeks flat, followed by a half marathon in another fourteen weeks. To be fair to myself, I tried to tell her that her goals were unrealistic. That seemed to discourage her. So I went and made out a plan for her. It wasn't a very good plan, unfortunately. She fell behind after a couple of weeks, tried heroically to stick with it for another couple of weeks before giving up almost completely.

I am now riddled with guilt at having lost a recruit for this sport that I love. I'm not sure I handled this correctly, or what I should have done instead. So, since then, I have become extremely guarded in dishing out advice.

New runners assume that someone who runs faster or farther than them, must obviously know more than them about running. And runners with experience sometimes (as in my deplorable case) end up assuming that they are in a position to give stone-tablet commandments to those who are just beginning. Blindly following what others do on the road, or what you read on a website, is playing Russian Roulette with your running goals.



Quite contrarily, I wouldn't tell you not to seek advice either. Learning from failures and successes of others is essential. But the truth is, no one...no one knows your body or your mind like you do. Every runner is unique. What works for one, may or may not work for another. Even the most universally accepted maxims in running are not guaranteed to benefit the next runner who implements them.

So here's some advice about giving advice... Say "Here's what I would do...", and make sure that the advisee understands that it doesn't mean "Here's what you should do..."

And here's some about taking advice...All advice needs to go through the filters of common sense and self-awareness.

Yeah... I write pompous stuff like this when I don't run in the morning...

It Can't Be Done...

"It can't be done..."

There are a few people in the world who are so intensely positive, motivated and inspired, that the above thought never crosses their minds.

I am not one of those people.

Two years ago, I started out in the singularly illogical (on the face of it...) pursuit of long distance running. At the time "long distance" meant ten torturous, never-ending kilometers. I remember getting in touch with a small bunch of people who ran as a group and joining them for a 10k. It was August 2012. We started at a half-past-five in the morning on a route over undulating terrain, with the sun well up. The temperature must have been in the high twenties, humidity in the sixties.

By kilometer 6, I was dead on the inside, half so on the outside, and fairly certain...

"It can't be done..."

Of course, I was wrong. I pushed myself not because of any lofty spiritual ideal, but because I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of the people I was running with. Somehow, I survived that run, taking just over an hour for the distance. My lungs ached, my legs hurt and I was soaked in sweat and ready to collapse. It wasn't pretty.

I would love to be all awesome and write that I learned my lesson that day...that I showed the requisite resolve and tapped into the mysterious 'power of positive thinking' that life-coaches go on and on about.

Nah. That didn't happen. I almost gave up. Almost...

Over the next few weeks, I started running regularly (more or less). Every so often, I would run a 10k. It was never a pleasant experience in those days. I stayed away from running groups. A lot of people in the running groups in Gurgaon were experienced runners with multiple races already under their belts. Too much pressure.

I stuck with it out of sheer stubbornness, with a vague, vain idea pushing me forward that running would give me six-pack abs. That hasn't happened yet, by the way...though I still remain hopeful.

Two months of stubbornness and misplaced vanity was what it took. I was running four 10k runs a week. They were growing less and less unpleasant. I would do one in less than an hour, now and then, and feel so ridiculously great about it!

Of course, by then, I had shifted my bar of impossibility to half-marathons.

I had started reading about running on the internet, and the idea that I would one day run long distance races was slowly contaminating my mind. Physically, I was far from it. Mentally... even farther.

"It can't be done...", I told myself, predictably, at the end of every 10k.

Twenty one kilometers! More than twice what I'm running now! Are you kidding me? That's the distance buses are made for!

It took me more than a year of running to get to my first half-marathon. I approached it with what, in retrospect, I consider extraordinarily rare wisdom. I crept up on it. There's something in running called the '10% rule', which essentially states that you shouldn't increase your weekly mileage in training by more than 10% of what it was in the preceding week. I followed that religiously.

I also struggled with loss of motivation and injury. IT Band Syndrome kept me off the road for almost four months. I lost almost all the gains I had made. Winters kept me in, with me succumbing to the temptation of a warm bed more often than I care to admit.

It was the spring of 2013 before I was recovered from injury and had accumulated sufficient guilt to get back on the road to train again. I registered for the Running and Living Gurgaon Town & Country Half-Marathon, to be held on the 11th August 2013. At the time, the longest I had run was 14 kilometers.

A month before the race, with the north Indian summer well on it's way, I went out to run with a group again, people who said they would be running an easy 16k. At the start point, someone decided to run a half-marathon. I was like... what? I wasn't ready! I hadn't trained! It can't be done!

That run was agony. I was running on unfamiliar roads and had no mental picture of how much distance I had covered and how much more I needed to go. I stopped and walked several times and got left behind. When I finally staggered back to the start point, some of the others were waiting patiently.

"How much did we do?" I groaned.

"Oh, about eighteen kilometers...", someone said.

I was never more convinced, in my mind, than I was at that point, that a half-marathon? It can't be done...

For me, when I crossed the finish line of the race a month later in 2:08, the Half-Marathon distance was a watershed. Suddenly, I was addicted. My glutes and hamstrings were killing me for a week after the race, but I couldn't wait to get back to running!

I had bought a pair of ASICS (had never heard of the brand before) and some other running stuff. A fuel-belt. An mp3 player. A Garmin watch. I started writing a cutesy training journal with a fountain pen. I started putting my runs on mapmyrun.com .

I had now shifted my bar of impossibility to marathons. Forty two kilometers? Pheidippides died...died, when he ran that much to start the whole madness off in the first place. Who was I kidding? Marathons?

Can't be done.

Today, it's another year later. I've done three marathons, eight half-marathons and a 28k race. I no longer struggle to get out of bed to train.

And I've started dreaming of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.

That requires me to run the 42.2 kilometers in 3 hours and 10 minutes or less. Seriously? Do you know what pace that is? It's 4:30 per kilometer...I can barely do two kilometers of speedwork at that pace nowadays. You have to be genetically gifted to run at that speed. You know what? It has to be said...

Can't.

Be.

Done.