Sprinting On...
Image by Eva the Weaver via Flickr
One of my new year resolutions was to participate in a marathon. Of course back when I made the resolution I did not know that a marathon was 40 odd kilometers long... lets just say my resolution was to participate in one major long distance running event.
As the year chugged along and I kept running around for other things and I slowly forgot about the original running I intended to do. About a couple of months ago there was a night marathon event at Bangalore. I did not participate in the event considering that I hadn't prepared at all, but missing the event was a good enough catalyst to renew my interest in running.
About a month and half back the announcement of the Sunfeast 10k marathon hit the newspapers and hoardings. This seemed like the perfect opportunity, without hesitation I registered for the event and began my training.
My earlier experience with running wasnt much, I wasnt the fastest among my peers to top the school athletic events, so that was never an incentive. To add to the disinterest I was warned by many that my underweight frame would worsen with continuous running... Even in my brief stint working out in a GYM, the instructor plainly told me not to run much as he felt I didnt need it.
The only time it had become a semi regular part of my workout was when I had paired up with my cousin to improve our fitness. He wanted to run and considering we were keeping a check on each other's efforts I ran too. Ironically I used to run easily twice the distance he ran... soon he simply stopped the habit, but I continued. After that it became a part of my daily workout. I never measured the distance I ran but now realize that I had grossly over estimated the distance and in turn my fitness :D
When the announcement for the run came along, I contacted ashwinne who was one of the regular runners I knew. Considering we were similarly built, I figured his advice would be extremely valuable... it was :)
Very soon based on the advice and a few running tutorials on the web, I was running thrice a week. I even discovered that my cellphone had this app that did a fair job recoding my runs and letting me analyze each run. I started out with jogging in bursts, slowly moving to running at a varying pace and finally to running at a very consistent pace. Actually my last 4 runs near my house took me almost exactly the same time (+/- 5 sec!)
The longest run I managed was about two weeks ago, running Nanda Road. The 4.45km road(bothways) took me about 25min 59sec. My regular run is about 2.1km in length and takes me about 10min 40sec. Ironically the regular run is on a very hilly section (my home happens to be on top a hill) and that means that running some of stretches is very easy and some hard. With less that two weeks to go to the event I plan to run almost everyday for the next week and try one long run probably Nanda Road twice(~10kms).
Running has been one of the hobbies that I have held onto despite so many events around me. The physical pain and strain (atleast at the start) can break anyone's spirit, and the need to wake up early is probably the prime reason for most ppl slowly giving up on it. But for me it came at the right time and filled a small void... I once told a friend that running seems like the only right thing happening in my life right now...
I leave you now with a few inspirational videos ashwinne had suggested... They are pretty awesome, if you haven't seen them before do watch them :)
Click to view