18... and time for dedications

Today morning's run went perfect as per plan. Coach Tom had scheduled me a mammoth 18 miles! Until a few days back the figure of 18 miles sounded totally crazy. Then slowly the feeling changed to enthu and I started looking forward to the 18 miler. The week has been funda busy, with work, and also practice for Parichay, still I managed to run on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (6, 8 and 11 laps of Univ Park respectively). Which was not bad at all, relative to some of my earlier weeks.
And yesterday finally I bought an IPod shuffle, and immediately loaded it with an awesome playlist and was literally raring to go today!!!

Today's run was like just another regular run, which is awesome coz 18 miles is way beyond anything I've ever run before. One difference was the water stop at 7.5 miles, which meant we could do 9 and back, which is so much better than coming back to the start mark and running again :) Finished the run, and then just out of curiosity I asked Coach Tom how long I took, and the time was quite pleasantly surprising.. 2:59! Under 3 hours! Man.. I sure have come a long way from where I started this June.

Alrighty folks.. now's the time for dedications.. (yeah I know I've not finished the marathon or something, but 18 is still big for me, and I might as well savour the moment ;) )

1) Steve Jobs:
I bow to thee! How did you manage to come out with something as cool as an IPod Shuffle? Its smaller than a finger and lighter than a keychain, as good a gadget as a music-loving marathoner could ever get :)

2) Pink Floyd:
Oh Floyd! You were the reason I kept going 9 miles one way. The run started with Animals, by the time Dogs was over I was at the 2 mile mark, and once Pigs and Sheep were over I was at the 5 mile mark. After that it was some DSOTM and some Pulse. After the 7.5 mile mark, the goal was to get to the 9 mile mark, there were 5 of us then, and at 8 miles, one guy turned back, and I was quite tempted to follow suit. And then.. David Gilmour started his mindblowing guitar intro, the song was Coming Back to Life.. and indeed I came back to life!!! Totally awesome it was.

3) Ilayaraja:
The second half of the run today from the 9 miles to back, was Ilayaraja all the way through. I was totally totally lost in the music, felt like I'm driving on the freeway with Ilayaraja playing on my stereo. I forgot the fact that I was running :) No.. I'm not exaggerating, you need to experience the feeling to believe it.

4) Coach Tom:
If not for the awesome inspirational coaching from Tom (he has completed 23 marathons himself!), I'd be struggling to do 5 miles right now. Us Asha Team have been really lucky to have a coach as awesome as him.

5) Kiran, Arvind, Diwakar, Praveen, Joy, Hitesh, Chandana, Olivia:
The Asha marathon volunteers - the unsung heroes of the marathon training. Today having run 3 hours, I realized how tough their job is, and what an awesome job they are doing at it. Getting Gatorade, Water, Power Gel, Energy bars, (today there was even Bagels after the run!) and standing at different mile markers for 3 hours every Sunday morning from 7 am, not an easy job at all. Hats off to you guys!!!

Alrighty, now that all run post-analysis and dedications are done, its time to pamper myself with a nap :) (Yeah I know I have a truckload of work to complete, but I think I do deserve a nap now!)

An easy and fun run

This sunday we had a usual large crowd of around 15-20 runners again, felt good.
I was supposed to do a 12 miler, so were majority of others. 12 mile was the farthest anyone would go today, as coach Tom has scheduled a 16-18 miler for us next week, and we needed a breather this Sunday.
The fact that 12 miles is considered a breather itself was quite reassuring to me :)
My running during the week had again been sporadic:
Tuesday Sep 6th - 5 miles (Univ Park)
Wednesday Sep 7th - 9 miles (Univ Park)
Thats it!
Today the weather was again amazing, cool and chilly. We started around 7:37. This time I had good company during the run, me, Ram and Bala were together from the start to finish. The run felt very easy, and we maintained a decent speed. Finished the 12 miles in 1 hr 53 minutes.
Next week is going to be an 18 miler, lets see if I can make it :)

15 miler

So I finally managed to reach the 15 mile milestone.
Was supposed to do 15 miles last Sunday but could not because of a sudden unplanned trip to Washington DC to meet a friend.
My running since my last post until today had been:
Tuesday Aug 23 - 6 laps (Univ Park)
Wednesday Aug 24 - 9 laps (Univ Park)
Sunday Aug 28 - missed the run coz of the DC trip.
Wednesday Aug 31 - 11 laps (Univ Park)

As is evident, my running schedule has been quite sporadic, Owing mainly to a sudden lot of work in my lab. So the 15 miler was intended to be a redeemer. And a redeemer it was...

Since this was the long weekend, everyone had gone vacationing, and left were only 6 runners + coach Tom, a friend of his (I think her name was Donna), and the ever dedicated Asha volunteers. The previous night was the Coldplay concert, which got over late in the night, and was followed by my car clutch plate breaking down and the car getting towed from Holmdel at 2 in the night. Managed to go to sleep around 3:30 and got up at 6:55. Hardly any sleep. And there were 6 runners in all. The others were not doing more than 12 miles, so I was worried I would be the last to finish and make others wait for me. Weather was the saving grace, it was totally amazing, cool, chilly climate. Started running at 7:42 am and this time I timed myself. The plan for 15 was to go to the 5 miler mark, come back to the start, go to the 2 miler mark, run half mile more, come back to the 2 miler mark, and then back again to the start. At the start of the race I was quite fast. Most of the run I was alone, and it was extremely boring. At around 7 miles, coach Tom crossed me, actually he just zipped past me, he was doing 7 1/2 mins per mile speed! Seeing his speed enthused me and I increased my pace too. Reached the start mark, and coach then told me to go easy for the remaining distance, in retrospect if I had continued the same pace I may not even have been able to finish the distance. When I went back to the 2 mile mark, thats when I found out that I'm actually not the last runner and there were atleast 2 people still behind me. That was extremely reassuring!
I finally finished the 15 miles in 2 hrs 32 minutes, which I felt was not bad for the first time. In fact I was quite surprised at how nice I felt after the run, was expecting to have an aching body all over :)